Entrepreneur, solopreneur, micropreneur, and on and on. It’s currently fashionable in the business world to take the ending “-preneur” and tack it onto the end of a word that semi-closely resembles what you do, so that’s what I’m going to do in this post. After much soul-searching I’ve decided that I am indeed a micropreneur, which is a specific variety of the generic entrepreneur.
I’m micro because I intentionally keep my companies small. Understand that keeping a company small has no bearing on my revenue goals… I always want to maximize revenues, just without having to manage a large team of people. I also want to be able to live where I want, work on my own schedule, etc. (you can call my company a lifestyle business if you want to, I don’t care.)
I’m disqualified from being a solopreneur because I don’t do everything alone. I have a great (small) team that I have worked with over the years, and everything I’ve done so far wouldn’t be possible without them.
All The Labels
I typically don’t care much for labels like micropreneur, but in this case it does a fairly good job of describing what I do on a daily basis. It’s always hard trying to explain what I do to friends and family, and having a descriptive-sounding label might be just the ticket. It sounds easier than telling them that I own and operate a portfolio of small web businesses.
Your Thoughts
What labels identify you the best? If you don’t ascribe to a given label then how do you describe your daily work to your friends and family?
p.s. I heard the term micropreneur for the first time at LessConf this year during Rob Walling‘s presentation, so hat tip to Rob for that.