We often hear the terms entrepreneur, businessman, and industrialist. And often, we mistake between all these three to be the same. There’s a vast difference between an entrepreneur, a businessman, and an industrialist. In this article, I will be discussing what’re these major differences between these people.
Despite these differences, one thing is common among an entrepreneur, a businessman, and an industrialist. They generate their income and don’t depend upon any employer. As a matter of fact, they generate employment by hiring many people for their various activities in their field.
And unlike employees, an entrepreneur, businessperson or industrialist is affected vastly either positively or negatively by various factors such as politics, the economic situation in own country and the world, wars and natural disasters, among others.
Therefore, here’re the major differences between the three: entrepreneur, businessperson, and industrialist.
Qualities of An Entrepreneur
Perhaps entrepreneur is the most common term we come across nowadays because we’re living in the startup era. Therefore, I will begin by describing what qualifies a person to be known as an entrepreneur.
1. Idea for Enterprise
An entrepreneur always comes up with a unique idea for their enterprise. That means, their enterprise would possibly be the first of its kind in the market.
The leading difference between an entrepreneur and a businessman is that they don’t follow set business ideas and instead, work on their dreams and passions. Some people might even mock their ideas but an entrepreneur continues and launches an enterprise with his own original thoughts.
2. High Appetite for Risk
Generally, an entrepreneur has a high appetite for risk with their investments. That’s because the business idea and concept are new and never tried earlier in any market.
They’re willing to put their ideas and concepts to work, even if their enterprise doesn’t record enough business. Instead, they’ll always find ways and means to make their enterprise and its products or services more attractive for customers.
3. Not Afraid of Failures
An entrepreneur isn’t afraid of failures. They have a lot of self-confidence. An entrepreneur would know how to turn around a business if it shows signs of floundering. They will exert extra efforts to prevent their enterprise from failure.
However, if the enterprise is headed for failure, they know how to minimize the losses and use the money to launch another startup venture using their skills. There are many young entrepreneurs who began their journey with very small investments and unique ideas, who are role models of many many youngsters that thinking out of the box.
4. Entrepreneurs Depend on Own Skills
As a rule, an entrepreneur will put all their trust on their own skills and competencies. In the sense that they’re not dependent upon others to run their business.
They put their own entrepreneurial and other skills to test and keep learning new ones, as they go along with the enterprise. They’re not afraid to learn new things in their business or profession.
5. Doesn’t Depend on External Sources
An entrepreneur doesn’t depend on external sources to provide business. They generate their own clientele using innovative ideas. They don’t worry about competitors because they have something unique for the market.
And they neither keep a watch on what others are doing. Their main focus is the internal and external growth of their enterprise.
Qualities of a Businessperson
The word businessperson refers to a woman or man that has a business. It’s also one of the most common terms in English. The new way to describe a businessperson is biz man or biz woman, in slang or colloquial language. Their characteristics are different from those of an entrepreneur or an industrialist.
1. Copycat Businesses
As a rule, almost every businessperson opens a business using already established, time-tested and proven ideas. They don’t look for new ideas or concepts. Their main intention is to open a business in a field that already has lots of competitors and customers. They hope to grab a slice of the larger market pie with their business.
2. Lower Appetite for Risk
The key difference between a businessman and an entrepreneur is that A businessperson usually has a lower appetite for risk. That means, they will not take any steps that would harm their business venture. Therefore, they operate very cautiously, with their eyes solely on profits and the growth of their business.
Generally, a businessperson is averse to trying something new because they believe it would put their business at risk or cause them losses. That’s because they follow only a set model of business that others are already using successfully.
3. Afraid of Failures
A businessperson will not take any steps that could lead to the failure of their business. Therefore, their main focus remains on making the business prosper in any way. Therefore, they’re always cautious about everything they do.
A businessperson will follow the flock, meaning, they’ll do only what others in the same business are doing, without using much of their own ideas or concepts. This can sometimes be a problem because a businessperson operates like the proverbial frog in the well and isn’t willing to explore newer things.
4. Heavy Dependence on External Skills
Usually, businesspersons depend upon the skills of others to manage various areas of their business. That’s why they hire a lot of people for different roles. Since they don’t have an appetite for risk, they want the business to run smoothly and hence are willing to pay others to do the work where they lag or don’t have the necessary skills.
For example, a store owner will depend on a cashier and a merchandiser to ensure they have enough stocks and proper cash flows.
5. Higher Dependence on Various Factors
A business is prone to various factors such as downturns in the economy, political uncertainties, conflicts, and disasters, to name a few. In general, a business also depends upon seasonal sales and festivals.
Therefore, every businessperson offers sales or special offers during such periods to ensure they don’t lag behind competitors in the same market. A businessperson monitors their competitors closely to wipe away any adverse effects on their own business.
They’re usually busy monitoring what’s going on in the market and implementing such things in their own business, to stay in line with trends that are prevailing at any given point in time.
Qualities of an Industrialist
An industrialist differs vastly from an entrepreneur or a businessman. In the sense that all the nature of their work is totally different. However, in some ways, an industrialist’s qualities are also similar to those of an entrepreneur and businessperson.
1. Create New Industries
An industrialist has only one objective in mind. And that’s to set up newer industries that generate employment and products that a business can sell. They know there’s a market for their products and find ways and means to promote and sell them through a network of businesses.
The difference between industrialists and businessmen is that industrialists depend upon businesspersons to generate profits through sales. In the broader sense, an industrialist helps the nation through exports and earning foreign currencies for the country. They’re not wary of entering foreign markets too.
2. Extremely High Appetite for Risk
An industrialist usually has an extremely high appetite for risks. That’s because they’re setting up industries or manufacturing units without much or any assurance that their products would sell and succeed in the market.
They invest a lot in buying machinery and setting up a production unit. And they also invest vast amounts of money in manpower to run these production units. Their staff consists of almost everyone- from senior executives to handypersons for the various tasks at the factory.
3. Care Nothing About Failure
Industrialists don’t usually worry about the failures of their own products. That’s because they can always use the machinery to make newer and innovative products on their own brand or for some other organization.
Usually, the machinery they buy is on loan from some bank or financial institution. And they have to pay only the loan installments. This gives them enough time to relaunch a product, create new brand lines or start productions for some other company in the same field. Often, industrialists also lease their production units to other companies.
4. Heavy Dependence on Workforce
As compared to an entrepreneur vs businessman, an industrialist has a great dependence on the workforce to run their manufacturing units.
They require both skilled and unskilled labor as well as highly qualified engineers and other staff. Industrialists have a high dependence on logistics since they need to ensure that the goods that they produce reach the businesspersons for sale. They also have much longer payrolls compared to an entrepreneur or a businessperson.
5. Severely Affected by External Factors
An industrialist is severely affected by external factors such as local economics and global scenarios. That’s mainly because they need to source raw materials for production from various suppliers.
Any adverse thing that happens to suppliers or even businesspersons that sells their products, affects their industrial production. Furthermore, an industrialist is forced to maintain lower prices so that the businesspersons can make some profits, despite logistical and other costs.
In Conclusion
As we can see from the above examples, there’s a vast difference between an entrepreneur, a businessperson, and an industrialist. Though in some ways their qualities and mindsets are the same for making profits, their functions differ vastly. That’s the reason there’re fewer industrialists while there’re several entrepreneurs and countless businesspersons.
