30 things people don't tell you about running your own business

Ditch the corporate job and start your own company - and ideally a start-up. Flexible working hours, innovation, big money and nothing but success await you. That Ferrari is waiting for you. All you have to do is.... The reality, however, is completely different, and it turns out that running a company is hard work.

Problems that await you while running a company

• You incur the costs of running a business from the very first day of running the company.
• Tax regulations are difficult, complicated, unclear and ambiguous, which makes it easy to make a mistake. The VAT white list, split payment.
• You have to keep up to date with the regulations, because you'll be liable even for your accountant's mistakes.
• Expect inspections by all sorts of authorities, who will check whether you're not defrauding VAT, not running a fictitious business, etc.
• Don't count on help from the state.
• Clients persistently extend payment deadlines, forget about them or are late with payments.
• You have to earn your holiday.
• The size of your earnings depends on the length of your holiday.
• And once you do have a holiday, clients still expect you to be working.
• It's easy to fall into workaholism.
• The flood of duties destroys the illusion of "I work when I want".
• You work best on days off, when it's quiet and peaceful.
• Clients won't come on their own, and you have to work hard to win them over.
• You constantly have to update your offer, change your product, improve your processes.
• You have to diversify your revenue in order to survive in the event of unexpected changes or events, e.g.: an epidemic, a change in the law introduced overnight.
• To grow your company you'll work longer and more than you have so far.
• Delegating tasks is very difficult.
• Managing people is even harder.
• You're responsible for yourself, the company, the employees and the clients.
• A lot of time is consumed by things completely unrelated to the subject of the business you run: invoices, contracts, terms and conditions, declarations, GDPR, BDO, JPK, GTU, records, etc.
• You have to learn to plan a budget. Because of seasonality and payment gridlocks you can quickly run into financial problems.
• The fact that you like something doesn't mean someone will buy it. You have to understand the needs of your target group.
• You'll rack up a load of failures, make quite a few mistakes, and you have to get used to it and accept that it's part of the process of developing a company. You may even have to close the company down.
• Sick pay practically doesn't exist for you.
• You have to know about everything and keep an eye on everything, and you constantly have to learn, because running a business requires knowledge from many fields.
• And if you don't know about everything, you have to hire specialists.
• Good specialists are hard to find, and when there are some, they cost a lot.
• The cost of a full-time employee is very high, and on top of that you'll gain new duties like labour law, health and safety, holidays, sick leave, managing people.
• You're constantly being observed and commented on, and many people are just waiting to point out the slightest mistake in what you do.
• Everything costs. Accountants, lawyers, specialists, software, services. A program that was free for home use costs quite a lot when you want to use it in a company.

Useful guides

• An entrepreneur on holiday – learn the ways to stop clients bothering you and let you rest
• The entrepreneur versus the rest of the world. How to cope better in relations with others and with yourself
• 5 tools that will help solve many of the problems that arise in running a business
• The 10 biggest mistakes made when starting a business
• The myth of work-life balance – Miłosz Brzeziński on work and life