There are good reasons why over 30 million Americans have chosen the path of entrepreneurship. But some of the most important reasons are often overlooked.

Entrepreneurs are responsible for starting and running the small businesses throughout our cities. These people include the local dry cleaner, auto dealer, restaurateur, franchisee, personal trainer, and grocer. They’re responsible for the technology we rely on every day—cell phones, Internet access, hardware, and digital entertainment.

An entrepreneur is a visionary and a builder of businesses. They build profitable companies that sustain our nation’s financial foundation. While their initial reasons for venturing into startup-world might go no further than the pursuit of personal wealth, they ultimately play a significant role in our society. As articulated by Peter Drucker, “Business isn’t just business. It’s the economic engine of democracy.”

The personal reasons for following the path of entrepreneurship vary. Typically, the greatest motivations come from the prospect of wealth, security, being the boss, freedom, and a passion for a product or service. All good reasons. Fifteen years ago, my main reasons for going solo were basically the same. I suspect your reasons might be similar.

It’s taken me 15 years to realize, though, that entrepreneurship is about more than achieving the obvious objectives—much more. The fact is, those who pursue entrepreneurial success meet unexpected tests and trials that shape them for good.

Here are five reasons why starting your own business will mean more to your life than you think:

1. You’re going to be tested. Hammered, actually. When I started my journey as an entrepreneur, my vision was fixed on the financial rewards of growing a business. I had no way of knowing how many great personal tests I would face along the way. I was too inexperienced to anticipate how market factors, competitive pressures, cash constraints, and managing employees would create an environment of nearly constant pressure. New twists, turns, and surprises surface with exhausting frequency. There’s a wise saying that “…hammering hardens steel and plays havoc on putty.” It’s the opportunity for you to become strengthened and refined under the heat and hammering of business challenges. Sadly, many wilt, falter, or fail under these circumstances. So be prepared to face and conquer real-life tests as an entrepreneur and to be better for it.

2. You’re going to fail. That’s a good thing. Think of failure as the toll paid for future success. Every great success story includes painful chapters of failure and misstep. It’s a fact that through failure, questions are answered and solutions are discovered. Og Mandino said, “Failure is the highway to success, as every discovery we make of what is false leads us to earnestly seek after what is true and points out some error which we shall afterward carefully avoid.” And it’s the experience of failure that breeds the ability to be flexible, humble, and thoughtful—qualities required to create a company that can stand the test of time. Flexibility, humility, and thoughtfulness go a long way in life, too.

3. You’re going to learn patience. It develops as a natural result of the hammering and the failures that you’re sure to experience. Patience is the trait that truly separates inexperienced entrepreneurs from the seasoned and successful. Patience earned through experience is what allows a business operator to get beyond idealistic dreams and deal in the world of sound, realistic expectations. Pray that it develops within you as soon as possible.

4. You’re going to have a major impact on people. It’s inevitable. People—perhaps many people—are going to give a portion of their lives to your cause. This isn’t a small thing. Your actions toward your customers, vendors, and especially your employees will have a positive or negative impact on their lives. You will learn that managing people is really about leadership, and leadership is about inspiring people to reach their full potential. In The 8^th Habit, Stephen Covey explains that it is absolutely crucial that we “…find our voice and inspire others to find theirs.” And again, from Drucker, “Management is about human beings. Its task is to make their strengths effective and their weaknesses irrelevant.” I hope that as you build your company, you will find that it is an ideal platform for doing much more than selling widgets—the opportunity is there to change many lives for good.

5. You’re going to develop character. Sure, you might get rich, retire young, and travel the world, too. But realize that this isn’t really the end game. In time (sooner rather than later, with any luck), you’ll recognize that building a business is much different than what you might have initially envisioned. If you choose to pay the price for success, you’ll find that it’s actually much harder than most accounts of business success would suggest. But through that hardship, great rewards are available. While there is no guarantee of riches, through the pursuit, you will obtain rewards of character. And the development of sound character is perhaps the most important perk of entrepreneurship. At the end of the day, no one really cares how much money you made. They care about who you are.

We all have perceptions of what it will be like to reach a certain goal. And when we finally get there, we usually find a completely different reality than what sparked our action toward the goal. As an entrepreneur, that has been my experience. I have been pleasantly surprised by the lasting benefits uncovered through the lessons of my business experience.

Entrepreneurship is one of those things that can provide greater results, greater benefits than you might have initially expected. You’ll develop deep life experience and a level of humility as a result. You’ll gain patience and have a great impact for good on many people. And ultimately, that is the most important benefit of your pursuit.

Seasoned business-builders typically recoil at the prospect of facing any public exposure of their failures, and they certainly don’t report their own mistakes to the world.

But Bessemer Venture Partners does just that. They actually report their “Anti-Portfolio”.

As someone who lives in the world of small business, it’s refreshing to observe that even the best entrepreneurs and investors make the same mistakes I’ve made; missed opportunities, wrong assumptions, poor judgment, and lack of foresight. All necessary lessons on the road to success.

Thanks to BVP for showing some light-hearted humility on our behalf:

“Bessemer Venture Partners is perhaps the nation’s oldest venture capital firm, carrying on an unbroken practice of venture capital investing that stretches back to 1911. This long and storied history has afforded our firm an unparalleled number of opportunities to completely screw up.

We chose to decline the investments below, each of which we had the opportunity to invest in, and each of which later blossomed into a tremendously successful company.

Our reasons for passing on these investments varied. In some cases, we were making a conscious act of generosity to another, younger venture firm, down on their luck, whom we felt could really use a billion dollars in gains. In other cases, our partners had already run out of spaces on the year’s Schedule D and feared that another entry would require them to attach a separate sheet. Whatever the reason, we would like to honor these companies — our “anti-portfolio” — whose phenomenal success inspires us in our ongoing endeavors to build growing businesses. Or, to put it another way: if we had invested in any of these companies, we might not still be working:

		Apple Computer BVP had the opportunity to invest in pre-IPO secondary stock in Apple at a $60M valuation. BVP’s Neill Brownstein called it “outrageously expensive.”
		eBay “Stamps? Coins? Comic books? You’ve GOT to be kidding,” thought Cowan. “No-brainer pass.”
		Federal Express Incredibly, BVP passed on Federal Express seven times.
		Google Cowan’s college friend rented her garage to Sergey and Larry for their first year. In 1999 and 2000 she tried to introduce Cowan to “these two really smart Stanford students writing a search engine”. Students? A new search engine? In the most important moment ever for Bessemer’s anti-portfolio, Cowan asked her, “How can I get out of this house without going anywhere near your garage?”
		Intel BVP’s Pete Bancroft never quite settled on terms with Bob Noyce, who instead took venture financing from a guy named Arthur Rock.
		Intuit Along with every venture capitalist on Sand Hill Road, Neill Brownstein turned down Intuit founder Scott Cook. Scott managed to scrape together only $225K from friends, including HBS classmate and Sierra Ventures founder Peter Wendell, who personally invested $25K to get Scott off his back.
		Lotus and Compaq (formerly known as Gateway Computer) Ben Rosen, one of the founders of Sevin Rosen, offered Felda Hardymon the chance to invest in both Lotus and Gateway Computer on the same day. Says Hardymon: “Lotus had just missed a payroll, and I was worried about the situation there. As for Gateway, I told him there was no real future in transportable computers since IBM could do it.”
		Paypal David Cowan passed on the Series A round. Rookie team, regulatory nightmare, and, 4 years later, a $1.5 billion acquisition by eBay.”

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