By: Mostafa Hisham Fawzy

‘Ana haseeb shoghle w hab2a entrepreneur’. This is a statement that has definitely stirred upon your ears lately. What is noteworthy is the answer that follows the question ‘Entrepreneur in which field?‘ and you hear ‘Ay haga’. At that exact moment, entrepreneurship turns into bulls**t-ship. A number of factors have made a lot of Egyptian youth perceive entrepreneurship as an easy way out of a heavy workload, low salaries and tough working schedules. The question remains though, “Is entrepreneurship any less of that, or do we have a huge misconception of what the word means?”. To keep it short, entrepreneurship is defined as a person who sets up a business or businesses and can be taking on financial risks, so basically yes, we do misdefine it to a sad extent. Here are some of the bulls**t-ship concepts you may have sadly come across:

1. ‘I’ll start my own business in any field, as long as it’s mine’

That one leaves me wanting to load a gun. Entrepreneurship has to have drivers to in order to move forward. The concept itself is all about taking a certain passion/dream into your own hands and finding the correct channel to make it happen. If you decide to open ma7al shawerma without a proper business plan, you will end up totally clueless of how to manage it!

2. ‘‘I’ll invest 5000LE and that’s it for me as an entrepreneur’

Having to just finance a project without even going through operations would rather entitle you as an investor and nothing more. An entrepreneur is someone who runs a private business. Your dreams of drowning in cash while having a bubble bath are sadly too good to be true.

3. ‘A few marketing efforts and some cash funds, and we got ourselves a project’

Entrepreneurship is something you need to learn how to master. It takes a lot of skills and characteristics to become an entrepreneur. A role like that would involve a lot of self educating.

4. ‘Why do I need a team, I’ll be an entrepreneur, my own boss’

You can have an idea that you want to run and fund, but yet recruit a team to help you or even supervise you. It’s not like you thought you’d run all departments and all operations  on your own and make it boom. Sadly, no one is Superman!

5. ‘It’s already been a month and I don’t see any CASH, entrepreneurship is a lie’

A part of agreeing to become an entrepreneur involves patience and understanding of what building a project means. A new project usually starts with a goal of breaking even and doesn’t create significant profit at first. The fact that a lot out there just want to hold those bills in their hands right at the beginning makes us wave sadly at the world of entrepreneurship.

6.’I’m not a corporate person, I’ll never fit in this world’

You’ve definitely heard that one. Entrepreneurship here is just a result of not being able to fit an employee profile. If this is the case, make sure you maintain good connections with your old supervisor, because you’d be wanting your corporate job back soon! #Ouch

7. ‘Being an entrepreneur would just leave me some space to enjoy a morning at Starbucks’

Speechless.

  1. ‘I won’t go green on entrepreneurship unless I have a backup job and loads of cash!’

Nothing is wrong with having a backup. The idea that you must have a backup or a big amount of money pushes down the concept and teaches people that entrepreneurship is a huge risk and needs a lot of funding, which in most cases, is not true.

Having said it all, I hope that people can relate to the size of damage we’re facing when it comes to defining entrepreneurship, and understand that like everything else, it’s not for everyone! It’s as tough, demanding and challenging as anything else. My only request is if you ever consider opening a shawerma bistro as a project, make sure you add extra tomeya and you’d make it out there, regardless of all what I just said!