Jen Bonnet asked the following question on her blog:
Entrepreneur magazine has been running an interesting campaign on Twitter, Facebook and their site. The question is...
Are you a small business owner or an entrepreneur? AND what is the difference?
Self-employed vs. Risk Taker
9-to-5 versus 24/7
Here's some of the answers people have posted:
- An entrepreneur is a creator and an innovator. A small-business owner may or may not be.
- A small-business owner eats crab legs. Entrepreneur eats ramen noodles.
- I am a small-business owne, not an entrepreneur. I want to be my own boss, do something I enjoy, make a good living and enjoy life. I do not want to take big risks in the hopes of making millions or headlines.
- A small-business owner has already determined his potential: small. An entrepreneur has already determined the world is his oyster.
- As an entrepreneur, I feel that we bite off huge tasks and then figure out how to chew it.
How do you define entrepreneur versus small business owner? Which are you?
Here’s my 2 cents:
I'd say the key difference is tolerance to uncertainty. For iterative entrepreneurs (my term for "small business owner" - both groups are entrepreneurs), the business model is defined and the problems are well understood. Business capital is often easier to get because there's usually physical assets to back a loan and banks understand the risk involved. Uncertainty is manageable.
For innovative entrepreneurs, the business model is constantly changing, the problems aren't even known, capital is difficult to get because (amongst others) the value of the enterprise is in the intellectual property, and any attempt at modeling risk is a fool's errand. Following the fable of the dutch boy and the dam, plugging one area of uncertainty allows another area of uncertainty to spring open. You can't contain it, nor should you - uncertainty leads to serendipitous outcomes and the goal is to maximize your exposure to positive serendipity and reduce exposure to negative serendipity.
"I want to be my own boss, do something I enjoy, make a good living and enjoy life. I do not want to take big risks in the hopes of making millions or headlines."
Basically this person is saying “I want be king.” Who doesn't? However, you're in for a rude shock because you're not your own boss - your customers are your boss. You may make a good living (whatever that is - each one of us defines that differently) but that won't initially be the case and guess what, you're eating ramen noodles like the rest of us.
This comment also points a big difference between the two camps. As an innovative entrepreneur myself, I love what I do and thus enjoy my life - it's only work if you'd rather be doing something else (much to my wife's chagrin.) If enjoying life means working the least amount possible, you've set yourself up for failure from the start.
"9-to-5 versus 24/7"
Seriously? Any entrepreneurial effort requires every bit of effort you can muster. If you're not willing to commit to that, don't bother. Seriously, don't waste the effort.
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