Don’t Make the Large Error in Judgement I Made

For all the years I’ve worked in business, with the majority of my time starting my own businesses, I really believed that all business people were entrepreneur’s.

And that was the error in my judgement. It became very obvious to me when I conducted some research last Fall. I call hundreds of businesses to speak to the owner/manager of them to speak about a new offering that was really tailored to what I believed was them – entrepreneurs.

Now to set the table for you. I knew when I was calling that many of them would not be interested in this new offering, but the more I called the more it because obvious that they were not entrepreneurs.

You may be asking, what were they?

So let me explain.

There are many differences between an entrepreneur and a business person but unfortunately the words are used equally in business language. That meaning one is commonly used to mean the other. But did you realize that a business person and an entrepreneur are two distinct things, as I found out? The key distinctions between a business person and an entrepreneur are covered in this.

A businessperson is a person who;

• is involved in any activity that is carried out for commercial or profitable interests,
• establishes their company to compete with other companies already in the market,
• creates a company using an existing idea and provides clients with goods and services, and
• operates in a highly competitive market because hundreds of competitors are already operating in the same industry.

Businesses are started or run by individuals who have the same old business idea as many others in their market. These businessmen face stiff competition. This is because of the fact that the concept they are using has already been tested and used by other companies.

An entrepreneur is a person who;

• goes above and beyond to ensure the success of their innovations,
• places a greater emphasis on talents, particularly the use of people resources, with the primary objective of providing novel ways to succeed, and
• has a strategy which enables the staff to streamline all aspects of their business to make the most of all of their human resources.

An entrepreneur has a fresh idea to launch a new business and transform the world by his or her actions. They recognize a need in the market and fill it with their solution. Entrepreneur are highly inventive, willing to take chances and accept the uncertainty that their business will experience. The key for me now, is that they launch start-ups. They utilize their unique abilities and initiative to identify the needs of their clients/customers and sell innovative ideas.

As you can see a business person is very different from an entrepreneur. The entrepreneur is an organizer, manager and risk taker. A business person focuses on competition, while an entrepreneur emphasizes cooperation and coordination of all the resources. An entrepreneur is the business person of the future.

A few questions to conclude;

• Do you want to be a business person or an entrepreneur?
• Did you know your actions will tell if you are a business person or an entrepreneur?