What could be the elements of entrepreneurship?

Are successful entrepreneurs made or born?

Entrepreneurial behavior isn’t about scale, it’s about a desire for a certain kind of journey

We’d need to start with an understanding of what an entrepreneur is. They’re all over the map, which makes the question particularly difficult to navigate.

There’s the 14-year-old girl who hitches a ride to Costco, buys 100 bottles of water for thirty cents each, then sells them at the beach for a dollar a pop. Scale that that every day for a summer and you can pay for college.

Or the 7-time venture-backed software geek who finds a niche, gets some funding, builds it out with a trusted team, sells it for $100 million in stock and then starts again.

Perhaps we’re talking about a non-profit entrepreneur, a woman who builds a useful asset, finds a scalable source of funding and changes the world as she does.

The mistake that’s easy to make is based in language. We say, “she’s an entrepreneur,” when we should be saying, “she’s acting like an entrepreneur.”

Since entrepreneurship is a verb, an action, a posture… then of course, it’s a choice. You might not want to act like one, but if you can model behavior, you can act like one.

And what do people do when they’re acting like entrepreneurs?

1. They make decisions.

2. They invest in activities and assets that aren’t a sure thing.

3. They persuade others to support a mission with a non-guaranteed outcome.

4. This one is the most amorphous, the most difficult to pin down and thus the juiciest: They embrace (instead of run from) the work of doing things that might not work.

As far as I can tell, that’s it. Everything else you can hire.

Buying into an existing business by buying a franchise, to pick one example–there’s very little of any of the four elements of entrepreneurial behavior.

Yes, you’re swinging for a bigger win, you’re investing risk capital, you’re going outside the traditional mainstream. But what you’re doing is buying a proven business, not acting like an entrepreneur. The four elements aren’t really there. It’s a process instead. Nothing wrong with that.

All four of these elements are unnatural to most folks. Particularly if you were good at school, you’re not good at this. No right answers, no multiple choice, no findable bounds.

It’s easy to get hung up on the “risk taking” part of it, but if you’re acting like an entrepreneur, you don’t feel like you’re taking a huge risk.

Risks are what happens at a casino, where you have little control over the outcome.

People acting like entrepreneurs, however, feel as though the four most important elements of their work (see above) are well within their control.

If you’re hoping someone can hand you a Dummies guide, giving you the quick steps, the guaranteed method, the way to turn this process into a job–well, you’ve just announced that you don’t feel like acting like an entrepreneur.

But before you walk away from it, give it a try.

Entrepreneurial behavior isn’t about scale, it’s about a desire for a certain kind of journey.

Notes and tidbits posted on FB and Twitter. Part 130

There are two viable solutions for the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, short of exterminating one party or most probably both, that has been spreading death, disabilities, miseries, indignities and humiliation since 1920.

From a psychological necessity, a Palestinian State will make them feel that persistent resistance and countless “martyrs” for re-establishing their rights as legitimate and independent people have brought fruits, as any genuine national resistance ultimately should.

It would be inevitable that the Palestinian State be guaranteed a neutrality status (no preemptive wars within and outside its borders) by the world community and the regional powers (Like in Switzerland?).

Mago of Carthage wrote the masterful 28 volumes on agriculture “Treatise on Agriculture” and considered by the Romans as the “Father of Agriculture”

Pythagoras’ mother was Phoenician and she sailed from the island of Samus to Lebanon Afka Temple in order for her son to receive the lustral consecration (baptized according to the rite that is still performed in Lebanon).

Il apparait que, tant que tu lis passionement, si la Mort est de passage, Il se penchera pour lire ton livre. Tant que tu lis, la Mort te protege

Pour briser les moules, il faut d’abord les connaitre. On apprend toujours les methodes conventionelles: c’est l’ecole.

L’effet tunnel: Voir le monde a travers une longue-vue, se trouver a l’exterieur des choses et la vie. Ca s’appelle l’ angoissse, le stress.

Around the world, a growing body of evidence is showing that people with lower levels of stress and higher levels of mental well-being are more creative, more productive and take less time off work.

White males coping with financially difficult times (the poorer classes) view firearms as “morally and emotionally restorative” to society’s problems.

My second impression of the USA is that the citizen projects an attitude of positive happiness to life; he smiles, he is friendly, and he is conscious of his value. (Einstein as he landed in the late 40’s)

The Europeans demonstrate critical minds and absence of generosity and compassion. The European asks a lot from his entertainments and readings. (Einstein as he landed in the late 40’s)

So far, Iranian mullahs have been consistent in safeguarding the territorial integrity in the Middle-East. Saudi Kingdom has been consistent in the last 90 years of executing the plans of the power of Evils (US expansionist policies, Israel apartheid regime and extremist religious sects)).

Do tell us Saad Hariri when you board your private jet, so we can locate you in time of difficulties

Yalla, yi teer bi doun ma yesta2zen majless al wouzarat wa President saaret min khabar kaan