The five realities of the entrepreneur

REALITY 1: An entrepreneur is an inventor, although few inventors are entrepreneurs.

An inventor sees the world through alert, wide-open eyes. An inventor lives asking the questions, "What's missing in this picture?" and then answers it by inventing the missing piece that makes the picture whole. He can't help himself, it's just what he is called to do. What an entrepreneur does next, however, is what makes the difference between him and all other inventors.

An entrepreneur invents new businesses. All other inventors invent new products. To entrepreneurs, the business he or she invents is a product, a unique product that stands out in a world of ordinary business products and, through its uniqueness, captures the attention and imagination of the people for whom it was invented: its customer, its employees, its suppliers, and its lenders and investors.

To the degree a business does not achieve that uniqueness, that originality, from the very beginning, it is not an invention. To the degree that a business is not an invention, it is not an entrepreneurial business. While being an entrepreneurial business is not a guarantee of success, failing to be an entrepreneurial business is a guarantee of failure.

REALITY 2: Entrepreneurs do not buy business opportunities; they create them.

While business opportunities such as franchises are more likely to guarantee the success of the person who buys them, they are only successful to the degree the buyer suppresses his or her inclination to invent - suppresses his or her entrepreneurial passion. Therefore, entrepreneurs who buy business opportunities are doomed to disappoint, no matter how successful the business is. The passion of the entrepreneur is not to run a successful business - not to run a business someone else invented - but to invent a unique business that becomes successful.

Business opportunities are invented for technicians and managers to run who have no aspiration to be entrepreneurs - who have no aspiration to create anything of their own other than a successful job. Ninety-nine per cent of business opportunities are actually jobs for the people who buy them. They may be better jobs (most actually aren't!) than the ones the buyers had before, but they are still jobs, not true business opportunities.

A true business opportunity is the one that an entrepreneur invents to grow him or herself. Not to work in, but to work on. That's the work of an entrepreneur.

REALITY 3: Invention is contagious.

People love to experience an original business idea that has been successfully manifested in the world. So, the entrepreneur's passion comes not only from inventing a new business but also from basking in the delight of other people as they gladly experience his or her invention. The entrepreneur, in this sense, is no different from a performer whose love for what he or she does is dramatically increased by the enthusiastic response from the audience.

For the entrepreneur, there is nothing more satisfying than when the audience applauds the performance. Every customer who buys from the entrepreneur's business and then comes back for more is applauding the entrepreneur's originality, brilliance, and successful performance. The entrepreneur loves accolades, lives for the successful manifestation of the invention, and finds joy only when the audience and the business truly come together as originally envisioned.

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