Mark Cuban - Kid Start-Up: How YOU Can Become an Entrepreneur

Have you ever been asked: What do you want to be when you grow up? Most kids reply with the following:

But have you ever heard someone say, I want to be an entrepreneur? Probably not. Thats because most people dont know what an entrepreneur is.

The dictionary defines an entrepreneur as a person who starts a business and is willing to risk loss in order to make money. Notice the key phrases in that definition: starts a business and to make money .

Thats because this book is really about entrepreneurship. Any kid that starts a business to make money is an entrepreneur.

So the next time you get asked what you want to be when you grow up, you can respond, I want to be an entrepreneur!

Entrepreneur comes from the French word entreprendre, which means to undertake. And thats exactly what it means to be an entrepreneur. In order to be an entrepreneur, you just have to undertake a business. This is not the same thing as having an idea. Billions of people

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have ideas. But only a few people are willing to pursue those ideas and turn them into a real business.

Another word for anyone that starts a business is founder. If you start a business called Sweeties Lemonade Stand, then you are the founder of the Sweeties Lemonade Stand. So when you start a business, you can call yourself both an entrepreneur and a founder.

Its not easy being an entrepreneur. You have to take a lot of risks. You risk your time. You risk your money. But you also have to risk what is often most special to people your reputation. What if you fail? Most kids do not want to fail, which prevents them from starting a business.

Do not worry. Every entrepreneur shares this fear of failing. Just go for it. No one knows whether or not they will succeed. You need to figure things out as you go thats the fun part about entrepreneurship!

Rejection is the necessary evil of entrepreneurship. There has never been an entrepreneur who succeeded without failing first. Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, is no exception. In his 2005 graduation speech to Stanford University, Jobs described being fired from Apple in 1985 and says that it was the best thing that ever happened to [him].

WHAT IS AN ENTREPRENEUR? |

Unlike many people who would quit after such a big rejection, Steve Jobs did not. He continued following his love of technology by starting two other very successful companies. It is this kind of passion that makes entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs great. Jobs would later go back to Apple when the company saw how successful he could be without them.