DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SELF EMPLOYED AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Is there really a difference between an entrepreneur and being self employed? It depends on how you choose to look at it.
Being self employed is the stage just before becoming an entrepreneur. After you're self employed, then you grow on to become an entrepreneur.

Here are some key words we would be considering and their definitions from wiki

"Entrepreneurship has traditionally been defined as the process of designing, launching and running a new business, which typically begins as a small business, such as a start-up company, offering a product, process or service for sale"

"Self-employment is the act of generating one's income directly from customers through working, clients or other organizations as opposed to being an employee of a business(or person)"

"Capitalist - a wealthy person who uses money to invest in trade and industry for profit in accordance with the principles of capitalism"

From the definition of entrepreneurship above, we can deduce that anyone who would be an entrepreneur is thought to start small and grow big, meanwhile, self employment involves getting your money directly from customers and is opposed to being an employee of someone else other than yourself.
Lets look at it this way, for a self employed person who is usually the owner of a small business, the product being sold, whether its in form of a service or physical product, is usually built around the self-employed person, because you're the one that deals directly with the customers who generate the income for the business. If you're a good salesman/woman, your customers begin to trust you probably even more than your product if you have good communications skills, making yourself the major product or an integral part of what you offer. Self employment then means your customers pay you salary. Your customers become your boss, and later on, the business becomes your boss. You're still employed, but by a more lenient boss. The day you are not around to run the business, you probably don't earn any salary.

An entrepreneur should be a capitalist. From the definition above, the entrepreneur is first a small business starter and then becomes more of an investor and in most cases, the investor is barely involved in the business directly, its the cash-flow that interests the investor, not necessarily the working of the business.
The major reason why most people want to be entrepreneurs is to gain freedom. Freedom from a 9-5 job, freedom from your boss, freedom to go out when they want etc. All this freedom luxury isn't available for most self-employed because they still have bosses, either the customer or the business.
Remember your economics class on the four factors of production and their rewards: Land - Rent, Labour - Wages/salary, Capital - Interest, Entrepreneurship - Profit.
The goal of every self-employed person, is to grow into an entrepreneur/capitalist. If you can do this, then your small business becomes an investment and whether or not the entrepreneur is present, this time he keeps earning dividends/cash-flow/profit but not salary. Its the self employed who is a labourer for his business earns salary instead.
You're still self employed if your employees would call you before making any sales decision in the office, you're still part of the product. You're still self employed if your employees cannot run your business smoothly if you're not in the office. True freedom and entrepreneurship is when you can take a vacation at anytime  and be rest assured your cash-flow would keep going up. One major reason most small businesses never scale through being small is because the self-employed person only trusts himself to run his business. Trust issues were probably even the reason your previous boss in the office was harsh on you. Learn to trust people by employing the right people and adapting the right systems to run your business effectively. Be the boss you wanted your former boss to be. When your business system isn't well developed, then it becomes a struggle for money between you and your employees to monitor cash-flow. Imagine how bosses of multinational companies maintain thousands of staff and the company's revenue keeps going up. Before you start your business, think, strategize and research on your expansion plan so you wont just be self-employed but you will graduate to being an entrepreneur and a capitalist.

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