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In 1989, the 39-year-old executive was at a crossroads. After 17 difficult years, I climbed the corporate ladder. trend, she lost the editor-in-chief position to her rival Anna Wintour. One day, as she was struggling to find the perfect dress for her upcoming wedding, she found a business opportunity to design dresses for others. She was hesitant and she wasn’t sure if it would work. “Maybe it’s too late for me,” the executive wondered. Still, she took the plunge, and a year later she opened a boutique at the Carlyle Hotel in New York City.
Fast forward to 2024, and that executive is Vera Wang, one of the world’s most successful fashion designers, with a net worth of over $650 million. It’s easy to be surprised by Mr. Wang’s financial success. But the real rewards of entrepreneurship go far beyond money, as a new study reveals, and can mean reduced stress, improved health and a more meaningful career.
The burnout that drives successful people away from corporate America has intensified in recent years. At the height of the pandemic, Gallup recorded record stress levels. It would be easy to dismiss these numbers as an inevitable byproduct of COVID-19, except for one excruciating detail: We are just as stressed today.
Why entrepreneurs report less stress than the average worker
As someone who has helped thousands of entrepreneurs, I know firsthand the benefits of taking employment into your own hands and starting a business, as well as the misconceptions surrounding it. After a year filled with record layoffs, return-to-work mandates, and the looming threat of AI, now is the time to take research on worker well-being seriously and improve employee health, satisfaction, and reduced stress. The time has come to debunk the myths that are holding us back. It is alive.
In recent years, a new wave of peer-reviewed research has shown that starting a business can dramatically reduce stress and improve physical and mental health. This revelation first gained attention in a landmark paper published in a journal. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology. In it, researchers compared a nationally representative sample of employees and entrepreneurs on a variety of health factors, including blood pressure, doctor visits, physical and mental illnesses, and overall health. The results were overwhelmingly in favor of entrepreneurs, demonstrating significantly lower blood pressure and hypertension rates, fewer hospital visits, and lower rates of physical and mental illness.
How can starting a business, which many people understandably consider to be a large and nerve-wracking undertaking, reduce stress?
A 2020 study provides important clues as to why entrepreneurs report less stress than the average American. Economists from Colorado State University and Florida Atlantic University concluded that starting a business fosters a greater sense of purpose because entrepreneurs experience more autonomy and competence in their work.
And while we’ve been taught that being an employee is more financially secure, a 2022 JPMorgan report shows that the median self-employed household has a net worth more than four times that of the median worker. It shows that you have . Although counterintuitive, starting a business provides greater financial security than working for an employer.
What’s stopping more employees from starting their own businesses?
I recently commissioned a unique survey of 1,100 current and prospective entrepreneurs, asking them about their entrepreneurial aspirations, motivations for starting a business, and their work experiences. Next, we compared employees who had recently started a business with those who were considering starting a business but had not yet taken the plunge. We uncovered her three major barriers. These are all based on false assumptions about entrepreneurship.
First, aspiring founders believe that launching a business requires far more experience, industry knowledge, and financial savings than actual business owners have before starting a business. Masu. In other words, they hold themselves to higher, often unrealistic standards.
Another major barrier to starting a business is the fear that starting a business will require excessively long working hours, which will seriously impact their personal lives and relationships with their families. Our research tells us otherwise. After all, most new entrepreneurs work the same total hours as before they started their business, but with one notable difference. That means starting your own business without much work-related stress. At the same time, more than twice as many entrepreneurs report that starting a business has had a positive impact on family relationships than say that starting a business has had a negative impact on family relationships.
A final myth that hinders entrepreneurship is the belief that successful founders tend to be young. Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates may have both started their companies while in college, but research conducted at Wharton shows they are the exception, not the rule.
In our study, aspiring entrepreneurs estimated the average age of successful founders to be 35 years old. According to Wharton’s analysis, the actual average is he is 42 years old, but even that number can paint an unrealistic picture. That’s because, excluding the software industry, the average age of a founder is close to his 47 years, and he is older than Vera Wang when he opened his flagship store.
Not only is youth not essential for starting a business, but age is an asset if you want to succeed. Wharton’s analysis shows that founders between the ages of 40 and 49 tend to significantly outperform younger founders. In fact, their company is more than three times more likely to be ranked among the top performing startups.
For those at a crossroads, the path to overall well-being may lie in the very mindset they consider to be their greatest risk. For those looking to secure greater wealth, better health, and deeper personal satisfaction, taking the entrepreneurial leap may be just the right move. It’s never too late to pivot to a more positive work life. Data is your friend.
Ross Buhrdorf is the CEO of ZenBusiness, which has helped over 500,000 individuals launch and grow their businesses.
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