Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

I`m reading a book called If you don`t succeed, The 8 Patterns of Highly Effective Entrepreneurs.  It`s a pretty good read. Nothing new but a good introspective thing to read for yourself. It`s also funny because they talk about Startupnation and the Sloan Brothers.

But I read something that struck me as odd.  The author believes that there`s a difference between a business owner and an entrepreneur.  I always thought they were one in the same. It`s all semantics anyway. But I`m curious what are the differences between these two groups to you all.


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Follow the journey of Marvin Hawkins Visual Concepts and Nothing Like It Games at http://gamerdeveloper.blogspot.com/

Now that you mention it I see the author`s point. To me an entrepreneur is someone that takes risks, who is visionary, constantly try to find new niches within their industry. I have met a few business owners that do not fit this mold by not wanting to disturb status quo. They manage to keep the business running but I wonder how long the business will really survive.

Nancy,

I agree! If the owner is not willing to try and create new ways to do business or concepts, he or she could eventually fail. For example, if you know you are in an industry that Wal-Mart could possibly affect your revenues, it is best to have a mind set of an entrepreneur. An entrepreneur would mostly find a unique way to do business that repell the status quo of Wal-Mart negative effect on small business.

I define a business owner as someone who likes to run a business and an entrepreneur is someone who has lots of great ideas and likes to START businesses (but is usually pretty bad at the details of running them). 

~Kim

In many cases a "business owner" simply owns a job. They are the business. (See Robert Kiyosaki`s Cashflow Quadrants for additional explanation.) An entrepreneur builds a business system that has intrinsic value. One way to tell the difference is to ask if this business could be sold. Another way is to ask if the business would continue to function without the owner. If so, you probably have an entrepreneur. If not, you`re looking at a business owner.



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ah. This was deeper than I thought. I agree with what your guys are saying. But consider this: Can an entrepreneur ever become a business owner or vice versa.

Steve, what you said was really interesting. The Author of the book I mentioned said the exact same thing. "A business owner simply owns a job." but hey who`s to judge if they`re happy or not? Also would anyone agree that starting a business takes as much risk and guts that an entrepreneur displays several times over.


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Follow the journey of Marvin Hawkins Visual Concepts and Nothing Like It Games at http://gamerdeveloper.blogspot.com/

so do you guys walk around calling yourselves entrepenuers or do you let people label you as such?

 

For me I think if you have to call yourself one, you`re probably not 

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Follow the journey of Marvin Hawkins Visual Concepts and Nothing Like It Games at http://gamerdeveloper.blogspot.com/

I was going to respond the way Steve did with regards to the B/S/E/I Quadrents from Robert Kiyosaki. 

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I blogged about this earlier today & there is an interesting comment on the blog.

You can check it out here.

Personally, I don`t think being a business owner versus an entrepreneur has anything with what Kiyosaki was talking about.  I read that book and perhaps I misinterpreted the spirit of his message, but his main distinction was between someone `creating a job` for themselves where there`s no scalability and you have to be there all the time in order to make it work, versus creating multiple pipelines that reduce your risk and you don`t have to active do the `doing` of your business in order to make money.

To the question of entrepreneur versus business owner, I think it`s all in your spirit and how you do what you do.  Bill Gates was an entrepreneur in the early days of Microsoft.  Now he`s a business owner.  Steve Jobs is still an entrepreneur.  One plays it very safe and pretty much just makes minor changes to existing products.  The other reinvents his company and product offerings on a regular basis.  I think it`s about your willingness to invent and reinvent yourself, and instead of trying to move along the curve, jump it.


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