Will Entrepreneurship Make You Rich? A Realistic Perspective.

Entrepreneurship is a manifestation of the American dream. Anyone, with the right idea and enough hard work can become successful, the saying goes. And, indeed, we constantly see images of multi-billionaires, like Mark Zuckerberg and Richard Branson, who built empires from scratch, and are taught that there's no income limit for business owners in our capitalistic system.
Accordingly, hundreds of thousands of new entrepreneurs every year write business plans and gather funds for their own chance to strike it rich and build enough wealth for a lifetime. But, is the idea of using entrepreneurship to get rich just a pipe dream? Or is it a legitimate way to build that level of wealth?

                        

                            The Idea

Entrepreneurship is a way to unchain yourself from the fixed salary you’ll make at a full-time job. Rather than being capped at whatever value your company determines that you offer, you’ll create your own value by owning a business with no upper limit on profitability.

Whatever money your entrepreneurial company makes beyond what it invests in itself and its operations is then yours to keep; what's more, you just might see an even bigger payday if you sell your company to a larger organization. But, as you might imagine, the path to wealth from entrepreneurship isn’t as straightforward as that picture would have you believe.

The average salary
A study by American Express OPEN found that more than half of entrepreneurs surveyed were paying themselves a full-time salary, and typically making  $68,000 a year. That number rises and falls from year to year, but hovers around $70,000.

Of course, that paycheck doesn’t include any additional profits that business owners reap, or reflect what they make if and when they eventually sell the business. However, it does provide a portrait of how the “average” entrepreneur performs.

Because today's median household income in the United States is $52,000, entrepreneurs -- given that average $68,000 a year -- are earning above average.