What even is a “regular” job? Semantics aside, the heart of our question is about those moments when the stress of entrepreneurship is mounting – do you ever sit back and wonder what if you had just been working for someone else, what life would have been like without all the stress?

Whitney & Chez Sarnella

Growing up my parents have always been entrepreneurs, from owning a hair salon to multiple wedding chapels in Las Vegas. Growing up, they always told me that owning your own business makes you stronger and happier and yes you have to hustle, work long hours but the benefit is that no one is in charge of how much you can make, nor can they tell you what to do. As a young man my brother and I owned a window washing company and now I own an amazing, every growing and changing cabinet business called The Shelf King. Read more>>

Jessica Dawn

Opening my own business has been the single best decision I have ever made for myself and my family! As a working mother, having flexibility in my working hours was of the utmost importance. As my son started to get older and enrolled in school, I realized that the normal 9am-5pm just wasn’t going to work for us as a family. How would he get to school? Who would pick him up during the day? Who would watch him when I went back to work? All of these were questions that started to come to play, as I’m sure all working families can relate to! Read more>>

Aly Camerlo

I am definitely happier as a business owner. I have had the opportunity to work for other people and myself and hands down, I enjoy owning my own business more than working for someone else. Being completely honest though, when COVID hit in March of 2020 and we had just finished the construction of our barn wedding venue I definitely questioned everything. In 2019, my husband and I decided to build our own wedding venue on our property. We had an 1860 barn that was standing in Indiana for over 160 years, dismantled, shipped out to our property and we spent the year putting it back up and putting all the finishing touches on it to be ready for our first wedding season in June of 2020. Read more>>

Tiffany Rothe Rothe

Everyone wants to be an entrepreneur, because you are your own boss, you set the schedule and you make the rules, What people may not realize is that the flip side of this coin is being able to tolerate high risk, have a willingness to fail, and abundant amount of self motivation stored up for rainy days. I have often dreamed of what it would be like to go to a job each day, get salary, paid vacation, and to be able leave my work at the office when the day is done. Read more>>

Jocelyn Clark

I would be lying if I said I haven’t ever thought about having a more conventional job. Being a small business owner can be extremely difficult at times. It takes a lot of discipline when you are the only one running the show. If you don’t put in the work, there is no one else to come behind you and pick up the slack. One thing I love about being my own boss is flexibility, but with that, I think it’s important to establish a set routine you stick to. A regular job would force you to get up at a specific time and stay there until the work day is over. When you are working from home every day, Read more>>

Shika Johnson

I am extremely happy with being a business owner. I have thought about returning to a regular job and the only reason at the time was because I wanted to help establish my discipline in the workplace and, secondly, to be in a more social environment. Being a business owner is a lonely road at times. Most of the time, it is just me and my husband brainstorming, coming out with ideas, and working at events or weddings together, so when it comes to my social work life, non-client related, it is minimal. Also, tasks such as marketing myself, making my own schedules, and dealing with clients on a day-to-day basis, Read more>>

Yannelle Vidal

I couldn’t be anymore grateful to become a business owner. I get to choose my own schedule and hours, on top of that I get to meet lots of new faces! Getting to connect with others is an amazing feeling to me, with them coming to my suite and showing off what I have built, is no greater feeling. I do sometimes wonder how it would be to have a regular job. I honestly couldnt imagine working a 9-5pm with me being so used to my own schedule. I would love to experience having co-workers! Thats something, I do miss. Getting close with your work crew environment is very important in any industry. I eventually do want to hire on employees to work with me, but all with time. Read more>>

Tristan Cummings

Yes I am happy as a business owner. I haven’t given much thought on what it would be like if I had a regular job. With that being said being a business owner is alot to take on but I wouldn’t trade anything for it because it is something that I have wanted to do growing up. I always told myself that I had wanted to be in computers or run my own business. When it came to a owning a business I never really knew what I wanted to do until about 2012. Once I started the business in 2014 and it got going I never looked back at going to a regular job. Being a business owner you appreciate alot more than just having a regular job. Read more>>

Anna Harwood

I’ve always been a business owner in a way. I started teaching dance when I was 17, so I’ve never had a typical job. I went to college, but my love of dance continued, and upon graduating, I started teaching ballroom dance and competing around the Country. I always worked for myself teaching dance so didn’t have the normal structure of a regular job with a boss. Transitioning to owning a music entertainment company wasn’t a difficult transition after that since I was already used to finding clients, marketing, traveling, etc… the only major change was having more people that worked for me versus being a one man operation. Read more>>

Loequishia Howard

Owning a business instead of having a regular job has its rewards, but its really just a trade off of stress. For example, I have the freedom to take off work without having to get days approved by a Supervisor, but there is no PTO as a business owner. When you’re in the service industry, taking time off means making no money during those days. I’d still choose to be a business owner in that instance lol Read more>>

Amanda Neeley

I am very happy being a business owner and with the freedom it allows. I built my business to allow me to have as much time as possible with my family, but also be able to provide nicely for them. I had regular jobs as a teen and a very young adult and knew that type of schedule and obligation to someone else was not what I wanted for my life. Photography has given me the ability and reason to travel, stay connected to my first love of ballet, and be able to homeschool my three daughters. Read more>>

Willie Freeman

I will never regret taking that first step into owning my video production company called. I started this passion back in 2016 by editing simple video game content for Youtube and Facebook. Unfortunately, I wasn’t to make money to call this my career so I got a part-time job as a security officer and JCPenny’s. I worked at JCPenny’s for roughly a month and hated every bit of it. This gave me the drive and hustle to network & build relationships to survive in the Atlanta market as an editor. As I’m learning and developing my own style as a creative. I’m also taking courses on digital marketing and working with professional traffic coordinators. Read more>>

