An entrepreneur is someone with a mindset combined by grit and compulsion and who accepts the high risk of failure to try to see one of life’s toughest goals through: to succeed in running a profitable business.

Everyone has their own different reasons for why they want to be an entrepreneur: to make lots of money, to be free, to build innovations, solve problems, to change the world, to be their own boss.

An entrepreneur is someone who is willing to personally risk more than the average person knowing that failure could mean disastrous consequences yet understand that success means that additional wealth and value is created for society with great personal rewards.

Failure could mean homelessness, hunger, loss of personal financial assets and loss of family, friends, mates and could even end in prison or worse.

Unfortunately from personal experience, most entrepreneurs will fail. If they survive their first failure, many will never try again as failure can hurt and leave psychological scars like a bullet wound and create a fear of taking risks ever again.

A wealthy society requires that entrepreneurs be sacrificed by the plane loads in order to continue its high standard of living because even if they fail, they can still create jobs, innovations, new wealth and get trade flowing that keeps the rest of society alive.

If no entrepreneurs took risks to preserve themselves, everyone would probably be sustenance farming, live short hard lives with no modern luxuries. They would never know the taste of spices or the beauty of technology and ideas would take centuries to be slowly transmitted across cultures. There are countries in the world that still live like this.

The only people who will respect failed entrepreneurs are other entrepreneurs whether they have failed or succeeded. A failed entrepreneur will still have more in common to talk about with Elon Musk than the average person on the street who has known neither entrepreneurial success nor failure.

I’ve met failed entrepreneurs that should be celebrated as geniuses and remembered in history as great inventors but will probably die in relative obscurity.

The rules of the game are simple: there’s no guarantees or safety nets for entrepreneurs. Success will bring great rewards and failure will be devastating. They know the risks.