Many people really confuse these two into being the same thing. The more and more I learn about business, I’ve learned that they are actually two VERY different things. An Entrepreneur has a mind that seems to race - they are full of ideas, exuberant and a bit hard to control (of course there are exceptions).

Now, of course, by default, when an Entrepreneur starts a business, they are the CEO by default. But, what you find overtime is that many entrepreneurs are not fit at all to remain a CEO (I’ll explain why in a second). Many of these start-ups eventually go hire a “professional CEO” and the entrepreneur takes a different more targeted position (many times either technical in nature or marketing related).

Now, of course with that said, there are also many Entrepreneurs out there that have proven to be a great CEO, every day, I strive to be that Entrepreneur (and have to say that I’ve done a fairly good job at it so far).

See, a CEO is a manager. A CEO is good at building organization, structure, watching the details, the financials and keeping a “company afloat.” A CEOs entire job is to keep the company in the right line. A CEOs biggest responsibility is to build “share-holder value,” most entrepreneurs could, by nature, care one flying hoot about “shareholder value” - they just want to paint on the canvas!

The biggest difference I have personally experienced and seen between an entrepreneur and a CEO is that an entrepreneur can be FULL of ideas and always generating new ones as well. However, new ideas can give CEOs headaches (since new ideas challenge structure and organization).

Of course, again, there are many cross-overs here. Most “start-up” type CEOs can be close to an entrepreneur, but they still have a very structured way of looking at business.

It’s like someone said to recently… “Entrepreneurs are like artists…a business is their art, and we all know that most good artists don’t paint for the ’selling price’ - they paint to fulfill something inside them.”

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Tags: Building A Company, ceo, entrepreneur

This entry was posted on Monday, March 3rd, 2008 at 5:17 am and is filed under My First Time Lessons. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.