The Difference: Entrepreneur vs Business Owner

I always hear people calling business owners entrepreneurs and I find myself questioning this idea. So are business owners entrepreneurs? Well... I don't think so and here's my argument.

I reserve the term "entrepreneur" to those who have taken nothing but an idea and brought something of value to the business world. Also an entrepreneur in my definition is someone who has created an enterprise that otherwise would not have existed without them. An entrepreneur is someone who has developed a unique business model and took risk into the unknown.

What an entrepreneur is not (of course in my opinion) is someone who has duplicated a business model or someone who runs a business that is no different from any other business in that industry.

A few test questions to see if you're an entrepreneur would be:

1. How is your business different from the competition.
2. What is your business model(s) and is it a model that you have customized.
3. Does a business exist that already is doing what you're doing and how you're doing it.

Of course there are many other questions/factors but answering these would reveal your place in the entrepreneur check list.

Should someone who runs a tire shop be considered an entrepreneur?

Well it depends. How are they running this shop? Are they bringing new technology or systems to their industry? Are they doing business in a way that didn't exist before?

Certainly a tire shop owner can qualify as an entrepreneur. Just take a look at Tom Gegax. This man took a business, Tires Plus, to an incredible level through an effective distribution strategy among many other creative business strategies.

This post isn't ment to discourage business owners but it's ment to inspire us or be a call to action to truly do something different with our businesses. It's not what you do it's how you do it that makes the world of business so limitless. Entrepreneurs change things. They push industries foward and change the way business is done. John D. Rockefeller, Fred Smith, Richard Branson, Elon Musk, these people are entrepreneurs. Each of them took an idea and manifested a business that changed the way the industry operated before they came along.

We should reserve this term "Entrepreneur" to those who truly change business. Now we might not be on the level of the great businessmen above, but we should have something to show for how we changed our industry if we should be able to call ourselves entrepreneurs.

I used to subscribe to Entrepreneur Magazine but stopped when I felt like they were promoting franchises too much. You see, I dont feel like franchisees can be considered entrepreneurs. They mearly bought into a system that was developed by someone else. They may be savy investors but entrepreneurs they are not.

David Azua
Business Owner on the way to being an entrepreneur.