Inside the Head of a (Small) Business Owner

There is this common joke that we normally hear when friends and colleagues catch up – “You have a masterpiece of a brain and must donate it to the museum”.

Four years into my consulting business, having observed close to 1000 business owners and having worked closely with 50 of them, made me realise that, there is indeed some brains that should be studied.

Two decades of childhood in the Northeast India, graduation from one of the top colleges of the country, 12 years of corporate life in Aditya Birla Group and Reliance, 5 years of living in the maximum city of Mumbai, 4 years of consulting for SMEs, I must say I have seen nothing more captivating than the brain of a (small)business owner. In India we see them running firms which we collectively call the MSMEs.

A human brain on an average takes 35,000 decisions in a day – most of them trivial. For a business owner the numbers are way high, the non-trivial ones are overwhelmingly high. Interestingly, he rarely burns out unlike the corporate top employees portray on a daily basis. And I have always felt the biggest irony is in the fact that the decision of a business owner so directly impacts his every aspect of life which isn’t necessarily the case for a top executive working for large organisations. The various personality he dons at different places and with different people makes it impossibly challenging to identify the real man behind all of it. He can be an amalgamation of his different personalities or completely alien to what he showcases… Only he knows the answer.

Every business problem is a people problem and I am daring to dissect the source of all the problems and the solutions in the business world, The Business Owner.

In the Firm

He is truly peerless at his firm. He wants to reach out for some comfort, open up about the tensions he is facing in the business but fears looking weak. So, he cowers under that fear and exhibits assertiveness in the form of anger and sternness. He is very often seen as the man pushing the limits of his people for his gain alone.

In the Society

A business owner is the most under-rated, heavily criticised ( often as money-monger) human on the face of earth. His contribution to the society and economy in providing jobs, taking products to the last mile is often ignored and taken for granted. He is seen capable of cheating people for higher profits. His brain is in constant search for validation from the society – he looks for peers in clubs, networking platforms, social causes- fighting the battle within him, trying to express his views, trying to be of help for someone – with the desire to feel accepted at the least here among his peers. He often fails.

With The Customers

He is at his most humane element in the presence of his customers. Is it an act? maybe to an extend. But are we all not acting for the world? Then why is a business owner judged harshly. Why is he not given the benefit of doubt? The sheer fact that a customer is spending their money on the product or service provided by the business owner makes him vulnerable to these judgements and allegations when he is in fact the one who’s spending their life catering to the needs of the customer.

At Home:

A business owner is the God and Goddess together. He is the provider, he is the destroyer, he is the enlightened one, he is the one who knows it all. He is the one who takes all the risks. But at home and with family he is just seen as the provider who makes a lot of mistakes and spends a lot of money in business. He is advised by every self anointed business – advisors. A business owner understands his cost centres as revenue generating centres but at home he is made to see it as a cost centre.

Who is he?

He is a dare-devil, an unsung hero who refused the comfort of a job and monthly salaries and got into the tough world of entrepreneurship where the only outcome guaranteed is failure and yet pursue it with the hope that he can create more value to his life and society.

He wakes up a hero everyday in his own eyes and sleeps a villian in everyone else’s life.

My salute to the biggest unsung hero of the economy! The head of a business owner is one that must be cherished, celebrated and may be even preserved for what he learnt and unlearnt during the course of his lifetime is close to nothing else.

Sharat