I’ve slung around the term “entrepreneur” for most of my life. My parents owned a grocery store before I was born, then they owned a meat packing plant too. Then they owned a farm, a pawn shop, a natural remedy store, and currently a furniture and appliance retail business. (Which I happen to operate right now, as a consultant.) Their kids, all put together, have owned their own legal consulting, cleaning, landscaping, masonry construction, stone restoration, personal training, photography, and business consulting businesses. I figured for a long time that I knew what “entrepreneur” meant, if anyone did. And it meant, to work for yourself. But recently I came to a much better understanding of the term “entrepreneur.” From Dictionary.com: “1. a person who organizes and manages any enterprise, especially a business, usually with considerable initiative and risk.” …Manages any enterprise, especially a business. Well, that makes sense. Oh wait, but isn’t business defined as: (Again from Dictionary.com) 1. an occupation, profession, or trade: His business is poultry farming. 2. the purchase and sale of goods in an attempt to make a profit. 3. a person, partnership, or corporation engaged in commerce, manufacturing, or a service; profit-seeking enterprise or concern. Well, that’s basically everything, isn’t it? So you’re saying that I’m an entrepreneur as long as I’m managing a business, which is simply engaging in a sale to make a profit? But that’s what a job is, right? A sale of my time for a profit? So I work for myself ALL the time, then… If I’m getting paid $5 per hour to do something, it’s because I SOLD MY TIME, for that amount. As the manager of my business, I am required to make the decisions about what to do with the products my business produces. One of those products is my time. If someone offers to buy it from me for $1 an hour, it is my personal decision to accept or deny that offer. I happen to personally value my time at a higher dollar amount than that, but maybe that would satisfy you. It’s fine if it does. There is no morally reprehensible wage to offer for time. In fact, there is no morally reprehensible wage to OFFER for anything. I can offer all day. You are not required to take my offer. You have to run your business well, and if that means saying no to my offer, then say no and move on. Time, skill, mental power, physical prowess. These are the four products that every single person is born with. Every business is made up of these things, every person is made with these things. They might be in varying amounts for every person, but they’re there. We, as people, choose to sell bits or bundles of these products, for our own gain. That’s what we do. We trade time, time and skill, physical prowess and skill, mental power, or any other combination of these things, to other people, in order to receive what we need or want. That’s what it means to be entrepreneurs: To recognize that everyone is their own business, and that we are all managing that.