Business

Kramer: Entrepreneurship should be treated as more than just a title

Being a lone wolf, starting your own business and challenging a problem in the world isn’t an easy task, which explains why most people don’t do it. For every shooting star, there is a sky full of stagnant ones.

With a more connected world than ever and a spirit of imagination and creative thinking sprawling across college campuses, students and post-graduates are developing a love for entrepreneurship, procured by their admiration for young millionaires like Andrew Mason, founder and CEO of Groupon, and Facebook’s creator, Mark Zuckerberg.

While it’s great to idolize these figures, the only reason our generation praises them so much is because of the one attribute we share with them: the lack of grey hair. There’s a reason why the stories of Zuckerberg or Steve Jobs are so popular among the college demographic — those guys were just like us.

As a result of the glorification of the young entrepreneur, it seems that every other college student thinks they are one. Ever sincewords like “entrepreneur” and “innovator” became more relatable to young people, the titles started appearing in people’s Twitter bios, as if they were hobbies they could do on the side between hanging out at a bar.

Describing yourself as an entrepreneur without having to put in the effort to become one is no different from telling people you work as a photographer because you own a camera. Having had an idea once doesn’t put someone in the same category as the inventors of Snapchat, FlatironHealth or other startups. The people behind those projects dropped everything, many of them their education, to pursue their dreams. They are entrepreneurs. Most of us aren’t willing to do that, myself included.



That doesn’t mean that being an entrepreneur equates to success. Three out of four startups will fail, according to a Sept. 20 Wall Street Journal article. The founders of the companies within that 75 percent are still entrepreneurs though, because failure is a part of the job.

“Entrepreneur” is a less a career choice and more of a personal attribute that is backed up by effort and evidence. It’s a mixture of two things: the qualities that make us who we are and how we apply those qualities to solving problems bigger than ourselves, through ourselves.

It isn’t fair to call yourself an entrepreneur if you can’t show for both sides of the equation. Today’s best companies are founded by people who centered their lives and careers around ideas they held close to their hearts.

That being said, there is no better time to start acting on your business ideas than today if you’re serious about them. Many industries need innovators to challenge the status quo and reinvent the way things are done. That’s where college students come in. Having a college education can, and should, inspire us to change the world, and it puts us in a position to do so. But it requires effort to be a part of that change.

The only way to achieve the label of entrepreneur is to go out and do, instead of throwing it around until it is meaningless. By running a business and taking independent initiative, an entrepreneur is taking a leadership role in society. That is their role. Those who are unprepared to do so shouldn’t take up the name.

Phil Kramer is a freshman advertising and marketing management major. His column appears weekly. You can reach him at [email protected] and on Twitter at @PhilipWKramer





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