Did you know that 70% of small businesses are owned and operated by a single person? Or, 60-80% of all new jobs stem from those small businesses?[1] With these statistics in mind, we decided to reach out to 3 business owners to see what motivated them to start their businesses, what the rewards and challenges were, and what advice they would give to other Entrepreneurs.
One of the most common questions business owners are asked is how they balance and separate work and personal life. This is why we wanted to hear from Phillip and Nisha Cothran.
Phillip and Nisha are both Jabs School of Business alumni, Goosehead Insurance Agency[2] owners, and husband and wife. In fact, they opened their business 6 months prior to their wedding. So, how did they learn to separate work from marriage, especially after owning a business together? Nisha shares her point of view: “The first year we focused everything on our business; it was our baby and will probably always be. Phillip and I love being successful so it’s very hard for the both of us to not answer an email or phone call. But, we make dinner together most nights of the week. We create time to have fun and to put our phones on hold”. Phillip also shares that “this is the most difficult struggle and something we are still working on. Nisha and I had a serious conversation before we opened our business that we wanted to hustle every minute we had until we had kids”.
When creating business models, it is common for Entrepreneurs to seek guidance from other business owners or to model their business plan after other successful businesses. For the Cothrans, Phillip shared that they had an advantage. “The advantage we had was that both our parents owned their own businesses, as well as my sister, Amanda. We took bits and pieces from all three of them to create our own. My in-laws have a small family business that focuses on high-end home theater and my father and sister both own their own State Farm Insurance companies. When we began our business over two years ago, we were able to go to them and track how we were doing versus how they were doing at the same point”. However, Nisha shared that her and Phillip still faced challenges such as not making money. “When you first open your own business all of the money you are making is getting dumped right back into your company. We didn’t write a paycheck to ourselves for a little over one year”.
Knowing that not all small business owners come from a family of other business holders, we reached out to Karla Adams[3], a fitness and nutrition spokesperson who owns her own local gym facility and the Karla Adams Foundation. Here is her story:
“At age 16 going on 17, I dedicated my life to living for God. He put me in the nutrition industry, then the fitness industry. After spending about 7 years understanding what God wanted me to do with everything I had learned about business, I realized I had to create my own business model for it because I did not find any business models that I fit into. Before starting my own company and still to this day, I read a lot of books in order to learn more about business and leadership. Not coming from a family of business owners, I knew my biggest challenge was going to be failing more than the normal curve. However, something I also knew more than anything else was that God would only give me what I could handle. With this realization, every time I did not do something right, I learned from it and kept moving forward”.
These are the 5 tips Karla not only practices in her own business endeavors, but encourages other business leaders to practice as well:
- Know the top 10 ways businesses fail and succeed
- Practice the power of a positive mind on a daily basis
- Find 5 mentors in business
- Know the 80/20 rule
- Be grateful for your failures because it means you are learning what not to do
One of the commonalities that each of these business owners valued when asked what was most rewarding about owning their own business, they each discussed how they were positioned to help others. Additionally, the Cothrans felt rewarded by the fact that they did not have to rely on someone else to pay their bills. “We were always the two kids in the class that would raise our hands when Dr. Alderson would ask, ‘Who gets excited about making their own paycheck?’ The idea that we controlled our bank accounts was very intriguing to us” (Nisha).
If you are seeking to start you own business in an effective and efficient way, we recommend building into your routine Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People[4]:
- Be proactive
- Begin with the end in mind
- Put first things first
- Think win-win
- Seek first to understand, then to be understood
- Synergize
- Sharpen the saw
If you are interested in studying Entrepreneurship, visit our website[5] for more information on how you can major or minor in it!
For now, we would like to leave you with words from Walt Disney, “You can dream, create, design and build the most wonderful place in the world…but it requires people to make the dream a reality”.[6]
Your fellow risk-taker,
Megan Turner
Client Relations & Internship Specialist
Jabs School of Business, California Baptist University
mturner@calbaptist.edu
[1] https://advocacysba.sites.usa.gov/
[2] https://www.gooseheadinsurance.com/
[3] Karlaadams.com
[4] https://www.stephencovey.com/7habits/7habits-habit1.php
[5] https://calbaptist.edu/school-of-business/
[6] http://scottdmorrison.com/walt-disney-quotes-for-entrepreneurs/