An entrepreneur definition worth analyzing is that of entrepreneur Tara Hunt, after her potential investors rejected her business proposal:
This is when you go and take a big drink. Tequila has been my favorite… What happened?
What happened between that really exciting meeting and this?
It’s like everybody that you’ve been talking to either directly or indirectly are telling you the same thing – that they don’t believe in you, that they think you have a stupid idea, that you’re going to fail. You might as well give up.
Give up? Are you kidding me? Never! This is my dream. And we have a great team and… and… we have users! And we have a product that is advancing day by day. We have a plan! You didn’t even ask us to see our damn plan!! And look it! Lots of people believe in us. We believe in us. We just need you to believe in us… You’re breaking my heart! But you won’t break my spirit.
Spirit is indeed what Tara displays in this stirring speech. We’ve seen myriad in Shark Tank. There appears a 37 year-old, for the first time an adult who cannot pay her rent because she is “all in” on a venture that she not yet knows whether it will pay out or sink. Her words are without a doubt passionate. Her pockets empty.
Is she speaking like the kind of entrepreneur that you’d like to be?
Some might call her entrepreneur definition reckless. I call her unprotected. Anyone who ventures out, plan in hand, with no backup for failure is not a wise entrepreneur.
An Entrepreneur Definition Should Include Failure In It
Failure for an entrepreneur should be an expensive lesson but not a complete vanquishing. In failure you may retreat to fight another day. If instead you’re vanquished, then you won’t rise again. Entrepreneurs who fail, retreat. They don’t disappear.
Tara creates a dichotomy between what she calls the “unclear path” of the entrepreneur vs. the fear of going mad if you do not even attempt to reach your dreams. But what if your dreams are indeed delusional? No amount of wishful thinking will change that into a successful reality. What you need is not to follow an unclear path but a path of clearly mitigated risk and manageable uncertainty.
Entrepreneurship is a discipline. It requires a process. It is a rigorous career and not for the fainthearted any more than would other careers like medicine, engineering, firefighting, or high-rise window cleaning be for the fainthearted.
And though, as Tara says, you must be “all in” to accomplish your entrepreneurial objectives, I very much disagree that you will need to follow an unclear path to succeed or that “all in” means that you will have no life to live except for your business venture. This implies a lack for practical vision planning and priority setting.
Contrary to common parlance, the path of the entrepreneur is very precise, very definitive, and very giving. Entrepreneur definition, like that of a surgeon in effectively conducting an operation, consists of both a finely tuned focus of purpose and a rich interweaving of relationships with customers and workers but, most importantly, family to improve its lot in life. A wise entrepreneur is no lone eagle.
The Professional Entrepreneur Knows What The Career Entails
However, as in the case with surgeons, there are many specializations in entrepreneurship and each operation has its own risks. The skill of the entrepreneur as that of the surgeon is put to the test in each operation, and any recent school graduate or intern is not ready to perform like an experienced practitioner of 20 years in the field. You build skill with experience and that takes time.
This is why any fledgling entrepreneur should be determined to learn from those who have come before and who are willing to mentor the new entrant into the valuable discipline of entrepreneurship. How valuable is this discipline?
Competent entrepreneurs exercise superior foresight and judgment in identifying conditions that are out of kilter, where an effort at bringing them into alignment with each other yields a profit, thereby drawing attention to an opportunity further to exploit by the handling of risk and uncertainty. Other people around these situations will be drawn in for a benefit and everyone will gain.
This is the value that entrepreneurs bring to social change in this world. A sound entrepreneur definition is summed up in their being scouts and spotters, and the spark plugs that ignite the engine of change in society. They’re not rash daredevils.