One of the most consistent questions I hear from founders as CEO of Xero, a global small business platform, takes some version of the same form: "The business is doing well, so why don't I feel like I'm winning?"

That question matters, because on every headline measure, these owners are winning. In 2025, the United States recorded approximately 5.7 million business applications, a new annual record. The surge was driven in part by artificial intelligence: 60% of new business owners said they used AI to help launch their business that year, double the rate from 12 months earlier.

Small businesses generate trillions in economic activity, create jobs, and power entire communities. And yet the owner — the person who took the real risk — is often left asking: Was it really worth it?

This is a tension I have felt personally. My older sister Nicky is an optometrist who owned a practice in a shopping mall. She worked day and night to make her business succeed, but that stress never fully translated into her bank account. She had the company P&L, but no framework for understanding whether she was thriving financially or personally.

That gap is hiding in plain sight across the American small business economy today.

The missing measurement

The standard scorecard already tracks revenue, job creation, and GDP contribution — and by that scorecard, entrepreneurship looks healthy. What it does not measure is whether the owner is actually earning a living wage.

Data from Gusto, Xero's payroll partner, found that in 2025 the median small business owner paid themselves $4,800 per month — roughly $57,600 per year — in cash wages.

The time investment is even starker. Most small business owners work at least 50 hours a week, and 60% work six or more days every week. Research from Xero shows owners spend nearly 22 hours a month on finance alone, just tracking and managing money. Success at the business level does not tell you whether that success is sustainable for the person living it.

There is a name for this shortfall. I call it the Ownership Gap: the hidden side of the small business economy that measures what owners actually get back from everything they put in.

What success looks like

Income matters, obviously. But so do things we do not currently track, such as financial resilience, control over your time, access to capital when you need it, or peace of mind after a tough month — and the confidence that building this business is creating a better future for you as the owner, not just for the company's P&L.

Right now, we ask whether the business is working. We rarely ask whether business ownership is working for the owner.

This extends to personal wellbeing. There is a difference between "my business grew" and "my life improved" — between a dream realized and a dream worth realizing. Business success should improve the owner's life, not quietly consume it.

Making owner experiences visible

If business success should be measured by more than growth alone, the owner's experience needs to become part of the conversation. That starts with listening to owners — understanding the realities they face and the changes they have made in how they run, measure, and experience their businesses.

Those stories can spark a broader conversation about whether business growth is creating greater opportunity for the people behind it. A healthier business should be measured by what it produces and by what it gives back to the person who built it.

Who needs to come along on the journey

Owners cannot drive this change alone. Policymakers, economists, and investors must rethink how they make decisions.

When all we measure is business output, we optimize for growth without asking whether that growth is sustainable for the people creating it. We celebrate record business formation without asking what kind of livelihoods those businesses actually create. We see higher small business revenue and assume owners are doing better — when in reality, they may be working harder for the same return, or a lesser one.

That blind spot shapes lending decisions, the support programs we fund, and how we think about entrepreneurship itself.

The fix is not complicated. It is not about replacing the metrics we already use; it is about completing the picture by adding owner health metrics alongside business health as a measure of entrepreneurial success.

It starts with asking different questions. When business formation rises, ask what kinds of income those businesses are generating. When small business sales grow, ask whether owners have greater financial resilience. Create space for data disaggregated by business type and owner circumstances, and build frameworks that let owners connect what their business is earning to what they are actually taking home. Then make that data visible to the wider business community.

A concrete signal to watch: whether the annual reports and datasets that now headline application counts and revenue begin publishing owner-level measures — take-home pay, hours worked, financial resilience — alongside the business-level numbers.

Right now, we are flying blind on owner outcomes. We can see that the business is thriving. We cannot see whether the engine underneath is actually healthy.

The path forward

I have always believed that collective growth and individual reward go hand in hand. We need to help small business owners around the world understand what ownership actually delivers — not just in revenue, but in resilience, security, time, and wellbeing. That starts with changing what we measure, and owners should look beyond revenue and growth to what their businesses return to them personally.

For policymakers, business leaders, and economists, the ask is to broaden the definition of a healthy small-business economy beyond output and revenue: put owners at the center of research, public debate, and policy, and measure whether business success is improving their lives.

In short, owners will help rewrite the scorecard. The wider ecosystem needs to start using it.

A record number of people are building businesses in countries around the world. In this new Owner Economy, we should make sure we are actually measuring whether it is working out for them. A healthy small business economy is not one where the business thrives and the owner burns out. It is one where both succeed together over the short, medium, and long term — by measuring all the metrics that matter.

The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune. This commentary is by Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, CEO of Xero, and was originally featured on Fortune.com.