The butcher, the baker…

Why is that everyone who opens a business these days calls themselves an entrepreneur? Surely if you sell overly priced burgers you’re a burger seller, if you sell cocktails you’re a barman and if you sell bread (even craft bread, whatever that is) you’re a baker. I don’t get it. How can a person who makes cheese (a cheese maker) be so grandiose to expect to be called an entrepreneur and what about the butcher and the candlestick maker? Are they entrepreneurs too? Is England not a nation of shopkeepers after all then? Is it a nation of entrepreneurs?

Of course some things lend their entrepreneurial hand to entrepreneuring more than others. Anything to do with websites and the worldwide web seems worthy of entrepreneurs, as does gaming and working out of a shed in your garden to make millions of pounds (a la Roald Dahl). But I'm not sure about cupcakes sold at farmer's markets or selling cleaning products through door-dropped catalogues.

Entrepreneur has to be something more doesn’t it? To me the word goes hand in hand with tycoon and magnate, but I’ve never heard of a candle tycoon or a bread making magnate. Of course the very dry dictionary definition simply says that an entrepreneur is: ‘a person who sets up a business or businesses, taking on financial risks in the hope of profit.’ It doesn’t mention top hats, or tailcoats, or swirling moustaches, and maybe that’s where I’ve been going wrong. Perhaps I’m not a glass painter with a bit of a shop and no profit to speak of, perhaps I’m an entrepreneur after all.