I have definitely chosen the path of entrepreneurship, in my real life I am the owner of 2 small businesses. The first one I have been doing for the last 13 years, I'm a tile contractor. Licensed in the state of California USA. Got into tile in 2002 and worked for a series of contractors as a helper/apprentice and literally started at the bottom and worked my way up. Got licensed in 2006 and started my own business. I would recommend owning your own business to anyone, for me there is no other way. In the progression of my tile setting skills as I was going along, learning all that I could about the trade, I hit a certain point that I knew I could run the jobs better than the people I was working under. That's the jumping off place. When you know, with your own creativity and knowledge, that you can do a better job than your boss is doing, that's the point that it becomes a drag working under people. They tell you to do things, and you know that problems are going to arise doing it this way, and sure enough you follow their instructions and sure enough problems happen like you knew they would. You start armchair quarterbacking what needs to be done in your head and criticizing their decisions. This I believe is when you need to put your money where your mouth is and go for it. Go start your own business, people way dumber than you are running successful businesses so why not you?
There is a certain amount of fear in launching a small business, will I fail? will I lose money? I think a lot of people want to, but are afraid to take that first step. I'm not saying make hasty decisions but at some point you are going to have to take a risk, there is no great reward without some risk involved.
My tile business is not perfect, it's difficult to scale. Custom residential tile work takes a lot of skill and finding people that care as much about quality as I do is not an easy task. Most of the time I do the work, the advertising, the selling, the customer service, and the billing. It's not easy but SO worth it, I wouldn't do it any other way. I have complete freedom with my job, I decide everything. Who I hire, when I go to work, what jobs I do, it's awesome and the best part is I make quadruple what I would make working under anyone else. There's no way I'd ever go back to being an employee