How Running a Business Changed My Life

1. Democrat to Republican: Speaking generally, Republicans are pro big business and Democrats are not.

Before I owned a business, I never gave much thought to issues like an increase in the minimum wage and how it affects small business; offering health insurance to employees; tax cuts for corporations; etc.

Sure, I studied the issues and stayed abreast of them, but owning a business made me devour every miniscule piece of information I could find about the subject because, hey, they were talking about me and my bottom line.

I would listen to debates on C-SPAN, read the Wall Street Journal and Google terms like "corporate welfare." I wanted to know where my elected official stood on each issue so that I could be prepared to cast an informed vote when it came down to those local elections where nobody ever knows the names of the officials on the ballot.

Politics as a whole became not just something I paid attention to in November every two years, but something I made part of my everyday reading existence.

As for Democrat to Republican - I tend to identify more with Republican stances on business, much to the chagrin of my Democrat-leaning friends.

2. The Importance of Planning: Nothing, perhaps outside of having a child, forces you to become more thoughtful of the future than owning a business, for the following reasons:

i) Knowing your numbers: If you are going to stay in business, you need to keep your pulse on the numbers - sales, receivables, payables, marketing, conversion rates (of prospects to clients), etc.

ii) Growing your business: To grow, you need to know what's working, what's not, what needs to be changed, added and/or done away with, etc. How do you keep track of all this? You look at previous quarters and plan what to do moving forward.

iii) Exit strategy: Whether or not you plan to own your business 'til the day your die, sell it sometime in the future, or turn it over to a future generation, you must plan for this. Why? Because there are different operating strategies for each.