More than eight in 10 U.S. small-business owners say they would do it over again, despite major challenges such as cash flow, credit and government regulations, the new Wells Fargo/Gallup Small Business Index shows.

The survey found the punishment of the Great Recession did not cause America's business owners to regret their decision to start a business.

"One of the key reasons many small business owners would do it all over again is that they clearly value the independence they get from their choice of career, which no doubt is a part of their satisfaction with their career choice," Gallup's Frank Newport wrote.

In all, 42 percent of the 600 small business owners who participated in the survey said the most rewarding feature about starting and running their own business was being their own boss and being the decision maker.

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Other top responses for the most rewarding aspect of owning a small business included job satisfaction and pride of accomplishment (17 percent), having family time and schedule flexibility (12 percent), interacting with customers (11 percent), financial rewards (7 percent) and creating jobs (2 percent).

When asked about their most daunting challenges, the majority of small business owners pointed to the "nuts and bolts of keeping a business running," Gallup said.

The top challenges they cited were generating revenue/increasing customer base (23 percent), cash flow (15 percent), credit (10 percent), government regulations (8 percent) and advertising/marketing (8 percent,)

"Owners' sense of freedom and independence derived from their entrepreneurship apparently overcomes the challenges of finding and keeping customers and maintaining enough cash flow to keep the business afloat," Newport noted.

A new poll for human resources firm TriNet, showed a high degree of optimism for 2014 among U.S. small business owners — 74 percent of the 206 U.S. owners of small businesses with 10 to 49 employees surveyed strongly or somewhat agreed that their revenues would grow this year.

The survey found 50 percent of small business owners expect to hire more workers in 2014, but that finding qualified staffers was one of their top challenges.

Small businesses were once the primary source of new U.S. jobs, but they have been losing ground to larger companies, CNBC reported.

During the past 20 years, companies with 500 or fewer employees created roughly two-thirds of net new employment, according to a CNBC analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics job data. But by 2013, that share had fallen to about a half of all new jobs.

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