Running your own small business is the life, right? Being in control of your day and your destiny sounds great.
That’s the goal and the reason you decide to venture into business on your own, but a new Fundera survey of small business owners reveals small business ownership isn’t for the weak-willed or faint of heart. The life certainly comes with its hardships.
Salary of a Small Business Owner
And most notable is the lack of pay. The Fundera survey reveals that 30 percent of small business owners don’t take a salary.
What that says is, if you’re looking to collect a regular paycheck or you’re dependent on the check you’re getting from your day job, think twice about starting your own business.
Of course, if 30 percent aren’t taking a salary, that means that 70 percent are. Running a business certainly won’t leave you penniless, at least if you’re avoiding catastrophic mistakes. But compared to the average CEO, a small business owner’s pay is considerably less. According to Fundera, the national average pay for a CEO is $160,000. Almost 87 percent of the small business owners surveyed told Fundera they take a salary less than $100,000.
Paying the Cost to Be the Boss
Even if a small business owner is making close to that $100,000 figure, it’s not without toil.
Fundera found in its survey that the average small business owner is working much harder than the average worker. According to the data, 81 percent of small business owners work nights and almost half (45 percent) do so on a regular basis.
Weekends are no exception either. In fact, it’s more likely a small business owner will work a weekend (87 percent) and will do so more often (45 percent) than the average worker.
The average small business owner, according to Fundera, works between 40 and 49 hours per week. The average American worker clocks in for 38.6 hours a week.
For this survey, Fundera partnered with Qualtrics and questioned 409 small business owners and people in positions of upper management at small businesses.
Images: Fundera
If you are running a small business, you’ll find that it is hard to take a salary especially if you are in the building stage. But then, it will get easier as you move forward.
Hello Joshua,
Great shout over here 🙂
Those are some really great facts about the =small business owners and how hard they are working to get going with their dreams.
Yeah I know they generally work at night and even on weekends. These group of people are working nearly about 8 to 9 hours
a day.
That graph above reflects about how they are not accepting salary and working hard to be their own boss.
Thanks for the share.
Shantanu.