A serial entrepreneur is an individual who starts mainly multiple upwardly mobile enterprises and moves on to the next, either when a new management team takes control, or if the enterprise becomes lifestyle in nature. Because serial entrepreneurs have experience with multiple enterprises, they tend to be bigger risk takers than those that have started only one enterprise. As a consequence, their experience better positions them to respond to problems and to avoid failure over time. Many have learned from past mistakes. A serial entrepreneur will typically always work for themselves, and employ others.
A multipreneur is an individual who pursues multiple upwardly mobile and/or lifestyle business activities as a portfolio, either serially or in parallel. These activities can be within one business, such as new product and/or service line extensions, new product and/or service lines, new markets, or new business units; as new related or unrelated businesses; or as varied careers. A multipreneur may move from being self-employed to being employed by others to being self-employed again.
An individualpreneur is a focused multipreneur. The term “individualpreneur” is derived from the term “individualprise,” which in turn is derived from the term “individual enterprise.” The notion of an individual as an enterprise is based upon the practice of all income sources on an individual’s tax return being actively managed as a portfolio. Thus, individualpreneurship is a “top-down” mindset starting with the summarization of employment, entrepreneurship/business ownership, and investing activities as driven by multipreneurial initiatives. Each multipreneurial activity may be event or opportunity driven.
Multipreneurs (and hence individualpreneurs) include solopreneurs (individuals who work alone), webpreneurs (those doing business primarily on the internet), and can be employed working for others in parallel or between their entrepreneurial endeavors.
Because a married couple can file a joint individual tax return, the notion of individualpreneurship extends to both husband and wife (and their dependents as appropriate). This is notion is consistent with the concept of families pursuing many income generating activities during the agricultural age, such as farming, glassmaking, metalwork (smithy), needlework (weaving), stonework (masonry), and woodwork (carpentry).
Thinking and behaving as an “individualprise” helps an individual perform better, not only as an entrepreneur/business owner, but also for an employer, especially in an executive capacity. This is because they understand the concepts of income generation and expense, asset, liability, and capital management. They should also have a broader understanding of legal, finance, human resources, information technology, business development, and operations activities. For visionaries in the corporate world, intrapreneurial capabilities are also important for enacting and responding to change.
For many jobs, there is a lifecycle from value-added to commodity work over time. As jobs become commoditized, they are often outsourced to scale providers who perform the tasks at lower cost. Thus, to keep the economy healthy, it is necessary to provide for capital formation in new innovative enterprises that generate new job opportunities as the old jobs erode. Both serial entrepreneurs and multipreneurs who see and pursue multiple opportunities for innovation help keep the economy healthy. Typically for every one innovative job generated by an entrepreneur, there are many infrastructure and support jobs generated, either in the same enterprise, or in related.
Those seeking employment positions where such a lifecycle exists must recognize that a job search is a marketing campaign just as a business would adopt. Therefore, it must be treated as such by the job hunter if a satisfactory result is to occur. Thinking as an enterprise, the individualpreneur is more likely to achieve a satisfactory result in a job search because they are aware of the need to add value and promote it as such in the marketplace. Individualpreneurs appreciate the benefit of business relationships and networking, and the value of referrals.
Individualpreneurship is a discipline for building an individualprise for a sustainable self-reliant career. Sustainable means being able to continue over time, either by developing, enhancing, or maintaining the current state, or by changing it. Self-reliant means having the confidence to exercise one’s own judgment so as to be able to continue over time in a career – endeavors of achievement in both personal and professional lives.
As a multipreneur, an individual is willing and able to consider new and emerging opportunities as existing ones mature and decline. As an individualpreneur, they focus on those opportunities that offer the best likelihood of sustaining a livelihood over time.
Individualpreneurship embraces the entrepreneurship disciplines of entrepreneurship, leadership, and management, which apply to every individual in business, whether as an employee, as an entrepreneur/business owner, or as an investor. In the corporate world, leadership and managerial capabilities, and especially the ability to communicate effectively, are essential for advancement through the ranks.
