Amanda Gome of Fairfax Business Media is on the hustings today arguing that we’re all entrepreneurs these days and there has never been a better time:
It’s a big claim, but here it is: there has never been a better time to be an entrepreneur. I came to this conclusion after reflecting on more than two decades of interviewing entrepreneurs, writing about their conditions, being an entrepreneur myself and researching how companies grow as an adjunct professor at RMIT.
And it’s just as well it’s easier, because most of us will be entrepreneurs at some stage in our working lives.
As futurist Colin Benjamin says, just as people accepted the notion they would have three or four careers in their lifetime, many of us must now be entrepreneurial, creating a new business every three to five years or working on multiple things in parallel, as consultant, salaried employee and business builder. It’s become essential as the pace at which we move in and out of jobs and careers speeds up.
Twenty years ago, entrepreneurship used to be something a few people did for a while before moving on, sometimes to jail. Remember Alan Bond? He defined entrepreneurship for a whole generation. Entrepreneurs were always males, mostly white and usually eccentric; think the Biggles-like Dick Smith, the bullying, blustering Kerry Packer or the ambitious Rupert Murdoch, who was prepared to blow up the entire banking system to finance a growth plan.
The expression “serial entrepreneur” didn’t exist. And you certainly never introduced yourself as an entrepreneur at an Australian barbecue if you wanted a beer. Entrepreneurship is now a way of life.
With respect, this is bunkum. I am a serial entrepreneur and I hang out with a few others and there is only one factor behind any of it: drive.
That’s right. You can’t study to be an entrepreneur. You can’t choose to be an entrepreneur. You can’t assess the five reasons why you should be an entrepreneur and then become one.
The vision chooses the person not the other way around you and if it hasn’t yet tapped you on the shoulder then you are quite right sticking to your day job.
