What Exactly is an Entrepreneur?

Being an entrepreneur has a deep dimension which is usually misunderstood. He or she is inner-directed and has a great sense of personal mission and accomplishment. Generally, the entrepreneur wants to do something different. He may also want to do something conventional, but in a totally new way. He usually wants to make a statement of some sort in doing so. Even though many believe that an entrepreneur is in business for fun that is not the case.

But the entrepreneur doesn't go into business primarily to make money. And the idea that he or she is the head of a small business isn't true either. Most small business owners are "other-directed". They follow what the market place wants, and adjust their businesses accordingly. The entrepreneur however isn't "other-directed". He is "inner-directed", and has his own convictions.

An entrepreneur is not willing to take high risks as commonly thought. They will of course take risks to get their ideas across, but they're not high risk gamblers. Entrepreneurs will generally take the moderate rather than the high risk road, while normally a business-school graduate will try to reduce risk to an absolute minimum. These business graduates will find something that works for them, and run at high speed with it. The entrepreneur on the other hand generally just looses interest when a project is launched and running smoothly.

Usually the entrepreneur will enter the business world with a negative attitude. Either he can't make conventional ideas work for him, or he just doesn't like the status quo. This negativity will provide the entrepreneur with the drive and ambition to go and establish something better or even different. For example, a small store owner might just rely on foot and car traffic and newspaper ads to drive his customers to his store, while an entrepreneur would set up a website complete with a shopping cart, drive customers to the site using internet advertising, and sell appropriate items on EBay.