8 Advantages of Becoming an Entrepreneur

Entrepreneurship is not always an easy path, and it’s not the road for everyone, but when walked right, it can be one of your most rewarding and beneficial career decisions.

If you are considering entrepreneurship, congratulations! You’re looking down an exciting and rewarding path. But do know that it is not for the faint of heart.

For every benefit, there are some challenges. It comes with a lot of hard work and a need to commit to the journey.

But, for people with an entrepreneurial spirit and determined mindset, the rewards of entrepreneurship are hard to resist.

The eight best perks of becoming an entrepreneur:

• Rewarding career
• Work-life autonomy
• Leadership experience
• Work from anywhere
• Company control
• Flexible schedule
• Building a beneficial network
• Pride and satisfaction

1. Rewarding career

For most successful entrepreneurs, it's all about mindset and paving their own way, navigating out of a corporate world that doesn't always align with their values.

While entrepreneur advantages abound, one of the biggest ones is simply the fact that you can work in a role (and a field) that matches your beliefs in a really gratifying way.

For example, if you are a proponent of social justice and diversity, you can work only with clients that agree with those beliefs. If you are passionate about the environment, you can set up your business to have a low carbon footprint.

What's great about entrepreneurship is that you don't have to wait for the perfect job that fits your morals and ethics: You can create it! That in itself is an inspiring concept.

2. Work-life autonomy

Work-life balance and having the ability to set your own boundaries can't be overstated as an essential part of working for yourself.

When you can control your workload, your job satisfaction automatically increases, keeping you more engaged in the business' day-to-day operations.

3. Leadership experience

The entrepreneurial process involves a lot of entrepreneurial growth. The leadership lessons you learn from running your own business stay with you forever, helpfully extending into multiple facets of your life.

Skills like effective communication, patience, time management, fiscal planning, budgeting, self-discipline, opportunity cost analysis, and more can only be learned essentially in “trial by fire.”

The lessons learned (and application of them) by running your company are invaluable, both professionally and personally.

4. Work from anywhere

Your career is a big part of who you are, so it should be rewarding and generally not dull. You've likely felt the drudgery of office life before, so you recognize that a sense of excitement and passion in your work is no small feat.

As an entrepreneur, you aren't beholden to the daily drudgery of commuting, nor do you have to do the same things at the same times on a daily basis. You can even choose to work from places other than a boring office desk -- your home, a café, the park, or even on the road as you take a working vacation.

If you are considering entrepreneurship, likely you are already wired to have an appreciation of a faster pace and the unexpected. There's nothing worse than monotony in your book, and owning your own company knocks the predictable right away, thanks to its inherently dynamic and progressive nature.

5. Company control

While there are certainly many unpredictable unknowns about the nature of entrepreneurship, the beauty -- and the irony -- is that you actually have a lot of control.

This is your business, so you get to make the key decisions, from who to hire and what clients to take to how to price your services (or goods,) what partnerships to pursue, and what your quarterly and yearly goals should be.

There is a lot of freedom in being able to set the tone and specifics around your work.

Rather than being some cog in a corporation’s hierarchical wheel, your ideas get to take the stage and make a difference. It’s incredibly rewarding to see the very seeds you planted blossom into something successful.

6. Flexible schedule

Dolly Parton may have made the 9 to 5 sound bearable (and hummable), but let’s face it: It is an age-old gripe for most of us.

Setting your own schedule enables you to bust out of the traditional trappings of a 9 a.m. start and working through to 5 p.m., so you can accommodate your personal life, family, needs of your clients, and even your mental health.

Perhaps you are most productive when working in two-hour chunks with a large break in between. Or maybe some days you don’t need a full eight hours, and you have found that working to fill time is actually less productive. The flexibility of running your own business allows you to adjust as needed.

Focusing on results rather than watching the clock will increase happiness, work quality, and output. And, yes, there will be days when entrepreneurship will require long hours, putting you far past the 5 p.m. mark.

However, even when working long nights, you'll be building something of your own rather than the monotony of filling a quota.

7. Building a beneficial network

“It’s not what you know, it’s who you know” is often quoted -- and for good reason. Entering the entrepreneurial world means expanding your professional network.

The connections you make can strengthen your brand by expanding the pool of potential clients and meeting people who will just personally help you out. There’s no such thing as knowing too many good people.

8. Pride and satisfaction

At the end of the day, it is important to take pride in your work and feel good about what you do, as that is what will keep you going. Feeling accomplished by seeing something you conceptualized and built come together is an amazing feeling.

Being able to give back to your community, local economy, your employees, your family, and beyond is such a special feeling.

Being an entrepreneur means you are a problem solver by nature, and the satisfaction of seeing your honest hard work solve those problems is an experience unique to entrepreneurs.

The wide, wonderful world of entrepreneurship

Nothing worth having comes easy, and so, yes, being an entrepreneur will take time, work, and dedication. But if you choose to jump into that career path, the rewards and benefits it brings are priceless.