The media stereotype of the businessman is of a young, fairly
narrow-minded, go-getting alpha male obsessed with material success.
It is therefore refreshing that The Celebrity Apprentice just “hired”
by Donald Trump is Joan Rivers, a 75-year old woman who is very much her own
individual. Contemptuous of all notions of political correctness, she does not
care who she offends, and she is unafraid to mock her own lack of alpha-status:
she has had every plastic surgery procedure in the book – indeed, she wrote
the book!
Trump described the “level of strength and energy” of this
marvel of reconstructive surgery in her eighth decade as “amazing”.
It would be difficult to imagine anyone less like the media
stereotype.
Yet the truth is that Joan is closer to the reality of
entrepreneurs than the stereotype.
You can meet entrepreneurs who are senior citizens or
teenagers, veterans or hippies, technical geniuses or drop-outs, gentlemen or
Goths – but very rarely are entrepreneurs the stereotypical obsessed young men
in suits, whose natural habitat tends to be the corporate world rather than
self-employment.
The only thing that entrepreneurs have in common is that
they are all, like Joan, very much individuals.