Proprietorship Vs. Entrepreneurialism: The Difference Between Businesses

April 16, 2018

When thinking about businesses, a lot of people’s minds will be drawn to ideas of large-scale enterprises, power-hungry multinationals, and startups which embody the age of modern business. This idea has been finely crafted by blogs, forums, and other online resources which present all business as one very small part of it; entrepreneurialism. In reality, though, national and global business is quite a modern thing. To help you with this area, this post will be exploring the differences between today’s world of business and a method which has worked well for hundreds of years.
Being a sole proprietor simply means that you work for yourself. Instead of operating as an individual body, your business is tied to you, and this is why most will use their own name instead of branding for it. Enabling people to work in fields like construction, medicine, and consulting without having to go through the process of starting a company, this can be very appealing to a lot of people. This sort of route is great for anyone who doesn’t like the idea of working for someone else, but doesn’t want to throw themselves into the world of business.
Along with enabling you to start a business without too much effort, this route still provides many of the benefits of running a normal company. You won’t need to go to a specific school or establishment to get the certificates you need for your role, instead being able to use options like an FNP online to get into your field of choice. Regardless of the field, most customers and clients won’t ask to see where you went to school, and this makes it easy to skip some of the harder parts of getting the career you want.
Of course, though, this sort of route isn’t always the best to go down as a business. When you are working as a sole proprietor, you will be fully responsible for the money coming in and out of your company. If the business is in debt, you are also in debt, and this can be very hard to deal with when you’re first starting out. When you have an incorporated business, it will act autonomously, and will be able to go bankrupt if it runs out of funding.
When you’re choosing the type of business you would like to run, it’s always important to think about the work you’ll be doing. Some businesses simply aren’t catered towards this sort of option. Retail, for example, will often see you having to deal with VAT, and you will need to be registered to handle it correctly. In construction, though, having a much more personal approach can appeal to your customers.
Hopefully, this post will give you a helping hand when it comes to understanding the different types of business out there. It can be easy to look at building a large company as the only option you have. In reality, though, there are loads of routes you can go down in business, and there are plenty of people to help along the way.

Mark Asquith

That British podcast guy, Mark is co-founder of Captivate.fm, the world's only growth-oriented podcast host. A Harvard, TEDx, Podcast Movement and Podfest speaker (amongst many more!), he's a wildly approachable Brit and Star Wars/DC Comics geek.

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