Chapter 4: What being an Entrepreneur means to me…

Entrepreneurship is an attitude about how you live your life not what your job title is or how much money you make. The biggest misconception is that there is a set definition for the word entrepreneur that everyone must follow. Just like there is no set definition of what a human is there is no definition for being an entrepreneur.

Entrepreneur — a person who organizes and operates a business, taking on greater than normal financial risk in order to do so.

An entrepreneur can be so many things that have nothing to do with the kind the world is so used to obsessing over. The kind that will never make magazine covers or articles in Bloomberg Business week but are still as much an entrepreneur as Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Marvin Ellison, Travis Kalanick or Brian Chesky. These entrepreneur’s are amazing at what they have accomplished but that doesn’t mean they are more of an entrepreneur than my mother who started with $0 and built a 6-figure IT Staffing business while being a present, loving and thoughtful parent to two sons. It also doesn’t mean that just because the world puts them on a pedestal that your dream needs to be the same as there’s.

You do not need to take great financial risk to be an entrepreneur, you do not need to work 100 hours a week and you do not need to run up a credit card balance to be an entrepreneur. Just be the kind of entrepreneur that you want to be. I really despise people taking wonderful small business ideas and trying to force them into becoming multi billion dollar companies because its “trending” and VC’s wont invest unless it is.

I strongly believe an entrepreneur can work for a Fortune 500 company, run a small corner store or anything in between. Taking a risk doesn’t equate to quitting your job it can mean taking a risk on that project at work and trying to pitch a creative solution to your boss.

Entrepreneurship to me is about doing things differently and that can come in any form or fashion you want it too. Entrepreneurship is becoming toxic for so many because of the unneeded expectations. I want people to put themselves first and take the longer route if it means happiness in the end.

As a society we need to support entrepreneurship in every fashion and not just the Elon Musk’s of the world. It is why I put my money behind this and invest in any kind of business. I am not an “angel” investor, I am just an investor.