What does it mean to be an entrepreneur?

Entrepreneurs, often romanticised as modern-day pioneers hewing their future from the raw fabric that is the global economy, have come to epitomise the current professional's dream: master of your destiny, flexible schedule and lifestyle, ability to dictate the culture of the business with fantastic riches to be reaped.
The salutary books on the subject, buoyed by a sea of magazine articles and blogs, have spread and reinforced these dangerous ideas to every corner of the globe. Any attempt to temper or broaden the discussion is met with a tidal wave of criticism usually accusing sceptics of being anti-capitalist and closed-minded. This is unfortunate as it makes it harder for would-be entrepreneurs to receive a better idea of what can be a rewarding professional life.
What does being an entrepreneur mean? It does not mean starting a new company, that is not a requirement. One useful definition is that an entrepreneur is someone who identifies a beneficial objective, understands the risks, assembles the necessary resources and manages these resources and the risks to achieve his goal.
By this definition, an employee in a major company might identify a potentially lucrative new product then lobby management to approve resources to develop the new product. This clarification of how entrepreneurism can work is important as it can satisfy a professional's goals without the added risk of starting an organisation from scratch. Starting a company is much harder than completing a project, even a substantial one.
Probably the greatest fallacy regarding entrepreneurs is that they make much more money than employees. This misconception is driven by people generalising from the handful of mega-successess such as Microsoft, Virgin, Apple, Google, etc. The financial success both at the company level as well as the founder level is of such a size that it seems to addle the minds of the readers, who subsequently fail to question what the probability of success truly is.
To get a feel for the answer to that question consider that according to the World Bank's International Finance Corp there were about 125 million SMEs in the world in 2010. Whatever one wants to argue about the right way to measure the probability of making it big, this number simply does not bode well. In fact, if getting rich is the main aim, a trip to Las Vegas would give better odds and certainly be a less traumatic experience.
The message here is that making large amounts of money is not a rational reason to become an entrepreneur, but generating a reasonable living certainly is achievable, although the risk of losing everything is much higher.
The second greatest fallacy is freedom of decision-making. Unless the entrepreneur can personally fund their business then they will be overseen by a board of directors or an internal new business committee, substituting their single boss as an employee with a half a dozen or more people as an entrepreneur.
The third fallacy is the adage to follow your passion. That is commercial suicide. An entrepreneur needs to build a commercially successful business, not one they are passionate about, which could lead them to be blind to economic realities. An example is a great cook, passionate about what they do, who is encouraged to start their own restaurant. Will this cook compromise on their dishes from great to very good to manage expenses or will they insist that no expense be spared to create masterpieces? Far too often it is the latter. It is also remarkable how fast entrepreneurs become passionate about their company once it is commercially successful.
The critique of current thinking about entrepreneurship could go on but would not add any more value to this discussion. Switching gears, what are reasons to become an entrepreneur? As with anything in life, change is hard and therefore the payoff should be big. Starting with money, if billions, or even millions, are not sensible aims, what is? Financial independence, the same money as being employed but not under threat of a boss or possibly a capricious firm. The formative years will involve much greater risk, but stability, if reached, leads to far lower risk, if not more money, than being an employee.
In terms of freedom of decisions, that is rarely achieved. But that does not mean that building a corporate culture in your image is not attainable, creating a healthy mental and emotional environment in the one place that you spend your most waking hours. That alone is worth more than any amount of money.
On the final point, the management gurus took something beautiful, passion, and corrupted it for their own marketing and financial gain. You can enjoy creating and selling products and services, but if that is what you are passionate about you are broken inside. Passion is about being selfless, about giving. When there is a price tag involved, that is not passion, it could well be greed. Be passionate about your family, about contributions to community and society, about leaving the world a better place than when you found it.
Sabah Al Binali is an active investor and entrepreneurial leader, with a track record of financing, building and growing companies in the Mena region
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