You have arrived at the web home of Noah Brier. This is mostly an archive of over a decade of blogging and other writing. You can read more about me or get in touch. If you want more recent writing of mine, most of that is at my BrXnd marketing x AI newsletter and Why Is This Interesting?, a daily email for the intellectually omnivorous.
I can't remember who told me this, but they said "not everyone wants to be an entrepreneur." (If it was you please let me know and I'll give you credit.) Since then it's been swimming around in my head non-stop.
To me an entrepreneur is someone who wants to follow their own path, not necessarily someone who runs their own business. They're leaders, not followers. They find joy in breathing life into an idea. They prefer fewer instructions, not more.
Personally, I can't imagine wanting things any other way, but lots of other people can and do. There are a ton of individuals out there who would prefer to do what they're told and like the structure and regimen: They enjoy executing someone else's vision.
It was an important reminder to me. I think it's an important reminder to many of us. We are not 'regular'.
For me it's always been this way. At three I wore two different socks because I could. In kindergarten I refused to do the math problems everyone else was doing. In middle school I proved the teacher wrong on a question he had been asking classes for 20 years. I'm not bragging, just saying that I never knew it any other way. (Seriously, though, who brags about wearing two different socks?)
When I was told that not everyone thought that way, an idea that I'm sure sat somewhere in my mind, all of a sudden surfaced. I'm not saying one is better than the other, just that we don't all have the same thing driving us. Many seek stability, normalcy and routine: They prefer to have a job they could easily describe to a stranger.
Different things make each and every one of us tick and I don't think we acknowledge that often enough. I know I fall into the trap often of overgeneralizing based on my own experiences, or the experiences of a select few around me. It's important to dig deeper and look beyond our own prejudices. Sure you can use your own world to draw larger ideas, but once in a while we all need to get shaken up a little bit and reminded that what we see as normal might not be that way to everyone else.
At least that's what "not everyone wants to be an entrepreneur" means to me. How about you?