"I'm an Entrepreneur"

Occasionally as I click through the television channels, a show that I would ordinarily ignore grabs my attention. And I learn something.



This week I landed on a show that matches rich people to people who want to wed money. A matchmaker interviews the gold diggers, often asking them, “So what do you do for a living?



“I’m an entrepreneur” was the answer twice this week, one man and one woman. The matchmaker asked them to be more specific. I envisioned an entrepreneur as someone with a talent for identifying new business opportunities and turning those opportunities into lucrative ventures, a real risk-taker, a regular P.T. Barnum.



The man and woman both answered, “I’m writing a book.”



I burst out laughing. To her credit, the matchmaker did not. But later I reconsidered and read the definitions of “entrepreneur” available online. Here are a few:



•Someone with an idea who turns it into a profitable venture

•Someone who is their own boss

•Someone who organizes a business with considerable initiative and risk



I decided that a writer may indeed be an entrepreneur. But I’m not sure I would phrase it quite that way, anymore than I would refer to a homemaker as a “domestic engineer”--unless I was looking for the laugh, of course.



What do you think?