07. I’m an Entrepreneur
Do I get to say that yet?
I find myself tongue-tied these days whenever someone I don’t know asks me “What do you do?” Half of it is due to the fact that I’m meeting new people after being in a social bubble for a year and a half. The other half is that the answer is no longer quite as straight forward as it used to be.
Ironically, I don’t believe that “entrepreneur” has made the cut for acceptable profession responses as much as “engineer” or even “artist” has. Perhaps it’s because most people relate more with their title (“co-founder”, “CEO”, and the rest) as well as with the entity they’re creating rather than the fact that they are in the business of confronting high-levels of risk in order to create something new.
It may also be because entrepreneur is an incredibly broad term. You could be talking about a restaurant owner just as quickly as you would talk about a Silicon Valley tech bro. Whether it’s a nonprofit, a family business, a freelance side-hustle, or a startup unicorn, people are putting their necks out there in order to establish something that was once not there for the purpose of transformation in one way or another. At this point, “entrepreneur” is probably more associated with a character trait than with an occupation.
Counting myself as one of these people is in equal parts empowering and terrifying. By calling yourself an entrepreneur, you take ownership both of the risk as well as the potential of your current endeavor. Very few entrepreneurs succeed, yet no matter where you find them, they are beacons of hope in that they lead the effort to discover and build success. Failure in one space may inspire success in another. And so calling yourself an entrepreneur is laying claim to this unique form of leadership, and inviting others to see the process as you’re turning this dream into a reality.
So let’s practice:
Hi, my name is Grace.
I’m an entrepreneur.
