Perhaps the biggest problems is that my husband wanted this. I wanted it FOR him, but I never wanted this kind of stress. When the stress had me throwing up from the ulcers, and we hadn’t been paid in 2 years, I was longing for my husband to finally say ‘enough.’

He still has the drive to work for himself and be his own boss. I cannot take it. I see the spots where he is blind, but could not get him to see them and deal with them.

I don’t blame myself for the failure of the business, but I AM the reason we are not doing this again. He can sign my death certificate first. Or the divorce decree. I am not up for the stress of seeing the problems but being unable to get him to listen to me/deal with them. He did parts of the business brilliantly. The parts he did not do brilliantly he should have recognized. Until he can look back and admit to those things I see no hope that he would correct them in the next venture. Until then there will not be one.

I will never again risk one of our retirement funds, never again pull equity out of the house for this kind of thing. Never.

My dad has no aptitude for running a business, he just wants to fix cars and leave all the paperwork to his boss. My mom is a special education teacher who works at a rural public school for far less than anyone with a Master’s in Special Education should be paid but she does it because that’s her calling. Most people in their situations would be piled under debt and struggling to make ends meet, they’ve been savvy financially and can enjoy themselves as they’re getting closer to retirement (not that I can imagine either really retiring unless they had to, they both love what they do too much).

Certainly drive means the difference between letting a disaster beyond your control drag you down to failure, and picking yourself up and dusting off and trying again. But that *specific* business has still failed.

Let’s look at this from a different angle. How many of us can honestly say we have had the same job with the same employer for 20 years running (or for our entire work lives, assuming we’re too young to have worked somewhere 20 years)? Not very many, especially these days. It would seem that people are just as likely to fail as employees in one way or another as to fail as entrepreneurs–even if “failure” in this context is only defined as “found a better opportunity elsewhere and quit to pursue it.”

Supposedly, there is a greater percentage of entrepreneurs in the millionaire population than there are among people with less net worth. I suspect that’s because they tend to treat their personal finances as a business. Most likely the folks who succeed as employees to the point of obtaining financial security achieve that goal for similar reasons.

But there’s definitely something to striking it out on your own. And I think that if it were easier (in terms of infrastructure, degree of competition, etc.) for people to start and run their own businesses you would see a lot more people doing so. I’ve been interested to note that there are a lot more entrepreneurs in poor countries, as well as poor neighborhoods here in the U.S. Nobody else wanted to bother with them so they filled in the neglected economic niches themselves. It’s kind of sad that our current regulatory climate punishes the little guy more than the big guy who’s taking his customers away, even though those regulations were meant for the big guy to begin with.

-To Retire is to Expire!

This post also refreshingly speak to the myth that all you need to be an entrepreneur is a good business idea (skewered mercilessly in the videos @ garybuseyonbusiness.com). You do need that, sure, but running a business and the task of selling are a whole other ball game.

Thanks for the thoughtful words.

Case and point: My Father in-law is a driven, type-A guy. He is a corporate guy (not an entrepreneur) and paid his dues in his 30 years at the company. Now he is President of the company and he makes more money than God. The problem is that he is such a driven workaholic, I don’t think he has the ABILITY to enjoy the fruits of his labor. It is almost sad.

– Maybe the big difference is luck?

As a person who used to have zero interest in money, I have to admit that this is now the only website I visit every single day and recommend to everyone. After one year of reading your posts, we’re now about to pay off our debts and establish our emergency fund. Keep up the wonderful work!

People often forget about the survivor bias in books like “Millionaire Next Door”

Regardless of how much drive one has, or whether or not one has a mentor, most of the small businesses started each year will fail.

General market conditions can sink businesses that would otherwise have succeeded.

That’s especially important to remember now, as we’ve not had a real recession in over 25 years.

This one, however, could be as bad as 1973 or 1981.

We have so many friends that have started businesses and they did not take the time to learn the how to deal with the financial aspects of business. They have great drive, but they don’t know how to manage months with no income, months with huge incomes, spending/saving, budgeting.

I think most small businesses fail because people live by the motto: you have to spend money to make money. They spend it all and don’t make enough to cover all their expenses. It’s just like personal finances, you have to spend less than you earn in business as well.

That being said, it’s definitely something you have to be passionate about to do. It is much harder to work for yourself than to work for the man. You have to log longer hours and you have to be really driven, otherwise you won’t work when you need to. I would never give it up, but I know lots of people aren’t cut out for it.

This is another great article! I also sometimes feel like I am looked down upon because I don’t want to start my own business. Thank you for describing the other perspective. I take the long view on freedom: I want the security now so that I can save as much money as I can. Then when I’m older (maybe 45 or so) I can “afford” to take a part-time job and do something that I love. People ask me if I would regret saving so much money and not “enjoying” life while I was young, but I think it’s a noble endeavor to plan for a secure, happy future! I could never regret that. To me, this philosophy seems to be the same as the willpower/delayed satisfaction that so many people describe. I still do the things I love now, but having the freedom later to do whatever I want without worry is something that has no price.