{"id":6052,"date":"2014-02-12T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-02-12T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wework.com\/creator\/?p=4721"},"modified":"2020-03-30T19:09:10","modified_gmt":"2020-03-30T23:09:10","slug":"im-calling-entrepreneur-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wework.com\/ideas\/professional-development\/im-calling-entrepreneur-now","title":{"rendered":"Why I’m not calling myself an entrepreneur\u2014for now"},"content":{"rendered":"

I just got back from a Latin American adventure. On our first night in Panama, my colleague and I went out to a nice dinner and ended up seated next to a diplomat. When asked, I told him what I\u00a0<\/a>do for a living, and he said, \u201cWell, how entrepreneurial of you!<\/i>\u201d My body tensed. I answered,\u00a0\u201cYeah!\u201d<\/i>\u00a0and laughed uneasily.<\/p>\n

Less than a year prior, I quit my job, built a brand, developed a company plan, and nearly drained my savings account to get\u00a0audience.io<\/a>\u00a0started up<\/i>. A friend of mine helped design our business cards and the first draft read\u00a0\u201cCourtney Boyd Myers, Entrepreneur\u201d.\u00a0I cringed and said \u201cCan we just go with Founder?\u201d<\/p>\n

Am I an entrepreneur?<\/h3>\n

After all, I had founded something. That much I was sure of; it is in my heart, from my brain, and I\u2019ve welcomed a desire to create something that didn\u2019t exist before, as well as a desire to control my career.<\/p>\n

But labeling myself as an entrepreneur? Even now with a handful of members, two full-time strategists in New York and London, multiple part-timers, and 26 freelance writers on our employee roster, I feel awkward saying I\u2019m an entrepreneur, and for that matter I don\u2019t really feel like a chief, an executive, or an officer either.<\/p>\n

Is it the English modesty that\u2019s gotten to my head? No. I\u2019m plenty confident and am very proud of my accomplishments. It has more to do with the\u00a0saturation of the word<\/b>\u00a0in our culture. We live in a bubble where this four-syllabled word of French origins pops up\u00a0multiple times a day<\/b>.\u00a0It\u2019s going down the same route as \u201cdisruptive\u201d, a word TechCrunch pulverized with its annual conferences and frothy panel sessions.\u00a0Entrepreneur has become a cursory word thrown around by the media that perturbs even the moderately self-aware amongst us.<\/p>\n

A quick temperature check on\u00a0Secret<\/a>\u00a0reveals that people equate it with \u201cdouchey\u201d, \u201csalesy\u201d and the hype machine. At Makeshift, we\u2019re all a bit tired of the \u201centreprene-ugh\u201d.<\/p>\n

But aren\u2019t we supposed to be championing risk takers and supporting startups in every way we can? Why all the negativity? In 2002, we\u2019d roll our eyes when someone said they were a \u201cfinancier\u201d, why are we doing the same thing today with \u201centrepreneur\u201d?<\/p>\n

Who is an entrepreneur?<\/h3>\n

There are lots of real entrepreneurs out there. Richard Branson, Elon Musk, Coco Chanel, Henry Ford, Oprah Winfrey, James Dyson and Arianna Huffington. People who have disrupted entire industries with their boundless passion and hard work.<\/p>\n

But, by its\u00a0standard definition<\/a>, you could call any startup founder or food truck owner an entrepreneur, and we are doing so at an increasing rate,\u00a0according to Google<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Less than 24 hours on the ground in Panama, and I meet the\u00a0Kalu Yala crew<\/a>. Well, first I was sent\u00a0their website<\/a>, which reads:\u00a0\u201cA Sustainable Jungle Settlement for Entrepreneurs and Tropical Cowboys\u201d<\/i>. I was intrigued. But I was also embarrassed.\u00a0\u201cSounds like they\u2019re bussing a bunch of rich assholes into the jungle\u201d<\/i>, my coworker said, unimpressed.<\/p>\n

So when we actually meet the founder of Kalu Yala,\u00a0James Stice<\/a>, we have to tell him that he\u2019s making a horrible mistake with his website copy. Stice, who describes Kala Yalu as \u201ca village that\u2019s always in beta\u201d, makes a very good point. He admits the copy is dated in his techy circle of friends but says that in order to get the attention of investors \u2013 the kind that hail from his hometown of Atlanta and invest on Wall Street not Sand Hill Road \u2013 he needs to use bold language that they\u2019ll understand. He explains that what might be\u00a0mocked on Valleywag<\/a>\u00a0is sometimes the only way to describe something to someone outside of our tech bubble.<\/p>\n

Outside of our industry, the word entrepreneur is still widely used (probably because it hasn\u2019t been misused yet), and what is even more interesting, is that the word is becoming more popular in developing countries, where the word inspires and opens doors.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Numbers represent search volume relevant to the highest point on the map, which is always 100 (Google<\/a>).<\/i><\/p>\n

Regardless of the country or industry you work in, the word entrepreneur isn\u2019t very descriptive \u2013it can be attributed to someone who built a crappy mobile app or someone who has built a Fortune 100 company \u2013 and is therefore not something you want to introduce yourself as at a cocktail party.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s really entrepreneurial?<\/h3>\n

So let\u2019s lay down a few ground rules for activities that are and are not entrepreneurial:<\/p>\n

Activities that are entrepreneurial include:<\/b><\/p>\n