How to Be Your Own Boss Successfully

It may be your personal dream to be your own boss. But, fulfilling this role may be more difficult than it seems, especially when it's necessary to create and maintain a successful business in order to pay the bills. Several personality traits and other management practices come into play when attempting to be your own boss successfully. It's not all vacation days and coffee breaks when you act as your own supervisor. The requirement to be productive is even more important.


Steps
1. Establish a regular schedule. This schedule may not include specific working hours, but it should include some regular work patterns. For instance, it doesn't mean that you must be in your home office at 8 a.m. on the dot if you want to sleep for 15 extra minutes. However, it does mean that you can't blow off work for the entire day just because you want to play golf, unless you've scheduled it ahead of time. Establishing some regular routines and exercising self-discipline makes you answer to yourself when you veer from your schedule. Sometimes, it's alright to adjust the schedule. But, if you do that every day, you won't be successful for very long.


2. Set daily goals and priorities. These goals could be in the form of a "to-do" list or could be completing a certain percentage of a project. Your type of work and your current projects may dictate the types of goals you set daily. It's important to start each day with a plan of action.


3. Draw from your experience as an employee. Consider the expectations that previous supervisors and bosses had for you. Deliver the same kind of work ethic that you cultivated when you were employed by someone else. Hold yourself to these same standards.


4. Love what you do. If you have a passion for the kind of work that you accomplish each day, it's much easier to create a successful business and enjoy it.


5. Possess self-esteem about your work and your abilities. Take pride in what you do. Always strive to be better and accomplish more by increasing your goals and establishing more aggressive priorities.


6. Push up your sleeves and dive into the details. You don't have anyone doing the little jobs for you or completing the dirty work. You must be willing to work on small tasks, as well as the more significant ones.


7. Stay organized. This applies not only to your projects, but to all paperwork, invoices, billing, tax documents, etc. In order to be successful, you must have an organized filing system and keep important documents where they can be found. Another aspect to this includes keeping any tools you use regularly close by and any information necessary to complete projects available.


8. Set a budget and stick with it. Just because you're the boss doesn't mean that you can overspend and buy what you want if it's not really necessary to your work. Being fiscally responsible helps to ensure your success.