Bagger, you make some good points...
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1. I feel like it gets a little glorified, as if it's something that every person should aspire to. I strongly disagree. It has its pros and cons like any other profession. There's lots of potential upside, but like any other job there's a big pile of crap that comes with it. Whether it's right for you or not depends on whether you're willing to put up with that particular flavor of nonsense.
There's no doubt entrepreneurship has been glorified. Think of the Horatio Alger stories, which were rags to riches stories about what is possible in America. Then, we have Musk, Jobs, Sam Walton, Beaver Aplin, Ray Kroc, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Phil Knight, Zuckerberg, Gates, Dell, and Trump. Then there are the reality TV shows. These are superstars and they're no different that the superstars of sports being glorified. The difference is very few people can make it in the NFL, MBA, NBA, NHL, etc. Lots of people can make it in business, even if they never reach superstar level.
You are correct that entrepreneurship is not for everyone. However, I dealt with a lot more crap working in the Fortune 500 than working as an entrepreneur. I dealt with more working for a 100+ consulting firm. My father dealt with magnitudes more working as a college professor. There's crap everywhere. Plus, my experience is there's a lot more nonsense working in a publicly traded company.
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2. If you want to be an entrepreneur, you don't have to start a business from scratch. You can buy an existing business and level it up. This is a lot harder on the front end than starting your own thing, but it comes with a lot of advantages and lower financial risk if you can find the right deal.
You can also lower risk by raising money to start a business. This is what I did. There was still a lot of risk and I can remember when our run rate fell below six months and I shut down all discretionary spending until we got cash flow positive. Conversely, people who convince private equity and/or venture capital to back them seem to have little or no pressure to make a profit (some of the logic is still sort of a mystery to me).
Another option is search equity, where a budding entrepreneur gets family offices, high net worth individuals, and private equity funds to bankroll them for a year or two, while they search for a business to buy, then funds the purchase. I ran into enough of these guys to conclude that it's not particularly rare. Search equity buyers do seem to have a lot of nonsense. ;-)
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3. You don't have to sell your company to get rich. A lot of great businesses are fantastic cash cows that wouldn't normally attract much private equity attention (right now the PE market is crazy so the parameters of what they're looking at is unusually broad... who knows how long that will last). And even if they do, they might not get attractive multiples. Like if you have a business that's kicking out half a million a year, would you rather sell it for 3-5 times earnings or have a business that kicks out half a million a year?
Excellent point. The goal of every entrepreneur should be to build a business that can run without him. When you reach the point where you can delegate the things you hate or are not very good at, and then work on what you enjoy and excel at, business becomes a lot of fun.
However, it's worth noting that every business owner exits. Some walk out. Others are carried out. With another Aggie, I've done a major study on business exits for a forthcoming book. There are all kinds of things that might trigger an exit. It can be as benign as a desire to retire to as tragic as the death of a spouse. So while a business owner might not plan on selling, preparing a business for a sale makes it easier to run and easier to exit if necessary.
Multiples of EBITDA are higher today thanks to private equity. The greater the EBITDA, the greater the multiple. A business that generates $500K of EBITDA is likely pretty small and may command a 3-5X multiple, but for the industries I've worked in, multiples typically range from 7X to 10X. That's not a cap. My company got more than that.
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4. A lot of people talk about entrepreneurship like it's table stakes to be working 80 hours a week, not having time for your family or hobbies, always on call, late nights, high stress, etc. A lot of new opportunities take this path, but you can design it differently. Most entrepreneurs I know that work insane hours do so because they love what they're doing and/or they're doing a bunch of stuff they're bad at that should be handed off to someone else.
In the early stages, lots of hours are part of the game. The company's too small for much delegation. But it's up to the entrepreneur where the hours are allocated, so it's easier to carve out time for important family events than many, inflexible corporate jobs.
No doubt, there is stress and risk. If you want low stress and low risk, get a government job.
You are absolutely right in your assessment that entrepreneurs work crazy hours because they love what they do. I've had business owners tell me that they don't really have hobbies because the business is their hobby.
You are also correct that many entrepreneurs are loathe to delegate, though this can be overcome. You are also correct that entrepreneurs can be more intentional about family.
I'm not trying to argue, but to illustrate another perspective. It's good to talk about the pros and cons. Of course, I'm pro entrepreneurship.
Gig 'Em!
I don't mean any offense by this, though it will probably offend some, but it's a good thing that entrepreneurship is limited to the few, not the many. We, entrepreneurs need employees to help us realize our dreams.
