The U.S. economy has been growing at a slower pace, following the great recession that ran from late 2007 to the middle of 2009. According to business week.com, one of the main reasons for the slower recovery of the U.S. economy is due to the fact that many of the starting businesses that fuel the U.S. economy after a recession are still struggling. This can be seen clearly by the falling number of start-up businesses between the years 2000 through 2010. The number of start-up businesses in 2000 was 634,276, which had fallen to 505,473 in 2010, along with the decreasing number of new jobs being created. (businessweek.com)
Lindsay Broder, an Occupreneur, who also writes for the Entrepreneur Magazine, wrote in one of her articles that “Most professionals who consider starting their own businesses fear diving head first into the sea of the 
self-employed.” – 6 Questions to Help Unleash Your Inner Entrepreneur
Owning your own business requires you to have a greater amount of boldness. Along with potential benefits of making more money and working independently for yourself, it also comes with risks, and you need to have abilities to endure more stress along the way. The ability to make split second financial decisions and judgments that you need for entrepreneurship can only be achieved through experience.
The excitement of exploring the unknown is a driving power of many entrepreneurs, but also an obstacle for those who are afraid to take risks. Being your own boss is a big responsibility, and if you don’t have the courage to travel bumpy roads, working for a regular paycheck might be the right thing for you.
Working the entrepreneurial way
Even if you are working for someone else, you can still work in an entrepreneurial way. In our day-to-day life, we often feel that there is not enough time or resources to come up with new ideas and make a difference. We try to focus on our day-to-day activities, trying to make the best of our time and resources. However, we can easily make a difference with our limited time and resources if we can learn to think and act like entrepreneurs.
The mindset
The main difference between a regular employee and an entrepreneur is the mindset. An entrepreneur is a person who sees the positive side of things. He sees opportunities and pursues them. Dan Schawbel, author of the book: Promote Yourself: The New Rules For Career Success, writes in Forbes, that the definition of the word “entrepreneur” has changed today. It doesn’t necessarily refer to a person who builds a business from the ground up, but “being an entrepreneur today means having a certain mindset.”
Dan interviewed 2,000 Millennials, and out of those who responded to his survey, 58% of them classified themselves as entrepreneurs. It’s not because they have started their own company, but because they identified themselves as having the inner mindset of an entrepreneur. In fact, the majority of them started pursuing careers while still in school, and 21% of them were working online, while enrolled in a university. They gather enough experience and knowledge by the time they graduate from their university to jump-start their careers in the traditional corporate world, and make progress at jobs at a faster pace.
For example, one of the MK/MBA students at the University of Michigan sublets his living space and uses this money to hire mobile application developers. He already has two applications developed and patented for medical students and professionals.
Workplace freedom and the rising stars
There is a portion of the workforce that works on their own and on the side as freelancers, building their portfolio and skills. oDesk CEO, Gary Swart, said in an interview that, “Younger generations will increasingly start their careers as entrepreneurs, and independent professionals, from the very beginning. This will be a career path they aspire to.”
However, you may know many people who have worked for other companies for many years before breaking free from the boundaries of the corporate world. It requires a conscious decision or enough motivation before they can become independent and pursue their own individual ideas. What motivates people to quit traditional jobs? Most often, it is the freedom and ability to express their own ideas.
Freedom comes in many forms, and working around their own schedule, at their own pace is on the top of people’s lists of freedom. There are also other factors that make up the freedom list. In a survey, 70% of people said they like to work as a freelancer because they get to choose the type of work they want to do and work on things that they find interesting. According to a recent study by Intuit, 40% of U.S. workers will become freelancers by the year 2020.
There are no good reasons to be confined in a cubicle today, says Gary Swart. This is the age of information, where workers no longer need to go to work; the work can come to them. “The bottom line is that work is no longer a place.”
Companies need to implement flexible work policies and think differently about how they staff, or they will not be able to attract the star Millennials of today, who want to think outside the box from the start and make a big impact.
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Source : Institute of Ecolonomics
