It’s takes a certain kind of person to be an entrepreneur — one who is willing and able to risk a lot, one who is driven to see their dream succeed often at great personal cost, one who can see an opportunity and, more importantly, believes it’s theirs for the taking.

At Gibbons Whistler, we think less about the question of whether or not entrepreneurs are born or made and more about the question: How can we, within our group of Whistler companies, make people more entrepreneurial?

It’s an interesting question as Gibbons works on its latest entrepreneurial adventure, our startup — Gibbons Life. We’re doing it in the most public of all forums — reality TV. Talk about taking a risk!

The thing is, we believe whole-heartedly in this startup, just as we believe in all our new endeavours from the creation of our festivals and events division to our expansion into developing our own beer and spirits.

But back to Gibbons Life, the new side of our company that’s on everyone’s radar.

We’re 100 per cent serious about trying to fill what we feel is a gap in the Whistler marketplace with our travel company that attracts the adult market from around the world.

By going after it, we’re setting the example of a way of thinking that we want to see filter throughout the team, empowering everyone. Be fearless, don’t fret about potential failure, that fear of failure simply goes hand in hand with the dream of success, strive to be better.

We believe we can teach our team to think like entrepreneurs, innovate like entrepreneurs, behave with the same boldness and beliefs as entrepreneurs and, ultimately, reap the rewards like entrepreneurs.

This goes for our whole team, from the entry level workers right through to our senior team.

Rather than be threatened by their growing success, we see this as an opportunity to make the people we work with  better, light the fire within them, give them the confidence to go for it. If we can create a business that inspires entrepreneurs within it and they innovate our business to become better, we’re happy to support them as entrepreneurs outside of the Gibbons safety net.

It’s an interesting topic in light of Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW) last week. This is a celebration of “the innovators and job creators who launch startups that bring ideas to life, drive economic growth and expand human welfare.”

Stay tuned to this blog and we’ll show you how we’re making our business more entrepreneurial year over year.