Entrepreneur Definition

Who Is An Entrepreneur?

An individual who, rather than working as an employee, runs a small business and assumes all the risk and reward of a given business venture, idea, or good or service offered for sale. The entrepreneur is commonly seen as a business leader and innovator of new ideas and business processes.

1. Organises a business venture and assumes the complete risk for the venture at times, giving his personal guarantee and taking personal liabilities.

2. Has looked at a problem and seen it as an opportunity. He would then develop on this opportunity to start something new with the intention of generating surpluses for himself or his investors.

3. Has fire in his belly to do something and feels that his ambition is being held in check by the corporate red tape. But it takes more than just cleverness and frustration with the status quo to get an entrepreneurial venture off the ground.

4. Is someone who assumes the financial risk of the initiation, operation and management of the business.

Most entrepreneurs are driven not by the need to make money, but by the need to make their dreams a reality. More often than not, money is a byproduct of an entrepreneur's motivation rather than the motivation itself. Entrepreneurs are participants, not observers; players, not fans. And to be an entrepreneur is to be an optimist, to believe that with the right amount of time and money, you can achieve anything. When an entrepreneur reaches an obstacle, she/he turns it into an opportunity.

Failure is essential for any new entrepreneur to succeed. We cannot let any adversity pull us back. We have to learn from our mistakes and our adversities, accept the knock our profit-and-loss account will take and keep moving ahead. Every entrepreneur has to plan for the best but prepare for the worst. An entrepreneur's 'gut feeling' is often the subject of a lot of discussion and my own learning here has been that gut feeling is really the extract of one's own experience and one's ability for risk-taking rather than some vision that an entrepreneur purportedly has had.

Contrary to popular belief, entrepreneurs aren't generally high risk takers when they can't affect the outcome of the situation. They tend to set realistic and achievable goals, and when they do take risks, those are usually calculated ones based on facts and experience, rather than instinct. If one is convinced about an idea, there is no better time than now to start one's journey as an entrepreneur. The choice is yours and yours alone. Refuse to throw in the towel. Go that extra mile that failures refuse to travel. It is far better to be exhausted from success than to be rested from failure.

Take the plunge and start your planning process now. There is no day as good as today to make a beginning if you genuinely believe in your dream. Building a new company is hard work. But the hardest part of building a new company is not coming up with a new idea. You need to stay committed to your dream when you are dead tired or when you have to tell your spouse that you cannot go to a party because your work needs you more. If you are not willing to give up on things which are really important for you or if you are likely to be put down because of a rejection, it will be very difficult to stick to your idea and implement it.