What Are Your Motivations for Being In Business?

As an emerging entrepreneur, one of the first things you want to ask yourself is, what are your motivations for being in business for yourself in whatever capacity you are or like to be? Most people do not truly understand their motives for what they do. A lot of times, they don't really know what they want. And if they do know what they want, they don’t necessarily understand why they wanted it. So, motivation is truly referring to your motives; your reasons behind things.

Here’s another question for you that may sound a little funny. Are you a H.O. or a B.O.? And no, I am not being derogatory. H.O. stands for Hobbyist Owner and B.O. stands for Business Owner. Now, this a very important question. It’s a great distinction to make because it helps to determine what your motivations are and what you want out of your business. This distinction is really going to impact your decision making. It’s going to impact how you run your business and impact how you view the process of creating wealth, if you want to create wealth; what it is that you're doing this for and why you want money in general. So again, are you a H.O., or a B.O.?

I’m going to give you some background so you understand which one is which. A Hobbyist Owner is someone that maybe has a talent or a trade. It’s usually something that they love, that they are offering because it's really what they want to do and they feel drawn to it.

A lot of times people do things like this on the side. Sometimes it's a hobby. Sometimes they turn their hobby into a side business, but they’re a hobbyist. They have a specific thing that they do and they turn it into a business for themselves. If somebody is doing something like this full-time, that's fantastic. 

But there is one thing that I do want to point out. A lot of times it becomes very much like being an employee; working for yourself. For instance, if you have a certain craft, like being a jewelry maker. The more jewelry that you make and the more time that you're putting into making the jewelry, the more money you can make. Therefore, if you want to increase the amount of money that you make, you have to increase the amount of time that you are putting in to your craft or trade.

The distinction between that and a business owner, is that a business owner, even if they're passionate about it and uses their talent, they are not attached to themselves being their business. They are willing to look beyond at ways of diversifying what they do; at collaborating, using Affiliates, hiring other people or automating processes. They're not only looking at how they can trade what they offer for money from someone else.

That is the distinction. It's a way of expanding the mindset of working for yourself and opening up the door to new opportunities. People who are business owners truly have the opportunity of creating abundance in a way that someone who's a hobbyist owner usually does not.

Now there are exceptions to that. For instance, if you’re an artist and you’re one of the absolute best in the world, you can create and sell a painting for thousands of dollars, which can create a lot of abundance. But, in reality, there's a reason why there's a phrase called “the starving artist,” because most of them don't look at what they do as a business, they look at it as a hobby that happens to make the money. It doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with that, but it is vitally important that you understand which one you are and which one you want to be.

Another big difference between a hobbyist and a business owner, is that business owners understand that the nature of business itself is the pursuit of profit. This is why we work so hard on the mindset since a lot of people, especially heart-centered entrepreneurs, have a problem talking about the fact that they want profit. One reason is that, they feel bad about the fact that they're trying to make money providing something that helps people.

So, the question is why are you in business? Are you a corporate Renegade that is trying to flee the corporate world? Are you drawn to something specific? Do you have a talent or a calling? Are you looking for flexibility in your schedule? Do you have a specific goal? Are you after freedom? Do you want to help other people? What is it that has brought you to this place where you are either working for yourself or looking at how you could work for yourself?

For us, our two main factors that draw us to do what we do and work for ourselves, is freedom of time, of schedule and to do the things that we want. Also, contribution because we want to make a difference in the world. That is what drives us. Those are our motives and it is a very different experience as a business owner if you have different motives.

It's important for you to know what yours are. To help you do that, we have some activities included in the ebook version of this article. Try coming up with at least three key important reasons that you are doing what you're doing, so that you can use them as the driving force to move you forward in your business.