Why is being an entrepreneur so great? As it turns out, the answers might not be the first that come to mind. (Spawned from the Business News Daily article I was featured in.)
The obvious answer is that you get to be your own boss and set your own hours. But if you've ever spoken to a successful entrepreneur, you'll know that they don't work from 10am to 2pm, four days a week. Being an entrepreneur is not quite a 24/7 responsibility, but it's very close. When you're not at the office, you're still thinking about your company's future. You're running through your sales pitch. You're figuring out how to spend the next quarter's marketing budget.
I savor the time when work doesn't dominate my thought process. I coach basketball in my spare time, and when I'm on the court, I am 100% focused on my team. I distinctly remember driving to a game with one of my daughters (who I coach), thinking about nothing but work issues that needed to be resolved. I told my daughter that I was going to have a tough time coaching that night. All of a sudden, it was an hour and a half later. The game was over. We had won. I hadn't thought about work once, and I remembered why it's so crucial to have activities that force me to take my mind off my job.
Another cliché about entrepreneurship is that you get absolute freedom to work on whatever you want. But this kind freedom is often illusory. At the end of the day, the work needs to get done, and every project seems to become a top priority. How about that large customer who wants some new feature or service? Or that vendor that can't quite deliver what they promised? What about broader business strategies and organizational considerations? Work comes in all shapes and sizes, and it doesn't particularly care that I have the power to set my own schedule. It needs to be dealt with in a timely and efficient manner, regardless of the basic leeway I have as an entrepreneur.
So, what's so great about being an entrepreneur? In the most fundamental sense, entrepreneurship allows you bring something new into the world. I know that a particular product and service exist in the world because of the hard work I've invested. There is a great sense of pride in knowing that I've met somebody's needs and made their life easier. People who use my business VoIP product derive a certain value from it, and this ultimately represents the broader utility of my entrepreneurial endeavors.
As an entrepreneur, you can add value to society in a unique and important way. You shape the product, you build the service, you set the tone of the office culture. You're free to build a company that exists solely to please its shareholders, but the benefits of bringing value into the lives of your customers and employees can be a more enriching experience. This is this best kept secret of entrepreneurship: not the open schedule, not the ability to multitask, but the chance to provide value to the people who use and make your product.