Business Insights

Benefits of owning a business: 19 first-hand experiences

January 19, 2024

If you’re reading this, you probably have a business idea in mind and you’re looking for reassurance whether starting your own business is a wise move. You want to know what the benefits of owning a business are so you can decide if it’s worth the risk.

We’ve all heard about “Being your own boss is cool because you can work whenever you want” but that’s not the end of the benefits of owning your own business. Yes, freedom is the biggest advantage of running but there’s more to it than just sleeping until 11 o’clock or working at night.

1. Impact on someone else’s success

2. Freedom to choose your clients

3. Being spontaneous and active

4. Being present in your children’s lives

5. Sharing your core values

6. Investing in passion projects

7. Effecting change at macro and micro level

8. Pushing beyond the limits

9. Ability to travel the world

10. Neverending learning opportunities

11. Having control over your life

12. Unlimited growth and opportunities

13. Tax write-offs

14. Saving for retirement

15. Freedom to work as you please

16. Growing your network

17. Bringing ideas to life Ideas

18. Building equity

19. The ability to self-pace

20. Conclusion

19 benefits of owning a business according to business owners

Who else to ask about the benefits of owning your own business if not the owners themselves. They’ve been through it all – the good, the bad, the ugly – and they can sincerely tell if the sacrifices they made for their businesses paid off at the end.

Impact on someone else’s success

Running a business is heart-racing. Everything begins and ends with you. What systems you create, relationships you cultivate, every choice you make. All of it lives and breaths in you.

And that’s exhilarating. The late nights, trials and errors, amazing learning experiences all of that culminates in helping your client be their best.

They’ll never know completely, and they don’t need to. The journey is your own and their triumph is yours too. When they win you win.

It’s amazing to see their transformation and what a difference you made in that transformation. All the results you helped create and how much better their business is now because of your work.

The highs and lows create a business all your own and you can make it into whatever you like.

It’s not for everyone, but that’s pretty cool too.

Tracie Patterson, Quiz Creator & Conversion Copywriter at Indie Copy

Freedom to choose your clients

The best perk of being a business owner is only working with clients I believe in and enjoy. Each of my clients is more than just a business connection, they become friends, and their brands are ones I am passionate about.

In a previous life, when I worked for other companies, I didn’t have the luxury and privilege of choosing who I spent my time on every day. Now, I get to handpick exactly who I dedicate my days giving a voice to. I respect my clients, and they respect me. It creates an amazing environment and even on the days I am working all day and night for them, I am excited because I am passionate about them and for them.

Diana Bassett, President of DBPR

I love being my own boss because, instead of getting fired, I can fire clients. I handle public relations, marketing, and leadership consulting. If I am not getting buy-in and cooperation from clients, if they do not deliver on the things that I need to move projects forward, I can cut bait. Working for a company does not allow me that freedom. I have to work with whoever they place in front of me. The freedom of choice is the best part of being a business owner.

Tonya McKenzie, Founder of Sand & Shores

Being spontaneous and active

One of the best benefits of owning your own business is I can go on an adventure any time of the year and any day of the week. I can be spontaneous and active. I have always been a very active person. I love to travel and have once in a lifetime experiences like repelling down a waterfall in Costa Rica and making friends with llamas in the hills of Machu Picchu.

If I were an employee, I’d have to get permission in advance for any time off from my boss. I’d have to limit my adventures to the brief holiday season or 14 days of vacation time. I’ve always wanted the freedom to be adventurous which is exactly why I decided to start a business.

Tyler Read, CEO of Personal Trainer Pioneer

Being present in your children’s lives

As a single full-time father, being my own boss gives me the precious gift of being in my son’s life… consistently. I take him to school, I pick him up, I participate in fundraisers, and I’m at all of his plays, his extracurricular activities, and I even get to chaperone field trips.

Being a great dad is extremely important to me, and being my own boss makes that possible.

Chris Cade, Founder of The Miracles Store

Sharing your core values

What I love about owning a business is that allows me to share my core values with a larger audience. For example, one of my personal core values is “Operate at Level 10 Integrity”, which we adopted in the business a few years ago. This value guides decision making, planning, communication and more, as all of us and including me strive to meet the high standard. It is rewarding to see these core values applied at scale.

Michael Alexis, CEO of The Great Guac Off

Investing in passion projects

My number one benefit of owning a business is being able to invest profits into passion projects, without the fear that I am risking my livelihood. Being my own boss has afforded me the luxury of finding new and exciting ideas to expand my profile. Currently, I am developing more passive income businesses that can run alongside my SEO agency.

Tom Clark, Founder & Director of SEO at Convert Digital Ltd

Effecting change at macro and micro level

I think lots of people (particularly those who don’t own a business) view owning a business as controlling ones’ destiny or being able to set their own priorities, or “make a lot of money”. Those are all common outcomes in successful businesses, and not bad ones!

To me, though, they don’t capture the responsibility that is inherent with leadership—which, frankly, is much more rewarding (short and long term) than any type of personal achievement or accomplishment (not to mention at the core of ANY business ownership reality, successful or otherwise).

I think the greatest perk of being a business owner is having the ability to effect change! It could be at the macro-level (disrupting an industry) or the micro (doing something to demonstrate appreciation for staff or clients), but it’s a unique privilege that comes with the opportunity of being in the lonely seat at the top of the org chart. Sometimes it’s impossible to miss, other times it’s hard to see or takes a while to manifest. I’ve had many opportunities to experience the latter, and have spent a meaningful part of my career thinking about the former. In whatever format it comes, it’s real, and the impact it has on the lives of others, I believe, can literally change the world.

