As a former original concept franchisor, I always assumed that all entrepreneurs were like me, deep thinkers looking for new niches in the market to exploit with their original solutions. Today, what seems to pass for “entrepreneurship” is very different. Is it like everyone who starts a business is considered an entrepreneur? Above all, what I see is that everyone copies everyone else. What’s worse, many of these new business owners think they are just as smart as they are. Seriously, the situation is out of control, so widespread that it is now the norm, almost as if it is considered acceptable. Because?
Well, I have some thoughts on this, and before I start let me tell you what I think, let me give you an idea of what perspective I’m coming from and how I think. First, I’m a white male, and I think all this ‘white privilege’ crap is nonsense, as I started my first business at 12, so I’m not sure how much of my success was privilege, but I know it was hard work. I also had to drop out of college to run my company. So I guess I was lucky because authority hadn’t crushed me into believing that I needed an authority figure to answer all the questions I had. Nor was I brainwashed into believing that I had to stay within the status quo approved response category for every decision I made or conclusion I reached while observing the world.
The definition of an entrepreneur: does it already include the prerequisite of novelty?
So maybe I’m different, or one of the last ‘real entrepreneurs’ or maybe I’m wrong, and my definition of “Entrepreneurship” is wrong. No, I don’t think I’m wrong, I think the definition has changed. Maybe the term is ‘all-in’ now, meaning anyone who owns a business regardless of size or type, so society has changed the definition to make everyone feel special, but before they give all new business owners a certificate for participating, I’m going to give you my opinion in this article and give you a critique that I think you need and deserve. So here we go, ready?
Let me start with an example. I recently did business with a company that had created a second website to serve a new niche that they added to their business model. They ordered the proverbial GoDaddy website with 5 pages, email address and WordPress blog. Then they went and searched for competing companies on Google, extracted the content, copied and pasted it onto their own website. The website it was copied from made mistakes and it looked like it was copied from someone else. Now it was a copy of a copy, and it barely made sense, at least to anyone with industry knowledge or any serious customer.
This isn’t good enough, but we keep telling ourselves that here in the US we excel at innovation. Not from where I’m standing. We tell our college students that they are geniuses, creatives, innovators, and problem solvers – bullshit! We have endless programs to teach our innovators and entrepreneurs: classes, seminars, podcasts, webinars, eBooks, you name it. And yet, what are we producing? Copiers, cut-outs, imitators and the like. Because? Is it because students look things up on WikiPedia or Google, then rewrite them and turn them in for class credit? They have been doing this all through school. Now they’re out in the real world to run a business, and well, that’s all they know how to do. We are no longer teaching people to think.
Why is it okay? Why do so many business owners call them entrepreneurs when they are little more than copiers and imitators? I thought the word entrepreneur was reserved for us business innovators, original thinkers with market-worthy ideas and new solutions?