Entrepremanure

Wanting value amidst tons of catch phrasing

There is a ton of info out there about being an entrepreneur. How it should be taught in schools, why it’s the best job thing in the world, and teaching our kids how to be one. I guess I’m one. Maybe? I am a bit in the grey on this I suppose.

Regardless of where I land on the scale, I’ve gotta say that I’m getting a bit wearied with our obsession over it. I’m sure it is a bit heavier in my timeline than some peoples’ since I am working alongside them and, even if I wasn’t, I’m in the tech space which is where many entrepreneurial endeavors tend to end up if they don’t start there to begin with.

I love new ideas. I love big visions. I love tech. I’m writing this from a coworking space that is teeming with entrepreneurs. I just met a guy who has a great idea to help connect students with careers. I get jazzed about that sort of innovation. And yet here I am wrinkling my nose a bit at the fact that I’ve had to use that word more than a few times already.

I suppose my growing distaste for our overcooking of the concept is owing to the fact that we’ve actually lost the concept in the process. The concept of entrepreneur is one that revolves around original thinking and creative problem solving. ‘Entrepreneur’ then is merely a more-difficult-to-spell version of ‘designer’ or ‘engineer,’ really. Granted, it does have a business and administrative emphasis whereas these other two are more skillset oriented. All the same, we’ve begun to replace ‘business owner’ with the word ‘entrepreneur’ at which point we’ve wrangled ourselves a misnomer via sloppy word choice.

Further, we’ve equated ‘entrepreneur’ with successful business ownership. Or at least sexy business ownership if the market wasn’t right, the partner screwed the deal up, or some other important sounding deflection or excuse can make its way into the why-we-failed-to-sell-out-for-a-billion-dollars discussion. This is where the rubber really meets the road for our present discussion. And it’s a burning, nasty smelling rubber.

So what’s my issue? Besides the aforementioned linguistic precision that has been lost, it’s with an elitism that has become pervasive in this whole gig. I will say, in an attempt to be fair, that it’s very often an unintentional elitism. But while manslaughter isn’t murder, someone still ends up dead and thus we’d be wrong to think our lack of intentioned elitism gets us a free pass on things.

We have forgotten that we need the problem of trash pickup solved by a guy who rides on the back of a smelly truck. Sure, if an entrepreneur wants to find a better, more efficient way of doing that then go for it. But let’s not look down our noses and past our sleek MacBook Airs at the trash guy as if he isn’t doing truly valuable work. Imagine a world without that service. Pretty stinky, huh? Now imagine it without another ‘entrepreneurial’ venture into the social app space.

So, yes, I want to teach my kids to be entrepreneurs. There’s nothing wrong with that. We should be more intentional, as families first and a society second, in fostering creative problem solving and bold venture taking in our children. But only if we have the word correctly defined, the concept held close to the chest. If it’s between providing a valuable service that they can be proud of, no matter how base it may seem, or creating the millionth shoddy version of Twinstabooktrest with the pipe dream of landing a $19B deal, then go ahead, son, and start shoveling the manure. It’s still better than thinking you’re the shit just because you make some.