How did you know corporate wasn't for you?

[msaelim]

I am realizing that I can't stand it. What did you hate about it? Every day for the past few years I've been wishing I could open a business but I have no idea what to do =(. My parents and sisters own their own businesses and I just wish I could find something I'm interested in...

[billbenson]

There are jobs in corporate that aren't so 'corporate'. If I had to work in a cubicle I'd go nuts although I have had to do it for short stints during my 22 year corporate career. Most of my career was a field salesman working out of my house. I didn't even live in the same state as as the company I worked for. It was about as close to being self employed and still working for a company as you can get. Training is another field type of job.

A lot of these types of jobs have a fair amount of idle time. It can give you the time to research and start a business. It can also tell you if you have the skills and personality to work on your own. A lot of people dream about it, but don't have that personality and skill set. I personally feel that most Americans need the structure of a workplace. Most small businesses fail. I think the personality of the issues I've just mentioned play into that to a large degree.

Being an outside sales person for so long of technical products, I had to do accounting, sales, marketing, researching my competition,and ongoing education to keep up with the technology.

Just some stuff to think about.

[Brian Altenhofel]

It's not so much that "corporate" isn't for me. It's that being a human keyboard isn't for me. Being the boss gives me the flexibility to only take on work that interests me and turn away work that doesn't.

[Fulcrum]

Don't take this the wrong way, but I get the impression that you have been reading some books by people who left "Corporate America" to start their own business. If you start a business, or take over your parents store (see different post), you are NOT leaving "Corporate America" - you are, in fact, becoming an enabler of "Corporate America".

When you work for someone else, many schedules take the following approach:
1) Clock in at start of shift
2) Do the work assigned to you while (avoiding) playing office politics with those around you
3) Clock out at end of shift
4) Collect pay on payday

When you go into business for yourself, your schedule won't look anything like the above. It may look more like this
1) Your business will encompass your entire life. There is no clock in time.
2) There will almost always be "after hours" work to be done. You don't do a small portion of the work to be done - you need to be able to ensure that all the work will get done right the first time, every time.
3) Rather than playing politics, you will be trying to keep it from setting the work environment
4) See #1. There is no clock out time.
5) There will be times when you won't collect a paycheck. It was 2 years before I started paying myself more than the bare minimum to survive.

I'll give you the same advise I gave another poster. Take stock of both your strengths and weaknesses - be completely honest with yourself. Ask those around you what they think your strengths and weaknesses are and compare them to your own list. I'm willing to bet that you will be surprised when comparing both lists.

As to the question in the OP, there were a large number of factors that played into my going into business for myself:
1) Tired of being lied to by the boss about wages and responsibilities
2) Watching nepotism reign free while the company lost contracts and customers due to inept abilities
3) Told that it was my fault the company lost an annual 7 figure account because I walked out the door mid-shift to avoid putting the boss (owner) in the hospital. By this point I really didn't care about the job or the company. I did my work - no more, no less and collected my cheque every week.
4) After leaving that job after almost 10 years, went back to working at my parents shop. Unfortunately I had developed the "I will not tolerate incompetence and BS" attitude and was starting to challenge government inspectors. I don't recommend doing this when you're in the food industry.
5) Over the course of a February weekend, without my looking for them, I had my former employer ask for me to come back with a HUGE raise, another tooling shop that wanted me to partner with them, and a couple of potential commercial real estate investment opportunities. With all of that happening over 72 hours I figured I may as well go into business for myself since my skill set was bringing that kind of unsolicited attention.

[Brian Altenhofel]

When you go into business for yourself, your schedule won't look anything like the above. It may look more like this
1) Your business will encompass your entire life. There is no clock in time.
2) There will almost always be "after hours" work to be done. You don't do a small portion of the work to be done - you need to be able to ensure that all the work will get done right the first time, every time.
3) Rather than playing politics, you will be trying to keep it from setting the work environment
4) See #1. There is no clock out time.
5) There will be times when you won't collect a paycheck. It was 2 years before I started paying myself more than the bare minimum to survive.

Yep.

For me, there's times where "9-5" means "9AM-5AM", and then times where I decide the stress is too much and I need to cancel any appointments for the day to recharge. There's times where the pay is great, and times where there's almost zero revenue. Work is pretty much in session 24/7. If a fire gets started at 3AM, I have to put it out even if I just went to bed an hour before. When I'm out just doing regular shopping, I have to be prepared to potentially make a sale (it's not uncommon for small talk to include the "what do you do" question, and sometimes that leads to a business deal).

When I left the employee world, I had planned my exit several months in advance with an absolute date circled on the calendar that would be my last day whether I was "ready" or not. It was largely due to a miserable work environment. However, I had to make sure that no important bridges were burned.

I get offers weekly to go back to the employee world. I pretty much tell them that unless they have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that no sane person would pass up, I'm not interested. I've had a few companies that I've done work for ask me straight up how much it would cost to bring me on full-time and what sort of package I would want, including an acquihire. That encourages me to keep going, because it reinforces to me that I am still bringing value.

Something you might try instead of actively looking for a business opportunity that interests you is to write down ideas that interest you as you get them. Then don't reflect on them for a while (several months or so) until you come back to review them. If the interest is still there, you might consider looking deeper into it.

Running a business is not for everyone. It requires dedication, thick skin, and grit.

