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Why Run your own Business?

What motivates someone to risk everything to pursue the dream of starting their own business? Why chase this vision when most such companies fail? What extraordinary urge forces entrepreneurs to keep taking the plunge, despite terrible odds? This question of motivation has always fascinated me: like most things in life, there are a number of reasons, some of which I have listed below.

1. The Money
The obvious basic reason why people go into business is to accumulate wealth. From such riches flow material luxuries, freedom and status - all of them desirable goals. But there are plenty of ways to get rich and running your own business is not the most certain or simplest. So money alone is rarely the prime objective. But nevertheless having enough can be important - as in the famous New Yorker cartoon: "The point is to get so much money that money's not the point anymore."

2. To Build Something
Many are born with the innate urge to create something tangible and lasting. While some become architects or artists, others build companies. They know that a business can give life and prosperity to a community, and almost take on an existence of its own, like a living being. Entrepreneurs understand the vital significance of inventing something that can generate employment. No other creative endeavour undertaken by man is of more practical importance than that. They believe in Sir Walter Scott's dictum: "Ambition is the serious business of life."

3. No Choice
Many entrepreneurs find themselves unable to get a job or provide a living for their family except through self-employment. Generations of immigrants have come to Britain and found local jobs scarce: such resourceful individuals have often somehow found the wherewithal to start or buy a business and become their own boss. For them being an entrepreneur was a question of survival, not a chance to reach for the stars. Yet as a consequence of their boldness, ethnic minorities own a disproportionate percentage of the UK's most successful enterprises. Too many locals are too comfortable to take on the struggle of making something from nothing.

4. By Accident
I think many inventors, scientists, academics and the like never really mean to become entrepreneurs, but they come to it as a way of making their ideas concrete. These types are driven by a belief in their product and an obsession with making it successful, and the determination to do it themselves if no-one else will. They are often highly technical and not very commercial, but they tend to be intelligent, driven and original.

5. By Tradition
Some inherit a family business, and their sense of duty makes them carry it on. They are not perhaps natural entrepreneurs, and may lack a strong desire for riches or power, but believe in their role as someone who nurtures a family heirloom for future generations.

6. The Challenge
Some are driven to take on difficult tasks because an easy life is not for them. They see starting a business as a metaphorical mountain to be climbed - "because it's there." They realise that they only derive satisfaction in life by overcoming problems, thereby gaining a true sense of achievement. They follow General Patton's philosophy: "From here on out, until we win or die in the attempt, we will always be audacious."

7. Power
Many entrepreneurs are megalomaniacs - they love the idea of not just controlling their own destiny, but everyone else's. They like hiring and firing, making people rich and changing the way consumers shop or deciding what they can buy. Like the railroad king Cornelius Vanderbilt once wrote to some ex-partners: "You have undertaken to cheat me. I won't sue you, for the law is too slow. I'll ruin you."

8. Ego
Some have to be the boss to satisfy their vanity. They enjoy possessing things and creating empires in their own image. They would sympathise with US president LBJ's attitude: when he was moving towards the wrong helicopter an officer said to him, "Your helicopter is over there." He replied, "Son, they are all my helicopters."

My view is that for virtually all those who develop their own business, Alistair Cooke's words about Andrew Carnegie apply: "The chase and the kill are as much fun as the prize."