Last month at Toy Fair the toy giant Mattel debuted Barbie’s most recent career… yes, none other than “Entrepreneur” !

You know it’s trendy to be an Entrepreneur when Barbie becomes one.

What I find most fascinating about this is what Barbie the Entrepreneur is wearing. And clearly if that’s the image of the female entrepreneur, I need an entire wardrobe makeover. Out with the flip flops, yoga pants, jeans, summer dresses, sweatshirts, neutral business suits, casual blouses, boots…. and in with the bright pink skirt and heels!

All sarcasm aside, it is pretty interesting to see the near 180 societal shift in the perception of what it means to be an entrepreneur. When I started iCreate 4 years ago I was doing a ‘project’ in many critics’ eyes — certainly not building a company. And perhaps there’s some truth to that. Technically all ideas and products start out as small projects and it’s not until there is a customer base and valid business model that it truly becomes a business. It’s quite easy these days to build a website or app … it’s incredibly difficult to scale that single product or feature into a business.

Of the many, many entrepreneurial books out there, one that continues to stick with me is quite old – The E-Myth. The book essentially breaks out the differences among the Entrepreneur, Manager, and Technician. It’s a very classic small business problem where someone will have a talent – such as baking – and as a result decide to open a bakery. The shift away from the craft that the baker is particularly good at, towards running a business, which the baker is inexperienced with, becomes crippling and the business often fails. This is a classic case where a talented ‘Technician’ so to speak is challenged to become an Entrepreneur, and then grow into Manager as the business succeeds.

Whether a true Entrepreneur really looks like what Barbie is wearing, there are so many “roles” an entrepreneur has to take on to start and grow a business that I would think a Barbie dressed in layers or dragging around a closet of various outfits would be a more accurate representation!