According to one Gallop poll, one half of North Americans consider self-employment as a career option. Now, that's not only interesting news, but it also represents an enormous number of people.

First, it might shock you to learn that nearly three-quarters of our adult population is unhappy at work. That's what the literature tells us, and it applies across the spectrum of career paths from blue collar to highly degreed professionals. Many of you, who have been employees, have probably experienced some degree of unhappiness with your career, and probably seen others unhappy with their careers, and in turn, quite unhappy with their lives. If you were staring at the clock wondering what else you might be doing with your life, wouldn't the concept of self-employment make your list of options? Yes, I think so too. So... entrepreneurship is consequently a natural alternative work solution.

Although most of the statistics with respect to this subject are based on research done in the United States, they would correlate very closely to the Canadian experience.

Options with respect to self-employment begin with the realization that entrepreneurship is a very broad umbrella under which many types of entrepreneurs can be found. Many people use the terms “entrepreneur” and “small business owner synonymously. While they may have much in common, there are significant differences between an “entrepreneurial venture” and a “small business”.

Peter F. Drucker, a respected and acclaimed management consultant, and author of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, says that anybody from any organization can learn how to be an entrepreneur, that it is "systematic work." But there is a difference between learning how to be, and succeeding as an entrepreneur.

"When a person earns a degree in physics, he becomes a physicist," says Morton Kamien, a professor of entrepreneurship at Northwestern University. "But if you were to earn a degree in entrepreneurship, that wouldn't make you an entrepreneur."

Since the concept of entrepreneurship has such a wide range of meaning, is it any wonder that there is confusion about this abstract concept of what is an entrepreneur. On the one extreme you have the person of very high aptitude, pioneering change, possessing characteristics of a small fraction of the population to the other extreme of the self-employed individual who simply wants to work for himself or herself.