All entrepreneurs must be managers, even if the only person they are managing is themselves. They are the ones who must make the schedules, see that they are implemented, co-ordinate staff, and deal with every little problem that comes up. Both managers and entrepreneurs can be expected to be available 24/7 to address the needs of their business, and a manager's earning potential is often tied so directly to the company's performance that it's tantamount to having an ownership stake in the first place.

But a manager seldom comes in on an evening or weekend unless there's a problem that has to be solved. Managers are generally good at what they do (that's how they got to be managers in the first place) but they may be different people outside of work, pursuing interests and living a lifestyle surprisingly at odds their 9 to 5 world. Managers are also still climbing the corporate ladder, either aiming towards more senior levels of management or moving to another company with a more lucrative offer. For managers the reward for their efforts comes with their paycheck.

For the entrepreneur, on the other hand, coming in on evenings and weekends when everyone else has gone home is not the exception but the rule. The entrepreneur may or may not be the best at whatever he or she does, but makes up for it with enthusiasm, a true love for the task that makes it less like work and more like a hobby. At the very least they are filled with an insatiable drive to keep coming back, day after day, and rather than pushing themselves into work in the morning they have to push themselves to leave work when the day is done.

An entrepreneur's business is a reflection of the entrepreneur - "Joe the Plumber" will always be "Joe the Plumber" to every one of his customers Joe happens to meet on a given day, whether he's at the grocery store, visiting the barber shop or picking up his kid from soccer practice.

And while the manager's world is all about the corporate ladder the entrepreneur's world couldn't be further from it. Even if a manager has no aspirations to climb any higher there's still a chain-of-command he or she must understand and fit into in order to survive, and all managers must, to some extent, learn how to "play" the particular structure of their organization in order to stay relevant.

Entrepreneurs don't have time for petty political gamesmanship, and instead like to focus on the pragmatic aspects of getting things done. They show little tolerance for manipulation, corporate double-speak or empty promises, and tend to ignore those who try to play them, rather than trying to figure out how to play them back.

And finally, for entrepreneurs the reward is not the pay check, and quite often that pay check is slow in coming, and so small as to be laughable. Entrepreneurs are in business for everything but the money (and the ones who care about money the least are the ones who are usually ultimately successful). Just spending each and every day doing what they love is reward enough.

So yes, managers and entrepreneurs have a lot in common - quite often managers become entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs become managers. But most will settle one on or the other, something that suits their own particular style, and the major personal differences between managers and entrepreneurs make them two very different types of people.