An entrepreneur. The dictionary definition goes like this: A person who organizes, operates, and assumes the risk for a business venture. Here's my definition: An entrepreneur is someone who starts successful businesses. People are not very kind to those who start unsuccessful businesses. The instant you are successful, however, you are a hero and they start calling you an entrepreneur. See Also The Teenager's Guide to the Real World by Marshall Brain (20 free chapters online) Making money with web sites About the Author Robotic Nation Robots in 2015 Robotic Freedom Robot news AltEng Manna Science on the Brain Interesting Videos Thank you for visiting today, The whole point of creating a successful business, of course, is to have it generate money. There are two ways to extract the money from a business you create. You can either take the money out as you go along, in the form of a salary and dividends. Or you can sell the business and take your reward in a lump sum. Or, in the ideal case, you do both. In the ideal case, the money that you pull out of the business is being generated as passive income. For example, let's say you start a restaurant. You hire all of the staff, and then you hire someone to manage the staff so the restaurant "runs itself" without you ever having to actually be there. That is passive income. A house you own that generates steady rental income every month is another example. Note that the dictionary definition of the word "entrepreneur" includes the word "risk." That is important. If you are starting a business, you are going to have to invest both your time and (in many cases) your money in getting the business going, There is some chance that the business will fail without generating anything. Businesses fail all the time. That's part of the game. There are three things that you should keep in mind... << Previous Slide | Introduction | Next Slide >>