Raise your hand if you’ve had your loved ones scratch their heads and say: “What exactly is it that you do?”
It seems that having a job is easier to wrap their heads around, but you being an entrepreneur simply confounds them.
You know what being an entrepreneur is, but maybe those around you don’t. Here are a few points that you can share to help them understand why you do what you do.
Ways to Answer “What Is an Entrepreneur?”
An Entrepreneur Has a Passion
Whether that passion is baking, helping business owners, grooming dogs, whatever, you and other entrepreneurs do something that you have a calling for. When you have a job working for someone else, you may or may not love what it is that you do. But when you go to the extreme effort of starting and growing your own business, you darn sure better love what you do!
I hear all the time “I do what I love,” and people can understand that. What’s exciting for entrepreneurs is to wake up each day and be eager to get to work. How many employees can say that?
An Entrepreneur Is Willing to Take Risks to Succeed
Not everyone is willing to take a risk when it comes to their livelihood. Most people would rather have the stability and security that a steady paycheck provides.
But entrepreneurs are willing to risk utter failure in order to create something, to build something beyond ourselves. It doesn’t always pay off, but when it does, the reward is so, so sweet.
The end game of this risk could be that we sell our businesses, cash out or simply continue to make a lucrative profit.
An Entrepreneur Craves Freedom
Employees are required to show up at 8 a.m. and work until 5 (or later). They have to answer to bosses and follow the company’s lead in terms of how they work.
An entrepreneur essentially has a blank canvas to create whatever he or she wants to. An entrepreneur can work whatever schedule maximizes his or her time and peak productivity. An entrepreneur calls the shots, no one else.
What’s so great is that we have the freedom to chart our own destinies. We can take our businesses in whatever direction we care to. Sometimes we’ll realize that a particular path isn’t the best to take, and we come back to what we know best. But having the freedom to choose where we go is incredibly powerful for entrepreneurs.
An Entrepreneur Will Never Get a Job
Sometimes misguided friends or family ask, especially in the early days of us launching a business, “why don’t you get a REAL job?”
It’s a frustrating conversation because some people simply don’t get entrepreneurship. They don’t understand anything outside of their bubble of safety, and our own risk-taking and adventuring makes them nervous.
Understand that it’s not about you, it’s about them. You weren’t cut out to be an employee. You have a burning desire to be creative. To create. Never let other people’s limited view of the world impact your own ability to create positive change in it.
Entrepreneurs Photo via Shutterstock
This article, “What Is An Entrepreneur: How To Explain It To Your Family” was first published on Small Business Trends