If you asked most people who work a 9 to 5 job for someone else if they would like to own their own small business, many of them would tell you yes. This might be because they have never had a small business of their own to run. While many people do build huge corporations from one small business at the start, they could probably tell you many stories about all the horrors and headaches they had to go through to get there.

Not to be discouraging for anyone who wants to pursue their own business, but a lot of times people will not really be prepared for all the sacrifices and responsibility that go along with it. Sometimes it will not take very long to get past that rosy illusion of how great it is going to be when they are their own boss. You will soon find out what can make a boss be sometimes crabby and unpredictable because you are about to turn into him.

It is many times a lot easier to be the employee who gets to clock out at the end of the day and go home to their family and not have to think about anything job related until they clock back in the next day. Not so for the boss. The majority of business owners will still have details to be taken care of even after the shop is closed.

When you have a business where you have to employ people, it is not just your paycheck you have to worry about, but everyone else's as well. Suddenly you will have to feel responsibility about whether the families of those you employ will have food on their table too and before you have it on yours. You may own a small business, but that does not mean it is a small responsibility.

If in the past you never enjoyed having to file tax returns each year, well, you are in tax country up to your eyeballs now. If you are in a sales business of any kind, state sales taxes must be filed every month. There are employee issues such as social security and unemployment that have to be paid and filed. Unless you are really tax savvy, this means you will likely have to hire a regular accountant.

In order to survive, small businesses have to be operated very carefully. Overhead can sometimes become more than their income easily. It will usually have a precarious balance the first few years unless you were lucky and had a lot of capital to start out with. You will probably need a good line of credit to help pull you through the bad times. Many people have started a small business using all their savings only to have to give it up because they just did not know what was really in store for them.