Holiday entrepreneur, oxymoron?

The summer holidays are now coming to an end, so to speak, and everyday life is back on track. Holidays - especially in summer when the weather is kind - are undoubtedly the best time of human life: relaxing with hobbies, late mornings and long summer evenings, trips to different parts of Finland or reading books on the pier. Whatever way you want to spend your holidays.

For the wage-earner, holidays, whether in winter or summer, are a clear ram's meat. An employee's right under the Annual Leave Act. And what's the point of lounging around on holiday when you've still got holiday pay coming in. Oh, yeah! But somebody pays for all this fun. That someone is the entrepreneur, who employs and enables his employees to take their holidays.

I was talking to someone recently about entrepreneurship, and he said how he had - still in the year 2025 - come across a very distorted idea of entrepreneurship. It went something like this: it's easy to be an entrepreneur because you can wake up whenever you want and go on holiday when you feel like it. When I hear such a stream of ideas flowing from the mind of someone with the right to vote and the legal capacity to act, I wonder at what point have we as a society made such a big mistake in trivialising entrepreneurship to this level? If entrepreneurship were as described above, wouldn't everyone, every single adult, be an entrepreneur?

Of course, there are certain freedoms that come with entrepreneurship that you don't enjoy as an employee, but you have to compensate somehow for pulling that rock. As for that remark, have people who think like that ever considered that a small business owner who employs, say, a few people is very often the first to arrive and the last to leave? When the employees are on their annual leave, who else is there as a boomerang but the entrepreneur himself?

When does the entrepreneur himself take his holidays? Simple: when time and money permit. It's just a pity that in many, many cases, the entrepreneur's holiday is reduced to a half-hearted long weekend or the batteries are recharged while he or she is putting out another fire. Then try to relax and get into a zen state to make everyday life lighter again. But one of the biggest reasons for the scarcity and/or brevity of holidays for entrepreneurs is probably to be found at the bottom of the wallet. Few small business owners have the financial means to take time off and travel to the dock to photograph their toes on social media. This is not only because, as entrepreneurs bear the financial responsibility for the holidays of their employees and the very lifeblood of their business, with consumer prices rising, a month of 'elluncation' is an impossible equation for many entrepreneurs.

It is said that employers are trying to squeeze everything possible and impossible out of their employees, but who ever, other than another entrepreneur, thinks about the mental well-being and well-being of entrepreneurs that comes from zeroing in? Of course, it is a different matter whether the entrepreneur will ever know or be able to reset his or her head to factory settings. As I write this, I am lying in a hospital bed after suffering from inflammation of the kidney pelvis and blood poisoning. Of course, as an entrepreneur, I thought that my work, phone calls or a few texts would be just as smooth while I was lying here, because after all, those things have to be taken out of the daily routine. Even my wits tell me that there is no point in this, but sometimes (quite often) entrepreneurship is not about being sensible, but about getting things done in an agreed way and on time. Then you think about other things, such as holidays.

"As entrepreneurs bear the financial responsibility for the holidays of their employees and the livelihood of the company in general, a month of "counter-loaning" in the face of rising consumer prices is an impossible equation for many entrepreneurs."

Pastor