Destiney Jones

I’m happy as a business owner, sometimes it easier to say that but I do feel like in “general” I’m happy. It’s tough staying that way though. I often think how much easier life would be if I can go back to having a regular job, I actually left a pretty rewarding career to do this, it had its perks, consistent pay, set hours, lunch breaks, vacation, sick leave… I could call off . I don’t have those luxuries right now as a business owner. My business needs me practically everyday, sometimes for 60+ hours a week. Read more>>

Kristal Sims

Being a business owner has its good days & bad days. However, this is the route that I chose. This is how I provide for my family. So no matter what, I have to keep going. I’m happier owning a business versus working on a job. Sometimes when business is slow, I tell myself that I will go get a job and then reality sets in. If I go work a job, I’m working extremely hard for someone else. I can put that energy into my business. Read more>>

Drezzy Norris

Yes, I am happy that I found something that not only expresses myself but also helps others gain confidence & change lives through conversations. A lot of people think being a business owner is easy or that we don’t go through as much, not knowing that you have to be a strong person mentally & emotionally to deal with other individuals daily. Us business owners have a habit of living in our thoughts wondering if we made the right decision to work for ourself or if we made the right decision with an investment, Read more>>

Dustyn Dawn

When thinking about if I am happier as a business owner there were two things to consider; how likely am I to be booked if I do not produce the show, and how much experience would I get in the industry without owning the business. It is the unfortunate truth that most of the queens and drag performs in the Baltimore scene are completely and utterly rude. People will refuse to book you over rumors without any basis of truth to them, will talk behind your back while being a part of your cast, and will try and claim you are things you are not. Read more>>

Nicole Sandercock

For a year before going full-time with my business, I worked as an HR rep for a large restaurant-based company – a very typical corporate job. I really thought that it was the “safe route” and that I could be happy just working my 9-5pm job every day. Honestly it completely trapped me and I felt restless and unsatisfied with what I was doing. There’s nothing fulfilling about completing the same mundane tasks over and over, knowing that everything I did was just benefiting the CEO. Read more>>

Zuzia Soldenhoff-Thorpe

I used to freelance in my hometown in Poland, as well as New York City. I did few Summers working in London, a year of an endless Summer in Sydney Australia. Lots of very different jobs and work environments, but always had the freedom of being able to pick up and leave whenever I pleased. Jobs varied from Public Relations agencies, modeling gigs, Advertising agencies projects, TV production and waitressing in between, during high school and college and all Summers in between. I’d work 60-80 hours per week, but then go travel for 2-7 weeks in between (South East Asia, Europe, Antipodes, South and Central America). Read more>>

Amanda Garcia

Yes, I love running my own business! However, like any small business owner- I tend to go through ups and downs, business is great one day and slow the next. This year has been much slower for clients setting up short term rentals (Airbnbs, etc) because our market has become rather sarturated with them, so we are working on growing the interior decorating and design side of the business- which has been a slower process than I had hoped, but is starting to pick back up. I do this business for 2 reasons- 1- because I LOVE decorating, Read more>>

Allison Barbera

A few years ago, I was driving home from a television show my company does makeup for when I had a weird flashback. In reality, I was on 95 North in Rhode Island, but for a second, I thought I was driving home on 95 North from my office job in Florida 15 years earlier. For a brief moment, I remembered what it felt like to be done with work at 5:00pm on a Friday, knowing I had the entire weekend completely off. I felt giddy, free and excited. Read more>>

Rachel Griffin

I have had 14 jobs in my life. Yes, you read that right…14. I worked at McDonald’s for 1 day. I have worked at Joe’s Crab Shack, Target, Wal-Mart… all the majors. I even had two jobs at once for 6 months. I have always been a hustler. I was young and didn’t know what I really wanted to do but always was in a service oriented job. Never a career. There is a distinct difference between a career and a job. I left the corporate world in 2014 to have my first child and never went back, it was my last and final job. Read more>>

Dasha Hudson

I worked a regular job for 17 years, I remember thinking how can I work for myself everyday was a different challenge while I loved being in the medical industry it took me away from my family and friends. It pushed me to go in business for myself making up my own time and focusing on being successful. Read more>>

Victoria Cantu

Of course I am happy as a business owner, otherwise I wouldn’t continue owning a salon and/or trying to come up with my next project to do. I definitely think about what it would be like to have a regular job, it’s something I have spoken to my clients about. I’m pretty sure it was last month too! Anything that leads up to that response, is usually when my client ask, have I always wanted to do hair. Its not something that I fully think about, but when I do, its things like, To be able to clock in and clock out and go home and, to not have the responsibilities over everyone, making sure inventory is good, doing payroll, Read more>>

Meghan Faulkner

Sometimes I dream of a regular job. I would love to come in, work a 40 hour week, know what’s expected of me, know what I am going to get paid and have paid vacations. Sometimes I even fantasize about this. The time I almost gave in to this fantasy was during the pandemic. So much was unknown about what to do to keep my employees and patients safe. I felt like all decisions made in that time were hard because I was never sure if they were the right ones. There was a sharp decrease in business because, understandably, most people were scared to leave their houses. Read more>>

Wealthi Freeman

I can honestly say that I absolutely enjoy being a business owner. Even though there are ups and downs that come with ownership, I can’t imagine not having my business now. It’s never been the thought of what it would be like to just have a regular job, simply because I’ve worked while creating and running my business. My job has been the funds for my business along the way. So my end goal is for my business to expand so much, that one day I won’t have to work a regular job. This is my thought everyday. I see myself with a small or decent size space or building and my business thriving. Read more>>