For those of you who don’t know, I recently ventured out on my own professionally. It got me thinking about how that transition wasn’t easy for me and wondered if it was true for others.

As my career progressed and I found myself looking for employment at various stages in life, I searched for my next employment opportunity. To be sure, often I was searching for the next promotion or title that would get me to a goal. Sometimes that promotion occurred from my current employer and often, it happened because of a new job, either as an opening or even more exciting at a new position from a growth mode employer.

Many of you can relate to the idea as it illustrates the idea of climbing the corporate ladder. At times, you need to make a lateral move to get into a new industry or get out of a difficult workplace or economic downturn. It’s what most of us graduating into the full-time workforce do, often without really mapping out our career journey or path.

In the beginning, especially during the child rearing days, I never gave a thought to the idea of going into business on my own. I valued the security of being employed, plus I didn’t have a dream to pursue. While I knew others who had their own consulting business or worked for various clients as a freelancer, it honestly didn’t even come up in my thought process (and I think about everything A LOT!)

The Four Core Entrepreneurial Traits

Why do you think that is? Are we genetically programmed to prefer to be employed vs. being an entrepreneur? Actually, there are studies to point that this is true. This one was featured in Entrepreneur magazine:

It was conducted by Scott Shane, a professor at Case Western Reserve University. Shane looked at hundreds of pairs of twins, eventually finding that the identical twins among them had much higher rates of “shared entrepreneurial tendencies” than their fraternal counterparts or subjects in the control group.

When exploring the data, he found four core entrepreneurial traits, each of which increases the likelihood of becoming an entrepreneur, while also being heritable:

1. The likelihood of starting a business. Genes can influence your probability of starting a business.

2. The ability to identify new opportunities. Your ability to identify business opportunities is similarly heritable.

3. The tendency to become self-employed. Related to but distinct from starting a business, self-employment is also a heritable probability.

4. Extroversion. Though extroversion by itself isn’t enough to motivate entrepreneurship, extroverts have an easier time making new connections, leading followers and engaging in a wider community.

The Choice: Employment or Entrepreneurship?

I agree with all of this and have an unscientific add-on judgement as well. I have noticed that many serial entrepreneurs have some sort of example to emulate. Maybe it’s because they are predisposed to running a business from a nature perspective or it’s because they have seen family-owned businesses their own life. Whatever the case, think about many of your friends or family members – is there a pattern?

In my case, it’s the opposite. I can’t recall anyone in our family owning their own business. For me, when I started thinking about it a few years ago, the prospect filled me with dread. I’d feel anxious and wonder what I could contribute to our household, pay bills and save for retirement. All my focus was towards the idea of not having the necessary financial security. I had little confidence in my abilities to earn a freelance living.

I needed to take time, actually years, to contemplate the prospect. It took me a long time to put together resources like a business plan and a financial proforma to feel more comfortable, even to think seriously about the idea.

I guess it that it isn’t one way that is better than the other. But there is the opportunity to think differently – either way. Sometimes, it is great to own our own business and other times it is wonderful to be employed by someone else.

What do you think? What do you prefer – and why?!