What kind of people work for themselves?

What are the skills that you need to be self employed?  I recently read about a priest (on a retreat site) who had left the church to become self employed.  Over the years I have often wondered about becoming self employed and never done it.  I think that there are two things that I lack: unbounded confidence that everything will turn out OK (in fact I have rather the opposite - see here) and an ability not to worry (see here).  Neither of these are great attributes for a man of faith - see here and here.

This reminded me of the theory we discussed many years ago at work.  Have you noticed, like we did, that most of the big entrepreneurs don't have much in the way of formal education?  We came to the conclusion that this was not chance.  To make it as an entrepreneur you have to take risks with your life.  If you have a degree you can (at least you could then) be reasonably assured of a good life with little risk by entering one of the professions, the civil service, or management.  Why would you risk that to take up an insecure self employed role?  It could also be that to be a successful entrepreneur you need to have a clear vision of what you want to do - and that further education will rarely help take you towards it.

There are of course those who are exceptions to the rule.  Some like Stelios Haji-Ioannou have family wealth changing the risk/reward ratio somewhat.  Others like Michael Lynch turn their academic research into a product, again changing the risk/reward ratio.

And yet the irony is that technically I am now an office holder and not an employee!