Editor’s note: This article was first published in September 2014, based on the latest Global Entrepreneurship Monitor report available then, probably the GEM 2013 Global Report. Its findings and regional comparisons reflect that report.
The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor regularly publishes reports on entrepreneurship around the world. Its latest report placed special focus on entrepreneurs’ “subjective well-being”. In other words, on how happy entrepreneurs are compared with everyone else.
It reaches some interesting conclusions that can serve as lessons. Even so, we’d like to take the opportunity to remind you that the entrepreneur’s path is not a stroll along a soft carpet beneath a bright rainbow. At times it is terribly cruel and dark, but that darkness is the obstacle we have to get through to reach our goal or dream.
(Read: The secret price of being an entrepreneur)
1. Being your own boss
It’s true. Entrepreneurs are happier than employees, according to the report. Entrepreneurs tend to experience higher job satisfaction than people in employment, and even though they put in more hours, they are, as a rule, more satisfied with their work-life balance.
If you have an excellent business idea but you’re worried about becoming addicted to your business, don’t be: you would reach the same level of addiction working for someone else, as long as you were passionate about the work you did.
2. Especially if you’re a woman…
Women entrepreneurs report higher levels of subjective well-being than male entrepreneurs. For whatever reason, although hormones play tricks on women in many areas of life, the truth is that in the early stages of building a business, and when difficulties arise, they tend to stay calm more often, and are even more “analytical” than emotional.
In other words, women entrepreneurs are more calculating when it comes to business decisions and are less carried away by their emotions than men. They are also able to keep smiling when problems start attacking the company on every front.
Even so, there are still fewer women entrepreneurs than men, even though they have shown that they tend to be just as competitive in business.
(Read: The 10 richest women in tech)
3. But being an entrepreneur will only make you happy if you really want to be one
The report draws a clear distinction between entrepreneurs who started their own business because they really wanted to and those who started one because they had no other way out and urgently needed an income.
This is clearly no surprise. I think there is currently a bubble of “entrepreneurship promotion”, in which some governments are obviously sending the unemployed on a suicide mission.
Then again, whether as employees or as business owners, people have to find an income to achieve financial stability, so if they can’t find that stability in a job because there is no work, their job becomes creating one for themselves. Happier or less happy, your mission in life is to get ahead.
In many cases, if being an entrepreneur doesn’t make you happy but you have no other choice, tough luck: you do it anyway.
“If you can’t do what you love, try to love what you do.”
Still, the success of a business idea tends to be proportional to the passion put into the project.
4. …If you live in a society that values entrepreneurs
The report looks at the situation on several continents. In sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America, for example, saying you’re going to become an entrepreneur is like setting off on the road to becoming some kind of god. Opening your own business is taking the right direction in life.
In the European Union, on the other hand, telling your family you’re going to start a business doesn’t always go down so well. And although the report doesn’t say so, I know it means countries like Spain, where the gods are civil servants, while entrepreneurs get so many kicks in the backside, trip-ups and obstacles before they even start that they launch their businesses already mentally worn out.
The tax system also encourages or discourages people when they are deciding whether to take the plunge. Spain’s problem is that the self-employed (autónomos) are often confused with business owners, and from the outset the tax system is not very profitable for new entrepreneurs.
(Read: 32 rules for becoming a successful entrepreneur)
5. You don’t need your own business to be an entrepreneur
The business systems of the United Kingdom and the United States value the intrapreneur, who, as the word itself suggests, is an entrepreneur working inside a company. This figure is very important in high-growth companies, because these entrepreneurs push companies to develop new ideas, products and services.
The intrapreneur is also a creative, motivated worker who feels they are developing their own project within a large company and who will receive a substantial financial incentive or bonus based on the project’s results.
When this kind of entrepreneur works for a company that fully recognises them, their happiness tends to match that of business owners with their own company.
Further reading
Featured image: Runjiv, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
