I have a ritual on Friday afternoons. After everyone else has gone home for the day, I sit back and reflect on the week. I look at what went right and what went wrong. I make lists of things I want to get done in the week ahead (or sometimes over the weekend) and try to figure out how I spent my week – did I make good use of my time?

Last Friday  I realized it had been a pretty interesting week. There was a beef jerky tasting, a visit from Jason Bean, picking up his Powered by Beans T-Shirt, a trip to an antique mall and a blog post about strange funeral requests. There was also a lot of time spent doing things I never envisioned would be part of my job.

There was the opportunity to work with Hoosier Wildlife to remove a dead animal from the crawlspace under our building. Eric and his team do a great job, by the way.

There was a conversation to the State Department of Revenue to convince them I really didn’t owe $2,000 in back sales tax. It took some time, but kudos to Jonathon in their customer support department. He sent me all the right forms and told me what to do to correct my filing so I wouldn’t have to pay any of the $2,000 or  the interest penalties.

Neither of  these time-consuming tasks fit in to my vision of how I thought I would be spending my days as a small business owner when I started Roundpeg 11 years ago. That  is the funny thing about owning a business. Most days it isn’t all that glamorous. It’s hard work and your time is often spent doing things that keep the business running, paying bills and calling clients who haven’t paid you. There are  working sessions with employees who need just a little bit of coaching and lengthy conversations with your hosting company when your website goes down.

Sometimes, when I look at what I accomplished (or didn’t) on a given week, I wonder why do I do this. I wonder why don’t I just get another corporate job with a big fat paycheck and let someone else worry about the lights, the water and the dead animals in the crawl space.

The answer is simple. Even with the possum poop and the tax questions,  employee issues and customer issues, the truth is I love my life. From launching a new website to creating a download for a client that actually adds new contacts to their database every day, I love celebrating the wins with clients and my team.

Owning a business isn’t for everyone. Is it right for you?

Don’t start a business if you think it’s going to be easier than working for someone else. It isn’t. But if there’s something you’re passionate about, if you enjoy celebrating the small wins and don’t mind doing whatever it takes to get the job done, then maybe, just maybe you’re ready to be business owner.

And if you are, be sure to pause every now and then to celebrate, reflect and move forward.