Hi Megan,

Here's my personal take on what makes a person an entrepreneur....

To me, the essence of being an entrepreneur is to be willing to take your own future in your hands. You're not going to rely on a steady paycheck from a boss, but you're ready and willing to go out into the big world yourself and support yourself from it.

Just think - a child is someone who is completely dependent on his or her parents. He/she relies on parents to provide everything - shelter, food, and so on. Without parents to take care of a young child, he/she would probably die.

The opposite of that is to take care of yourself, to be your own boss, and take complete responsibility for your successes and failures. To take complete responsibility for your own means of living, day to day and week to week.

I see the majority of people as being in-between the two. For many, the company or job they work in is like a "substitute-parent" - if you do what the boss tells you, they'll pay you your weekly check. If you don't do what you're told, you're out. So you do what the boss tells you - just like you used to obey your parents. You've made yourself dependent on your job.

Entrepreneurs are the only truly independent ones, in my opinion. They've taken their own future into their own hands. By finding opportunities and using what they know to survive, they provide their own means of support. They're not relying on having to do what some boss tells them to.

Sometimes I see entrepreneurship as "urban survival skills". Just like someone can learn where to look for food and water in a jungle to survive, entrepreneurs know how to find opportunities in the "urban jungle" to survive.

Perhaps mine is a "romanticized" view of entrepreneurship - but I think there's a lot of truth to it.

Well, that's my view - you asked for it. :)

- Dien Rice


Start a business with little money!