[Harold Mansfield]

I always knew. I have never had a job where I said to myself, "Yes, I want to move up in this company". I've never wanted to move up in someone elses company. Every job was always about the money, so I always did jobs that had the potential to make nice money out of the gate without a lot of responsibility. Service industry was perfect for that.

I can be anti social at times, I hate small talk, I'm impatient, I like working alone, I have problems with some forms of authority, and I'm not good at kissing up to people. I can't sit back and watch things run poorly, and hate how long it takes most companies to make small decisions to improve service or customer experience. It used to drive me crazy. When I do work for people, I liked working for people who think clearly and make decisions quickly.

That, or I'm making a buttload of cash and I don't care how they run it just as long as they leave me alone.

I worked in a few offices over the years and it was like sitting in a prison cell. I never understood why people were so happy to sit in a cubicle and make the exact same paycheck week after week, year after year, and get so excited to get a once a year Christmas bonus or 2% raise every now and then.

Especially people who get 30 minute lunches. To me that's always been the difference between if you have a go nowhere job, and a possible career. The 30 minute lunch says you're just a worker. Expendable. Interchangeable. The only reason you're even getting lunch is because the law says so.

The 1 hour lunch usually says that you run something, or are there because you have a specific talent, or education. The 1 hour lunch usually means you're salary. The 30 minute lunch means you work by the hour.

So I always knew that when my "career" in the service industry was over, and I wasn't making gobs of cash anymore that I would go it on my own with my own business. There was no way I end up a 30 minute lunch person. I just never knew exactly what until the very end and I started it. But I'd been preparing for years, mentally, and studying others...so I knew it was coming sooner or later.

[bjay99]

I just wish I could find something I'm interested in...

You need to get out there are start networking. There are countless amount of opportuntiies out there. It sounds to me that you are bored and want to be a business owner... you don't have to be 100% interested in the product or service, but you need to find something people want to buy :-)

[Freelancier]

I was an entrepreneur starting at 13, had my first company at 15, was doing freelance programming at 19 while I was at college. Went into the corporate world right out of college and learned some hard lessons from some really poor managers and some valuable lessons from some really good ones. But I knew that I couldn't avoid poor managers, there just weren't enough good ones and never would be enough of them. And I found I had what it took to run my own company once I found my first client.

The thing is: if you don't have a talent combined with drive and discipline, you might as well work for someone else, because you'll most likely fail on your own.

[Harold Mansfield]

Also, it's not necessarily going to hit you over the head. Sometimes one thing leads to another. I didn't start out with the idea of doing WordPress Websites and support services. It evolved into that. I wanted to be a music blogger. I figured that's how I would make a living cause it looked easy on TV. At the time I knew everything about my music niche, but nothing about publishing, blogging, advertising, or running an online business.

But go back even further, the reason I even got my first computer is because I wanted to learn more about bundling and selling mortgages as a broker during the boom. Once I was online I started reading blogs and websites. That's when I saw that there were very few U.S. based websites about Electronic Dance Music.

I started the music blog as a side hobby. Then one day I woke up and I realized that I had gone from asking a ton of technical questions on webmaster forums to answering them. Then the economy and mortgage industry crashed before I could even get started as a broker and that dream was instantly over, but I had learned something on the side and that's how I started doing it for other people.

Today I know probably 100x's what I knew then. When I started My Space was still a hot social media site and the idea of Social Media marketing didn't even exist. Things evolved and so did I.

I say all of that to say, you aren't always going to find your way to entrepreneurship by roaming aimlessly looking for some kind of business to start. Take an interest in something, learn as much as you can about it. The more you learn, the more options and possible opportunities you'll discover.

[KristineS]

I'm still on the cusp with this. I have a corporate job (I'm one of the people who run things :)) but I'm really getting the urge to go out on my own. I've experienced the bad managers and the delay in making decisions or inability to make decisions and people putting roadblocks in the way of success. I'm also much more confident in myself and my abilities, so that's made a difference in even thinking I could go out on my own and make a go of it. I also have a skill set that could easily be applied to working for myself and I'm already finding success applying those skills on the side. So, I have almost all the pieces in place, except maybe the piece that says I can do this and it will work. Still working on that bit.

[user2837]

As far as looking to do something non-corporate such as start your own business, I would suggest (as I am sure others would agree) to do your research first. Read forums like this, read magazines, do online research. Just make sure you know what you are getting yourself into. Perhaps choose something you can start and run part time while still working your "corporate" world job. Then if your business idea doesn't pan out, you are still able to pay your bills.

[Wozcreative]

I needed more flexibility in my hours because of personal reasons. Luckily I had enough experience to quit and start my own business.

[The Coach]

Not being the place where creativity is fully accepted even in key roles where is demanding to have such quality. And the reason was never that the ideas, projects, methods were not good, there were just not wanted at all, without conditions, not at the time proposed. So , a corporation has its own path directed by shareholders and changes or differences are very difficult to be accepted.

[Paul]

As far as looking to do something non-corporate such as start your own business, I would suggest (as I am sure others would agree) to do your research first. Read forums like this, read magazines, do online research. Just make sure you know what you are getting yourself into. Perhaps choose something you can start and run part time while still working your "corporate" world job. Then if your business idea doesn't pan out, you are still able to pay your bills.

I agree, don't jump from the pan into the fire. Hating corporate doesn't neccesarily mean you're going to love running a business. Try it out first.