Exploiting Entrepreneurship: The Health and Healing Benefits and Drawbacks of an Entrepreneurial Career
By Serena Weil
Entrepreneurs face a variety of working conditions that differ greatly from those of the majority of the world’s workers. While most people function at the mercy of a boss, entrepreneurs are their own bosses who control the manifestation of their own ideas and perhaps have their own employees as well. Research speculates whether the difference causes greater rates of mental health issues or alternatively, freedom from mental illness. Ultimately it appears that entrepreneurs have the ability to ascertain greater levels of happiness and work-life balance due to the control they have in their line of work. Higher levels of autonomy in the workplace, while sometimes daunting, ultimately creates the clearest path towards job satisfaction and a greater sense of contentment. However, the required leadership and potentially exploitative aspect of business ventures may weigh heavily on empathic entrepreneurs. Furthermore, the less empathic a person is, the less likely they are to identify emotions such as depression and anxiety. All jobs have the potential to depersonalize workers and isolate them from their feelings, but given the high pressure and small chances for entrepreneurs to succeed, entrepreneurs must truly care about their work and may identify with it more. The findings as to whether entrepreneurs are significantly happier or more depressed than others are inconclusive, but if an entrepreneur can control an entire startup, they should utilize their knowledge to positively influence their mental health. Therefore, an entrepreneurial career is highly compatible with health and healing as long as the entrepreneur can make strides to organize and compartmentalize their work life to be both personally fulfilling and healthfully balanced.
The opportunity to choose from an ever-growing list of career paths is a privilege. However, this presumed breadth of job possibilities, which only seem to multiply as time passes on, is not without caveats attached to each and every job. In his essay “On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs,” David Graeber laments “bullshit jobs”: “pointless jobs just for the sake of keeping us all working.” Furthermore, he writes, “hell is a collection of individuals who are spending the bulk of their time working on a task they don’t like and are not especially good at” (Graeber). As a college student navigating future career options, I’ve found it hard to strike a balance between things that I enjoy and am also good at. It turns out that for me, my talents and passions are mutually exclusive from livable wages, let alone lucrative careers.
No job can be perfect; each comes with a side effect or many. David Graeber argues that “in our society, there seems a general rule that, the more obviously one’s work benefits other people, the less one is likely to be paid for it.” Whether the caveat of a specific job means being unable to afford groceries, or working 100 hours a week, or feeling generally dissatisfied, few positions in the United States allow for the vacation days or even maternity leave that European countries prioritize in the name of the well-being of their people. The American Dream pushes for a mindset in which working and earning money is more important than family, rest, or living a fulfilling, balanced life. The choice to be an entrepreneur is both a confirmation and rejection of The American Dream. Entrepreneurship highlights it by requiring great devotion to one’s personal capital and to the pursuit of a dream, in a highly risky field. On the other hand, flexible work conditions also frees them from the typical career path, potentially allowing for high levels of autonomy and control over working hours and therefore their livelihoods. When entrepreneurs do succeed, it is an opportunity to deviate from the typical American career path and monotonous lifestyle, potentially while contributing to society, and still achieving its financial standards.
Becoming an entrepreneur is a high risk, high reward operation: statistically, not everyone can achieve it, but the benefits make for a highly desirable quality of life. However, success is not necessarily an immediate requirement for the well being of entrepreneurs. An empirical study found that “because of their high job control and the active nature of their jobs, entrepreneurs should experience less allostatic load which in turn seems to be associated with fewer mental disorders and higher well-being” (Stephan and Roesler 721). Although many are attracted to entrepreneurial endeavors for the sake of earning their fortune and having the same job title as some of the wealthiest humans in the world, it turns out that autonomy and keeping an active lifestyle lowers entrepreneurs’ stress levels and makes for a happier life. Unlike employees who have bosses, entrepreneurs take charge of their own success, allowing them to tailor their own schedules to their liking. Not only does this allow for proper levels of sleep, exercise, hobbies, and meaningful time spent with friends and family, entrepreneurs get to devote their energy to a project that means something to them. Furthermore, each unique workday for an entrepreneur is filled with new challenges, tasks, questions, and ways to solve them. Therefore being an entrepreneur allows for experiencing novelty on a daily basis, which is proven to greatly benefit mental health, yet remains chronically missing from the workdays of others. The study “What Do Entrepreneurs Actually Do? An Observational Study of Entrepreneurs’ Everyday Behavior in the Start-Up and Growth Stages” found that entrepreneurs “often engaged in short, sporadic actions that change in an abrupt, sometimes unpredictable manner. Two minutes of deskwork are interrupted by 1 minute of phone calls, which is followed by a 30-second unscheduled meeting, then 5 minutes responding to an e-mail” (Mueller et al. 1004). This work style keeps entrepreneurs present and engaged. Given all of these benefits, entrepreneurship seems like an ideal solution for evading job dissatisfaction.
