© Elliot Essman 2005. All rights reserved.

These pages contain the complete 2005 revised text of Building Yourself, public speaking trainer Elliot Essman's guide to living the successful life.

Elliot Essman Public Speaking Training
Building Yourself Table of Contents
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• No enterprise can exist for itself alone. It ministers to some great need, it performs some great service, not for itself, but for others. Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)

Forget all the mumbo jumbo you hear about entrepre­neurs. They're all glamorous maverick businesspeople, right? Hardly. Every successful person is an entrepreneur on some level. Entrepreneurs are the people who get things done in this world. Entrepreneurs create industries, cure diseases and put food on our tables.

Everybody else sits and waits. They wait for an entrepre­neur to create a business, so they can have a job. They wait for an entrepreneur to produce a movie or publish a book, so they can entertain themselves. They wait for an entrepreneur to open a store, so they can come and buy.

Most people expect a lot out of life. What this really means is that they expect a lot out of entrepreneurs. They expect water to flow from their faucets, electricity to come from their outlets, crops to be harvested, foods to be pro­cessed, goods to be transported. They take everything the market offers for granted—until it is taken away from them.

The entrepreneur takes nothing for granted. He or she knows that nothing ever gets done—for anybody—without individual initiative. So the entrepreneurial psychology goes way beyond business and money‑making. It's the backbone of any kind of success. This holds true whether you have your own business or whether you work for someone else. It's true whether you work in the private sector or the public. It's true for educators, professional athletes, concert violinists, farmers, poets, missionaries—any human activity you can name in which you can excel.

Being an entrepreneur doesn't mean you do everything yourself. Entrepreneurs can be team players. What the title “entrepreneur” does call for, at a minimum, is the desire to take responsibility for your own life and a strong desire to do what you must do to get things done.

I choose my words carefully. Notice I use the term “desire,” not “willingness.” Willingness to work hard, to “pay dues,” is often confused with the true entrepreneurial psychology. But a true entrepreneur needs more. The true entrepreneur is driven to act to create excellence. Entrepreneuring isn't just wealth‑grabbing or game‑playing, it's creating. It's basic to human progress.

Entreprende, the French verb from which we get the word entrepreneur, means to embark, begin, undertake. For our purposes it means to sweat to get things done. But it's good honest sweat. It's the sweat of real excellence. Will you settle for anything else in life?

Another common fallacy comes into play when we consider popular attitudes towards entrepreneurs. Does entrepreneuri­ng mean the same thing as starting your own business? Not exactly. Just as entrepreneurs can be found in all walks of life, so too can businesspeople be found who aren't entrepreneurs. Average people start businesses all the time—with predictably average results.

But if all this confuses you or seems too philosophical, just think of this. This life of ours gives you a choice. You can be an entrepreneur. You can be everybody else. We'll give you a generous ten seconds to decide. Time's up: What'll it be?