I was just reading a newspaper article online that was originally published in the Victoria Times Colonist which was written to emphasize how a self-employed business owner generally enjoys their work life a lot more compared to someone who is employed by a company. The interesting note was how it was mentioned that statistically on average an entrepreneur makes less than a paid employee. According to the article, in the year 2004 a self-employed individual works about 56 hours per week on average while earning about $38,000 per year. In contrast, the average working hours for a paid employee was about 39 hours per week with an earning average of about $5000 more than a self-employed individual. For those who are interested, these statistics came from a report entitled “For Love or Money. A Study of Entrepreneurship in Canada”.

While the average earnings in this report for a self-employed person was a little surprising to me, I suppose it makes sense as you have to factor in all the expenses involved in running a business which varies depending on the nature of your company and industry. As mentioned in this article though, for most people who start their own business it comes down to lifestyle. If you’re doing what you love then you will be motivated to be the best for yourself and the business everyday. Almost everyone that I have met who has started a particular business solely based on the fact that it had incredible income potential regardless of whether or not they felt good about it ended up dissatisfied about their lifestyle. I’m sure everyone has read stories about people starting a business based on a certain passion that they had which turned out to be very successful and hence created themselves a very profitable company. I personally think that is the best way to go as I believe regardless if someone has chosen the self-employed path or opted to work for a company, one should be working towards making their lives richer rather than to solely make their wallets bigger.