If you read the financial news, you will see that entrepreneurs are what keep capitalism alive. The word entrepreneur is usually used in the context of business ventures, but what is an entrepreneur really? If you own your own Edmonton Salon Spa, are you an entrepreneur? If you've invented a new type of deck chair, are you an entrepreneur? What if you offer financial advice to small business owners? This article should help clear up the issue by defining who is and isn't an entrepreneur.

Entrepreneur is a French word which was being used as early as the 1800s to describe people who were able to increase the productivity of a resource. It was soon borrowed by English economists who applied it to anyone undertaking a new business venture on their own behalf, which put people starting companies to make paving stones and the founder of the East India Company on the same level as someone who decides to pick flowers and sell them on the street.

Today, the word entrepreneur is usually used to refer to those daring individuals who have a new idea and plunge into the process of making it possible with great gusto. Whether it's marketing the new aquarium test kits they invented to chain pet stores or taking their already meagalithic company into previously uncharted waters, the commonality between all entrepreneurs is that they are always pushing to be better, more profitable, more successful, and to capture more markets.

Therefore, someone who sits in an Avaya IP office and doodles new ideas for internet phone devices is not an entrepreneur until she actually puts the idea into practice and starts selling it. The owner of a small business that is moderately successful and has been for many years is also not an entrepreneur unless he sets his sights on expanding the business and increasing its profitability. Therefore, every business owner is an entrepreneur while they're getting started. It's what you do after you're established that decides whether you get to keep the moniker or not.

If you want to stop being an employee or a just a small business owner and become an entrepreneur, you need to be dynamic, have leadership skills and market sense. Often, these are not things you can learn by attending a seminar and putting on some adhesive name tags. The best entrepreneurs, such as Richard Branson, Andrew Carnegie, Oprah Winfrey, Ray Kroc, Bill Gates, and Steve Jobs were all born with the drive to succeed.