You Don’t Want to Be an Entrepreneur, You Want What It Represents

If you’re asking why you want to be an entrepreneur, you probably already shouldn’t be. That’s not snark (well, not only snark), it’s insight. I wanted to write this because becoming an entrepreneur, taking entrepreneurship studies, or questions about how to be one, are prolific topics in modern society. The things, entrepreneurs, real ones, aren’t the people debating whether or not it’s the right path. They’re the ones pacing at 2am, gripped by a compulsive need to build, tweak, challenge, or change something that’s broken in the world. Not because it’s profitable. Not because it’s trendy. Because they can’t not. So, should I be an entrepreneur?

So, if wondering “why do I want to be an entrepreneur?” pause and interrogate what’s really drawing you to the idea. Is it the image? The freedom? The control? The chance to be your own boss? Or is it the legend of entrepreneurship?

Asking yourself, “Should I be an entrepreneur?” can lead to important realizations about your motivations.

Because make no mistake: entrepreneurship, as portrayed in social media, startup culture, and pop entertainment, is one hell of a seductive illusion.

The Pop Culture Delusion: Hustle Porn and Unicorn Dust

We’ve glamorized entrepreneurs to the point of religious worship. Elon Musk sleeps under his desk. Mark Cuban screams about hustle. Everyone on your TikTok feed is a digital nomad who made six figures dropshipping banana hammocks from Bali. The cult of entrepreneurship has replaced the American Dream with something more addictive and less attainable: the founder fantasy.

There’s a reason kids today would rather be YouTubers than astronauts. We’ve sold them a version of work where personal brand, flexibility, and hustle beats skill, discipline, and patience. Jessica Billingsley wrote for Rolling Stone, Beyond the Cult of the Founder: Why Vision Matters But Ecosystems Win, trying to push us beyond that cult of personality but it has it metastasized.

York Zucchi, “Entrepreneurship is an attitude.” Still, this question persists.

We no longer ask what problem you solve. We ask how fast you can scale. We don’t celebrate profitability. We celebrate fundraising rounds. And if your startup fails? That’s fine, you can always grift as a LinkedIn guru (ha ha, ha… *ahem*).

“You have been inundated over the past half decade with a crescendoing drumbeat from the mainstream media in the US that entrepreneurs are the coolest and richest kids in the hood. From hit films like The Social Network and Steve Jobs, to hit TV series like Shark Tank and Silicon Valley, to hit books by Peter Thiel and Ben Horowitz, to hit cult figures like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, to hit decacorns like Uber and AirBnB, you’d have to be a moron to miss the message.” – David S. Rose via Quora

But let’s turn down the ring light for a second to ask, what’s real?

The Reality: Stress, Scarcity, and Solitude

Here’s what being an entrepreneur usually looks like:

• You are broke. According to most study of startups, the #2 reason startups fail is running out of cash (right after “no market need,” which should be a red flag if you needed a reminder). Most entrepreneurs don’t get rich. They go into debt. They max out credit cards, mortgage homes, and go years without a salary.
• You are alone. Founders are statistically more likely to suffer from depression, anxiety, and burnout with a near majority of entrepreneurs reporting having at least one mental health condition. Of those, depression was most common, followed by ADHD, anxiety, and substance abuse. (Source: Michael A. Freeman, MD – “Are Entrepreneurs Touched with Fire?”)
• Your family will feel it. Entrepreneurship demands time, attention, and emotional bandwidth you don’t have. The startup world casually refers to “founder divorce” because it’s so common. Being obsessed with your business means neglecting your relationships unless you’re incredibly self-aware and disciplined. Spoiler: most aren’t.
• You carry the full burden. Unlike employees who have job descriptions and safety nets, entrepreneurs are HR, product, marketing, legal, compliance, and finance all rolled into one. If something breaks, you are the fix. If someone quits, you do their job. If a customer walks, you take the loss.

I’m really glad the question is being asked so frequently, why do I want to be an entrepreneur? but it’s the stressing of the words that matter, why do I want to be an entrepreneur??

What You Might Want Instead: Autonomy, Impact, or Escape

Here’s the twist most don’t see coming: You may not actually want to be an entrepreneur; you likely want what entrepreneurship represents.

• You want freedom: from a boss, from bureaucracy, from bad decisions made by people you don’t respect.
• You want control: over your schedule, your income, your destiny.
• You want to matter: to build something meaningful instead of pushing paper or appeasing clients.
• You want wealth: because in corporate America, the ladder is greased, the glass ceiling is still real, and owning equity is the only shot at outsized returns.
• You want to survive: because the job market feels like a rigged game, and the gig economy is just wage slavery with better UX.

And those are all valid reasons. But be clear: entrepreneurs don’t easily achieve those things, if at all, and besides, it’s likely the least efficient path to get there. Entrepreneurship is like jumping out of an airplane to get to the next town over. You might land on your feet… or you might just hit the ground hard while your friends took the bus and arrived early.

Personality Predictors: Are You That Kind of Crazy?

Entrepreneurship isn’t just a decision. It’s a personality type explored to be so by more researchers, universities, and studies than we can count. Pick your favorite flavor of psychology:

• DISC: Entrepreneurs tend to be High-Ds (Dominance) and High-Is (Influence); they’re competitive, assertive, persuasive, and hate being told what to do. Low compliance. Low steadiness. Great for disruption, terrible for rules.
• Big Five (OCEAN): High Openness to Experience and High Conscientiousness are the sweet spot, creative and driven. But also, high Neuroticism (yes, really) correlates with entrepreneurial action. You’re a bit manic, and it fuels the fire. Low Agreeableness? That too, startups don’t happen by playing nice.
• Myers-Briggs: ENTJs, ENTPs, and INTJs top the charts. These are people who chase ideas like bloodhounds on Red Bull. ENTPs (the “Visionary”) are especially known for starting things they never finish. Sound familiar?

And you’re asking yourself why you want to BE like that when most would look at being like that and recognize that it’s highly risky and borderline crazy.

Harvard’s Noam Wasserman, in The Founder’s Dilemmas, highlights that founders often choose between control and wealth, and most never get either. And Oxford research shows that founder personality is predictive of success… or, more often, failure.

So, if the traits that make you want to be an entrepreneur also make you likely to suffer, why do it?

Because you can’t not.

Because you are the type.

Ask a Better Question

The real question to be asking yourself isn’t, “Why do I want to be an entrepreneur?”

It’s:

• “Am I trying to fix something in the world, or fix something in myself?”
• “Do I want to build, or do I just want to escape?”
• “Do I crave purpose, or just status?”

You want a life that’s yours; authentic, meaningful, maybe a little chaotic but fully owned. That might be entrepreneurship. But it might also be joining a startup early, leading a nonprofit, freelancing, or reinventing your role inside a company.

Whatever the path, be sure it solves for the right variable.

Entrepreneurship is a personality type, not a job title. It’s an affliction of ambition, a compulsion toward control, and a pathological unwillingness to accept things as they are. It’s not sexy. It’s not safe. It’s not fair. That doesn’t scare you? Then the question of why or how is moot, it’s time to learn to be successful and to cope with who you are.

Dig deeper into what makes you tick. Start with your Five Factors / Big Five profile. Reflect on it or other assessments. Or explore how startup ecosystems work and why the dream of “doing your own thing” needs more than dreams. Then let’s talk.