What does being an entrepreneur really mean? How do you make your work a meaningful part of your life without becoming consumed by it? How do you revive your own entrepreneurial spirit and even incorporate it into your workplace? Gregg Vanourek, co-author of Life Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives, answers these questions in a Q&A about his book published in U.S. News & World Report.

Some highlights:
•According to Vanourek, people confuse owning a small business with entrepreneurship, but these aren’t exactly the same. Rather entrepreneurship is a state of mind that encompasses ingenuity and innovation. “You can’t be entrepreneurial without being innovative,” Vanourek says.

•Integrating your personal and professional life is not about working through the weekends; instead it’s about “being the same person in your personal life that you are at work,” Vanourek says. It’s “knowing what your values are, what your strengths and passions are, and bringing those to bear in your work, and your personal life, so that you’re the same person across all of those different roles,” he says.

Tags: business, Innovation, small business