However, the scholarly literature on the mental health of entrepreneurship proves both inconclusive and contradictory, and occasionally grim. One study done by Toivanen et al. in 2015 found that “workers in personal and cultural sectors (including hotels and restaurants) had lower risks of suicide, while those in agriculture, forestry, and fishing had higher (though not statistically significant) rates of suicide” (Cubbon et al. 791). The specific challenges of entrepreneurs are relative to their industry, social support available to them, and their initial personal capital. Therefore the lifestyle and happiness of an entrepreneur is highly variable. Although “entrepreneurs have the ability to determine the structure of their days” which makes them “less likely to experience symptoms of exhaustion and depression… working long hours and the potential for inconsistent sleep routine can have negative implications for entrepreneurs” such as “a decrease in individuals’ self-efficacy, motivation, attention, and decision-making, and can cause an increase in negative emotions” (Cubbon et al. 797). Furthermore, “these factors can contribute to a decrease in entrepreneurs’ confidence in their business ideas (Gunia 2018), making it difficult for them to stay motivated to work long hours (Hessels et al. 2018)” (Cubbon et al. 797). The implications of an entrepreneurial life tend to have a snowball effect, revealing that the career path is not for everyone.
Comparatively speaking however, the fragile well-being of entrepreneurs far outweighs the issues faced by employees. As with any life decision, the benefits and drawbacks must be weighed fairly. Due to the nature of their work, entrepreneurs are more likely to take their business personally in comparison to employees of a company that merely allows them to pay their bills and remain impersonal and detached. And with slim chances of success, “failure—whether financial or personal—is a significant risk associated with entrepreneurial work. Although this risk can sometimes pay off, it can also contribute to a host of circumstances that lead to an increased risk of death by suicide” (Cubbon et al. 797). Feeling like a failure may well contribute to depression and suicide, but nonetheless entrepreneurs face much lower likelihoods of experiencing mental illness compared to employees. However, the demands of entrepreneurial work provide space for creativity, and “by autonomously internalizing work into their identities, harmoniously passionate entrepreneurs are able to flexibly perform work activities and believe that they have control over their entrepreneurial endeavors. These feelings of flexibility and control make such entrepreneurs experience positive emotions” (Shepherd and Patzelt 202). Ultimately, studies have found that “entrepreneurs were 0.58 times as likely to have been suffering from at least one mental disorder during their lifetime compared with employees” (Stephan and Roesler 727). Although the effects of failed entrepreneurship may seem dramatic and dire, pursuing a meaningful career proves to be both an improvement and a departure from a mundane lifestyle devoid of autonomy.
As long as one can sustain capable leadership over both work and life, the work-life balance and opportunities for personal satisfaction as an entrepreneur are thoroughly enticing. Initially I theorized that entrepreneurship could be exploitative, as one person profits significantly and must capitalize on the menial work of their own employees. Since employees are statistically less happy than successful entrepreneurs, it appears as if entrepreneurs exploit both the system and people by reinforcing structures of power that keep others minimally paid and marginally happy. However, my research found that in both business and entrepreneurship texts, considerations of exploitation are absent from the literature. Rather, exploitation in these fields is often applied to “exploiting a business venture,” to signify the process of starting a business versus working on exploratory ventures. Due to the research it is difficult to determine whether entrepreneurs recognize the defects of leadership, and instead suggests that they turn a blind eye and instead enjoy the benefits of capitalism funneled towards them personally. Perched atop a corrupted system, entrepreneurs enjoy the spot that they have attained. This is not to say that entrepreneurs cannot positively impact society in other domains, making the innovation of a new business less of a bullshit job, as Graeber would say. But the number one person who benefits from entrepreneurship is the successful entrepreneur themself. After handling high-risk ventures, the great reward of entrepreneurship is the lifestyle it provides, one that is simultaneously flexible, creative, personal, and eventually and hopefully affluent. As I consider my future after college, I find that the benefits far outweigh the downfalls as I hope to embark on a career that allows me the autonomy to enjoy life while creating something that I believe would be meaningful to me and others. Every career has its drawbacks, but the great difference is that the boss or the company do not determine those for entrepreneurs. In a life where we each get to pick our poison in pursuit of health and happiness, entrepreneurship proves enticing.
Works Cited
Cubbon, Lauren, et al. “Depression among Entrepreneurs: A Scoping Review.” Small Business Economics, Springer US, 5 Aug. 2020, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11187-020-00382-4.
Graeber, David. “On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs.” Atlas of Places, 2013, https://www.atlasofplaces.com/essays/on-the-phenomenon-of-bullshit-jobs/.
Mueller, Susan, et al. “What Do Entrepreneurs Actually Do? An Observational Study of Entrepreneurs’ Everyday Behavior in the Start-Up and Growth Stages.” Sage Pub, Baylor University, 2012, https://journals-sagepub-com.libproxy2.usc.edu/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1540-6520.2012.00538.x
Shepherd, Dean A., and Holger Patzelt. Entrepreneurial Cognition: Exploring the Mindset of Entrepreneurs. Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.
Stephan, Ute, and Ulrike Roesler. “Health of Entrepreneurs versus Employees in a National Representative Sample.” The British Psychological Society Online Library, The British Psychological Society, 2010, https://bpspsychub-onlinelibrary-wiley-com.libproxy2.usc.edu/doi/pdfdirect/10.1348/096317909X472067.