Running any company, of any size usually has more 'uphill' bits in it than 'downhill' bits. I used to think otherwise but over the decades this one factor kept staring me in the face: it was so much fun in the beginning, where did that go? And then I realized that it was fun in the beginning because it was the beginning! Everything was fresh and new, nothing had entered maintenance, no technical debt, all sales and hardly any support and then little by little normality crept in and what was effortless became a serious effort indeed.
I think it takes about 3 years to establish an actual business and by the time you're there most of your 'motivational energy' will have burned out or dissipated and you'll be going on discipline exclusively for the majority of the time.
There's nothing wrong with that, that's where the money is made.
And that's why many people choose not to run businesses, and that's fine too. Some make money in other ways, and some don't mind that they don't have a whole lot of money.
If you're succeeding in your businesses, that probably means that it's close enough to "enjoyable" for you to make it worth your while (if not - man, I'm sorry).
I knew folks at Google who had zero interest in ever founding a company. Why? Because they knew exactly what it entailed, and figured they wanted to spend their budget on things like hard technical problems or dealing with office politics rather than on building a business. Ultimately, I decided that wasn't what I want, and a good portion of the reason why is that I wanted the challenge of stretching myself in ways that I couldn't inside a large corporation. But that's a choice as well - I looked at the schleps needed to have some level of sustainable self-determination within Google vs. the ones needed to have some level of sustainable self-determination in a company, and decided I wanted the latter. I don't actually disagree with any of the facts you've put out, I'm just pointing out that one shouldn't immediately leap from those to the article's conclusion.
I think it takes about 3 years to establish an actual business and by the time you're there most of your 'motivational energy' will have burned out or dissipated and you'll be going on discipline exclusively for the majority of the time.
There's nothing wrong with that, that's where the money is made.