What It Means to Be an Entrepreneur in the 21st Century
We’re living in the age of rising “tech stars” and world-changing ideas. Famous entrepreneurs like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs defined the Personal Computer (PC) revolution in the early 80’s and 90’s; and more recently, tech visionaries like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are constantly pushing the boundary of what we believe is possible.
Once made fun of and bullied at school, they — the nerds and the geeks — are now among the most powerful and influential people that have ever lived; they are the movers and shakers of our world.
Over time, entrepreneurship became “cool.”
With the popularity of TV shows like Shark Tank, Silicon Valley, and more recently, Apple’s Planet of The Apps, it is clearer than ever that entrepreneurship has become an institutional force of our society.
Like most reality TV shows, Shark Tank shows its viewers a highly-edited presentation that is used to push a certain narrative, to create artificial drama and tension for the sake of entertainment, instead of trying to accurately depict the process. Nuanced, back-and-forth negotiations and detailed discussions take a back seat to bite-size, 15-minute pitches/Q&A segments.
And while Shark Tank, along with many of its contemporaries, helped spread and popularize the idea of entrepreneurship, they also perpetuate the rosy and idealized image of working in a startup, with the exception being Silicon Valley and its mostly-accurate depictions of startup culture.
Understandably, TV shows such as Shark Tank cannot possibly show the finer details of entrepreneurship, and especially the “not very” wholesome aspects of startup culture.
However, this is a missed opportunity.
These shows have the potential to not only get people excited about entrepreneurship but also educate them about the process of being an entrepreneur (i.e. what are the reasons behind successful startups and how you can learn from them?). Thankfully, other types of media such as Internet podcasts and blogs are picking up the slack that traditional TV shows left off.
With the advent of Internet 2.0, the emerging worldwide web of content creators gave rise to entrepreneurial personalities like Gary Vaynerchuk, whose entire personal brand is about brutal honesty and embracing the entrepreneurial “hustle.” And in the Youtube space, you have people like Casey Neistat, whose life story embodies the entrepreneurial spirit and inspires others to follow in his footsteps.
Similarly, there are hundreds of millions of other creators out there — everything from artists to musicians to bloggers to filmmakers — trying to leave their mark on this world, their legacy.
While many of them are not “entrepreneurs” in the traditional sense, they possess the same burning passions for their crafts that are reminiscent to that of your “typical” entrepreneur. And most importantly, they are doers; they see a vision, and then they execute that vision to the best of their abilities.
Over time, the definition of what constitutes an entrepreneur evolves as technology advances. The Internet gave every one of us an open platform to build our own personal brand and share our voice, our unique perspective.
If the rise of Youtube Personalities and Instagram Influencers is a testament to anything, it is that people are hungry for stories and are deeply curious about what is going on around them. The appeal behind these “Internet celebrities” is that most of what they do seems obtainable and is highly relatable.
Unlike traditional media, you don’t need to have a job at a TV station or work in radio to create and distribute your original content. Anyone with a camera can go out into the world and do a v-blog, a street interview or a social experiment, etc.
All you have to do is to just do it… And yet, most people don’t.
That is what separates the content creators from the content consumers. They dare to do what others dream of doing. They dare to challenge the status quo and dare to be themselves.
Before Gary Vaynerchuk became the entrepreneurial brand that he is today, he worked on his brand from the ground up, doing regular monologues into a camera every day for many years and slowly building up his audience.
Before Bill Wurtz’s hilarious “history of japan” video went viral and hit 31 millions views on Youtube, he was regularly building a huge collection of videos brimming with his strange and unique brand of humor.
To be a successful entrepreneur in this content-driven world, you must be a content creator.
You must tell a compelling and personalized story about who you are and what your business stands for.
You must utilize the channels and the tools that are available, everything from your website to your social media to how you treat others, and consolidate your brand.
You must relate to your audience and allow them to resonate with your story, to care about who you are and what you do.
Only then can you truly stand out from the crowd and find success in your business.
