I recently spoke at an entrepreneurship seminar in Kwa-Zulu Natal. The event went off quite well, and I think the substance of the seminar deserves further mention.

The ultimate message in my piece was that an entrepreneur is not someone who has an idea, nor is it someone who owns his own business- A true entrepreneur is someone who acts on an idea, and goes the whole way through with it. This is so painfully simple and yet so important. Even surrounded by a thousand people, a real entrepreneur would have little problem with relaying his ten best ideas in great detail! The reason? He knows no one will actually take action on them!

We all have good ideas, and we all recognize opportunity, but for some reason very few of us put nose to the grindstone and turn an idea into reality. Entrepreneurs are very rarely geniuses, they rarely have better ideas than anyone else, and in most cases they make their money from other people’s ideas! All they do is take action.

*Wanting to take action but don’t know where to begin? See the article Your First Startup.