As an individual who is starting your own business, what is your approach? Will you be self-employed? Or will you be an entrepreneur?

Let’s start with self-employment. Here’s a definition from Wikipedia:

Self-employment is working for one’s self rather than for another person or company. To be self-employed, an individual is normally highly skilled in a trade or has a niche product or service for his or her local community. With the creation of the Internet, the ability for an individual to become self-employed has increased dramatically.

So self-employment is about operating out of what you know and what is known. You have (or develop) a level of expertise, and you differentiate yourself by finding a niche market for your product or service.

You may find a mentor with experience in what you want to do and learn the ropes from them (apprentice into what is known). And you compete by either having a higher perceived value than your competition, or lower pricing.

A self-employed person operates within what already IS.

This is Wikipedia’s definition of an entrepreneur:

An entrepreneur is a person who has possession of a new enterprise, venture or idea and assumes significant accountability for the inherent risks and the outcome.

Stanford University adds:

[An entrepreneur] create(s) or bring(s) something new to the world.

[T]he entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity. ~ Peter Drucker

The entrepreneur thinks creatively and develops a new solution that dramatically breaks with the existing one.

So entrepreneurship is about being disruptive to the status quo. You embrace change, and look for opportunity. You’re not content with what’s already known—you want to create something new. You draw on vision, creative thinking, direct action, courage and perseverance to see new ideas become reality.

You bring new value to the marketplace.

The entrepreneur operates out of what COULD BE.

So which are you? Self-employed or entrepreneur?
Which do you WANT to be? Talk to me!

Related posts:

1. Is Lack of Confidence Keeping You From Starting Your Own Business?
2. 4 Stages of Change for the New Entrepreneur
3. Twitter: A Strategic Transition Tool