Let’s start with the negative. At some point you will be asked:
What makes you an entrepreneur?
This is a valid but ultimately unhelpful question. Enterprise and entrepreneurship are fluid concepts where exact boundaries are defined only by their absence. More useful is the state of mind behind such a question, one that gets at two of the most important questions any social entrepreneur can ask themselves :
Why I am doing this?
What I am willing to do to make this happen?
(Here’s a hint. If your answers are “Yes” and “Anything” then you are not thinking hard enough.)
The “Why” is important because at some point you will need to remind others and yourself why you are doing this. It is a sad fact that most enterprises fail and even the successful ones fail most of the time before they succeed. This is even more so the case for social entrepreneurs where your most important markets — customer and financial — are still in early stages of development.
The answer to this question will also help you motivate others. I once met a women whose answer was that her newborn baby almost died for lack of specialist care when the country’s top experts were located down the street. She never wanted another person to go through that experience and had devoted over ten years to changing how we find care. To this day her answer motivates me in what I do and I know it was crucial in helping her inspire others — supporters, staff and partners — in what she did.
Answering the second question “What am I willing to do…?” will make the difference between you succeeding in what you want and only getting halfway. In our early days we went from our comfortable offices with guaranteed salaries every month to cold calling and handing out leaflets, when failure meant missing a pay check. As we grew the type and scale of promotion we did changed but one thing didn't — the need to bring in regular, increasing revenue and the relentless focus required to make that happen.
As a social entrepreneur the chances are you may be more motivated by delivering the service or product you offer, perhaps you like to focus on strategy and the bigger picture. You may even be one of the rarer type who are sales motivated. Whatever your interests the difference between success and failure is in realising where your boundaries are and being willing to bring others on to fulfil those roles when needed.