Entrepreneur or Artisan?
Are You An Entrepreneur Or An Artisan?
I’m inspired and want to share the enthusiasm, diagrammatic views, and entrepreneurial poetry with you.
I believe Entrepreneurs need an entirely different answer and category for the age old question
— “what do you do?”
More on that in a sec…
I watched a video over the weekend about a ten-year-old autistic boy named Jacob Barnett.
Jacob argued that even though he was autistic and most people thought he couldn’t learn anything, he was bored of learning, so he started creating and thinking more.
Watch the video of Jacob talk at TedxTeen to understand this concept more.
Little Jacob got me thinking.
I’m going to speak at Harvard this year, and I was thinking about what I was going to talk about.
How was I going to make the bridge of me dropping out of high school at age 16 and merely getting a GED, to speaking in front of 300 people at one of the most elite, Ivy League educational hubs in the world?
I came up with many ideas, but Jacob’s talk inspired me the most.
In essence, it’s a differentiation of something you can’t only learn from inside a classroom or from a textbook even at the most prestigious of colleges.
Here is what I decided… but first a quick backstory.
I spent a full year with Eben Pagan observing how he was able to run a 100 million dollar a year business Online with 80 virtual employees.
He called what he did “knowledge working”. That is a pretty different view of how we see ourselves as entrepreneurs, but I think we are even a bigger classification.
And after much hyper-thinking on this topic.
I believe God provided the answer.
As entrepreneurs, we need to stop thinking of ourselves as workers. We are not “workers” at all.
On the contrary, many of us wear our t-shirts that proudly proclaim we are “UN-employable”.
We don’t think the same way…
We don’t act the same…
And we sure as hell don’t “work” the same way as people that are not entrepreneurial.
...Right?
So does that make us “above” others?
Certainly not.
In fact, the counter-intuitive is a healthy entrepreneur is the one that is ….
“the greatest servant of them all”.
… So what are we then?
We are Artisans that craft.
We are crafters Not workers.
The next time someone asks “what do you do or where you work?”
Smile back at them and say….
“I don’t work. I craft for a living."
"I create solutions for challenges to serve people that work."
Definition of crafting
Pronunciation: /ˈkrɑːftɪŋ/
The traditional terms craftsman and craftswoman are nowadays often replaced by
artisan and rarely by craftsperson (craftspeople).
In English, to describe something as a craft is to describe it as lying somewhere
between an art (which relies on talent and technique) and science (which relies on
knowledge). In this sense, the English wordcraft is roughly equivalent to the ancient
Greek term techne. Folk art follows craft traditions, in contrast to fine art or “high art”.
[mass noun]
the activity or hobby of making things decorative by hand:
crafting has emerged as a popular form of self-expression
1. Skill in doing or making something, as in the arts; proficiency.
2. An occupation or trade requiring skilled artistry
3. The membership of such an occupation or trade; guild.
4. To make or construct (something) in a manner suggesting great care or ingenuity
In other words, screw ever working with the traditional mindset again!
It’s time you start crafting and accepting the Artisan that lives inside of you.
Remember… be a servant,
Cory Boatright
Founder of Real Estate Investing Profits