If I had to put it in one sentence, an entrepreneur is someone who wants to create something of their own.
Size doesn’t matter. Neither does what the company is worth, or whether there’s an investor behind you. What counts is the urge to build something that didn’t exist before you made it.
I’ve been an entrepreneur for 11 years, and I’ve had 41 guests on my Danish-language podcast, Den Nye Standard, which has more than 150,000 plays. Along the way, my definition has got shorter. It’s also changed.
From Dragons’ Den to a healthy business
When I started out, it was more about making a lot of money. The vibe around being an entrepreneur was very Dragons’ Den: how much is your company worth? Not so much whether it was a healthy, good business.
Today I believe in something else. You need a good, healthy business with decent conditions for your employees, and you need to deliver a brilliant product to your customers. Then everything else follows.
That’s why, for me, a pizzeria owner is an entrepreneur too. You don’t have to build a big company to be one.
41 guests and one thing in common
On Den Nye Standard, I met 41 different types. People who were good at completely different things and thought in completely different ways.
What they taught me is that the other side of the coin is part of being an entrepreneur. You’ll go through hard times, and every now and then you’ll have to fight some battles that aren’t much fun.
There are lots of types of entrepreneur. What I saw in all of them was that they’re really good at making those days bearable. They know the sun comes out again after a rainy day.
That was also why I started the podcast. I said to Ditte Julie Jensen in Episode 6 (listen at 36:14):
‘How do you get people to open up about the things that are hard? Because I believe that inspires more people than just saying: look how incredibly good I am.’
My own type
I’m energetic, happy and positive. I love new things and I adapt easily. I almost never get bored, and I struggle when things move slowly. I love a fast pace, I love success, and I love seeing my clients happy.
Most of all, I love creating. It’s the best thing in the world.
And I’m really bad at structure.
Structure is a necessary evil
It might sound odd that someone who’s bad at structure runs an agency. As much as I’d like to say I don’t care about structure, I care about it enormously. It’s how you go far, and there’s no way around it.
Structure is what lets you know, every day, that you’re making the right decisions and getting your priorities right. That you know why something happens or doesn’t. That you remember to write things down and remember to put them in the calendar.
In my private life, I always think I have more time than I do, and I forget things. At work, I know the most important thing is that things are calm and under control. So I push myself to do it.
AI remembers what I forget
This is where AI has changed a lot for me. The AI I work with every day knows my conversations and knows what I’ve done this week. The way I think gets written down, so I can remember why I chose one thing over another. I have far more structure today, because it remembers for me.
In the old days, I was more exposed. If I forgot to write something down or forgot to call a client, then I was the one who’d forgotten. I didn’t really have anyone to remind me.
It’s not just me. At Amplify, we’ve moved to working AI-first, so our people can spend their time on strategy, creativity and clients.
So what is an entrepreneur?
Someone who wants to create something of their own. Not a particular size, a particular type or an investor behind you.
And that urge has never been easier to follow. Today you can build the first version of a product with AI without being able to code yourself. I built the first version of a dashboard for a client myself, in the back seat of a car on the way to Bornholm. The hard part is still finishing, and I’ve written about that in With AI, building isn’t the hard part.
If you’re not sure whether it’s for you, I’ve written about what it takes in the post on being self-employed or an employee. And if you want to hear the rest of the story, I tell it in my talk on entrepreneurship. If you already have paying customers and want a sounding board, you can also pitch your company to me.