Daniel Koffler, Founder/President of New Frontiers

Pushing beyond the limits

Running my own business is like professional sports to me – a routine I’m missing out on after my sports career has come to an end. Being in business fills me with the amount of daily adrenaline I need, puts me into a routine that requires me to push myself beyond limits of everyday thinking, ideas, challenges and execution.

Adam Bukauskas, Co-Founder of Upmove

Ability to travel the world for business

Being my own boss offers a lot of lifestyle flexibility such as being able to travel the world to meet suppliers and explore new business opportunities. Being able to look back and see how we’ve grown a multi-regional brand, it is truly a rewarding thing! It also offers me control in decision-making which is crucial given we’ve nurtured this brand like our baby from day one.

Kate Rubin, Owner of Rubin Extensions

Neverending learning opportunities

One thing which I enjoy the most being the owner of Credox is that when you are the boss, there are a ton of things which you learn. For instance, when you are running a company you are the accountant, hiring manager, marketer, supply and demand maintainer, outsourcer, and technical support to name a few. You are responsible for everything that happens in the company at a large level.

Resultantly, my skillset and expertise have exploded as I have learned how to wear all the different boss hats.

Hanna Karl, Senior Editor at Credox

Having control over your life

I enjoy the level of control and security and comes with running my own business. I grew up with people saying that employment is security and stability whereas having your own company is the opposite but have found this to be not true.

In the past 4 years, I have been laid off 3 times despite excellent performance – for reasons beyond my control (M&A, funding cut, pandemic mass layoffs). I have worked 100 hour weeks for these companies like Uber and Rocket Internet just to find myself out of a job over and over again.

Having started my own business has given me much more control and stability in my life. Even if one income stream or client falls away I still have the others. I can make pivots to adjust to market changes, and I get to reap what I sow.

Julia Lemberskiy, Co-founder & Managing Director at JJ Studio

Unlimited growth and creative opportunities

I love being my own boss because it affords unlimited growth and creative opportunities. I am always open to the new in my legal and professional development. The ability to try different ideas, and use my knowledge and expertise in unusual ways is why I love being my own boss. Including the ability to fail, and learn from it without outside judgment.

One perk of running my own business, that I enjoy the most is: using my experience to create new business lines. I can change, add, or eliminate what I want, when I want.

Laura French, Founder of French Law Group

Tax write-offs

One perk – Tax Write-Offs, particularly mileage! I travel all over the state for my business. I also have to do supply runs, banking, and deliveries in-between my sales sites. I use a mileage tracker called Mile-IQ that allows me to catalog every single drive I make. These annually add up to SEVERAL thousands in mileage. Just my mileage write-offs account for quadruple what my write-offs were on my yearly taxes as an employee. This translates IMMEDIATELY to additional capital for my products, marketing and inventory.

Jay Jermo, Owner of Hey Honey

Saving for retirement

The one thing I love about running my own business is saving more for retirement and paying a lot less tax! By making large contributions to my SEP-IRA – much larger than a traditional 401(k) – and taking the usual business owner tax deductions I’ve managed to get my effective tax rate down into the single digits. I’d rather pay myself than Uncle Sam! #PayLessTax

Liz Steblay, Founder & President of ProKo Agency

Freedom to work as you please

A significant benefit of running your own business is it gives you the flexibility to run it however you want. When I left working at a large corporation to start my own business, I never thought I’d experience a parallel to one of the greatest movies of all time, The Shawshank Redemption.

As fans of the movie surely recall, the characters contemplate being “institutionalized” regarding how it takes time to adapt to a new reality after leaving a place they’ve been at for such a long period of time.

In my case, after a nearly 20-year corporate career, my default instinct was that I was not allowed to freely talk to the media, not allowed to freely market my services however I wanted, not allowed to publicly express my opinions on the industry, etc. After leaving to start my own business, I was then free to do all of that. It did though take a little time to overcome my prior “institutionalized” mindset!

Brad Wales, Founder of Transition To RIA

Growing your network

For me, even just a starter of being my own boss, the most enjoyable thing is the opportunity to connect with the smartest people around the world. I love communication, new people, and contacts. Also, when you don’t need to ask anybody what to do, you can free your mind and be open to new challenges and opportunities.

Lukas Tilkevicius, CEO at Artifix

Bringing ideas to life

Despite collaboration being incredibly important, one of the best perks of being a business owner is that you can run with those ideas you have blind faith in, even if others don’t. These can turn out to be some of the most rewarding initiatives especially because, as an employee, your big ideas might either be watered down, rejected or simply just rewarding somebody else with their success. It’s still important to listen to others and their feedback, but being your own boss means that you ultimately don’t need anybody else’s approval to run with an idea and test it out.

Tom Crowe, Owner of Tom Crowe Digital

Building equity

In my opinion, the best part about being a small business owner is the opportunity you get to build equity over time. For example, in a regular job you put in the effort and get a paycheck out of it at the end of the day and maybe move up the ladder for more pay overtime. While a small business owner you actually are building wealth as you grow over time since you actually own an asset that pays your salary and spits off additional cash flow from profits. Over time, compounding growth will make your asset worth so much more than any additional pay you would get from working a typical corporate job.

Bill Samuel, Founder of Blue Ladder Development

The ability to self-pace

Mike Decker, Founder of The Advisor Suite

Conclusion

It’s safe to draw a conclusion that the benefits of owning a business mainly revolve around the freedom to do what you want, both professionally and privately. However, that doesn’t mean that there are no responsibilities duties or even disadvantages of being your own boss.