Are You a Protopreneur?
What is a protopreneur?
We’ve all read of business owners, haven’t we? And most know what a ‘micropreneur’ is. And a ‘solopreneur’ as well. Even ‘mumpreneurs’ (and ‘Dadpreneurs’, in accordance to Rachel Elnaugh). But what is a ‘protopreneur’? It is a made-up word, just like all the rest. Well, apart from entrepreneur – which, according to Dubya, is one thing the French never have a term for! (1)
It arrives from the Greek ‘proÂtos’ (1st), which alone comes from ‘pro’ (prior to). Proto- tends to imply the kind quickly right before some thing emerges. For example a ‘prototype’ is the nearly-finished products, from which the ultimate product that goes to industry is developed. And ‘protoplasm’ is the earliest kind of residing make a difference, from which emerges all dwelling organisms. ‘Proto-‘ suggests the quite start, the stage just prior to the real issue itself is born.
Alright, so that’s the derivation. But what truly *is* a ‘protopreneur’? I use it to describe a individual who is standing at the brink of entrepreneurship – nevertheless in a career, but someway specified that you need to be accomplishing doing a little something for on your own. You may even have an concept what you’d adore to be doing, nevertheless something’s keeping you back again from taking that first phase – holding you at the ‘proto-preneur’ phase, right on the cusp.
That hesitation, that niggling question, that obstacle to just getting the leap of religion, could just be nerves. Or it could be one thing additional, it could be your instinct telling you that something’s not fairly suitable, that for you this is not quite the correct time, that you can find a fatal flaw in your strategy. And the problems is, it is extremely challenging to explain to irrespective of whether you’re keeping back again as a result of procrastination or perceptiveness.
And you really don’t have to be even now in a occupation to be one. A great deal of people stay in the protopreneur stage for pretty some time just after they depart employment, as you consider to work out exactly what it is you do. In simple fact, from my working experience, I would say a excellent fifty percent of the men and women you satisfy all around the networking circuit are in the protopreneur stage for a maybe a year, even two, as you try your hand at many matters that look like they are going to be enjoyment or they’re going to make your fortune, in advance of discovering that one particular thing you can stick at.
I’ve been there, I have been that protopreneur, on each sides of the work divide, and I have found it so usually in some others, I’m now on a mission to go protopreneurs on, to assist them find their laser focus, to see them established firm on a class that will get them where they want to go.
