Entrepreneurship is about many things. It is about people, about our relationships, our needs and desires, about becoming rich or poor, about successes and failures, about risk-taking and uncertainty, about curiosity and learning. No doubt, entrepreneurship is a key socio-economic phenomenon. It is often considered a remedy for economic, social, and currently even environmental diseases and discussed within the context of economic growth, employment and overall non-stagnant development of humankind. Entrepreneurship is also about a person and their journey, about crafting a path one takes.

Though entrepreneurship is associated with action and result-driven activities, learning through reflexivity is a necessary part of entrepreneuring, particularly at the beginning of the journey. What does “becoming an entrepreneur” mean for me? Why do I strive to become one? I want to become an entrepreneur as who? What does restrict me from entrepreneuring and why do I resist entrepreneurship learning? These questions, along with a multiplicity of more specific others, unveil the personal identity work of an individual who considers becoming an entrepreneur and gets involved in entrepreneuring.

In this autoethnographic study, I was observing myself during an entrepreneurial journey. The journey implied learning about, for, and through entrepreneurship, including the creative organizing of a language camp. Drawing on this authentic experience of entrepreneuring and research literature that discusses identifying self in the field of entrepreneurship, I reveal how identity work unfolds during an entrepreneurial journey and thereafter.

I answer the posed research question by presenting autoethnographic stories which are based on experiences from the entrepreneurial journey. In those stories, I expose vulnerable moments of hesitating to act, being confused and feeling insecure, and moments of questioning myself as an entrepreneurial individual. In those episodes, small encounters provoke emotional response and identity work that reveals an entrepreneuring person as a reflexive and doubting individual.

The study shows that identity work during an entrepreneurial journey can unfold as experiencing being in between a present self-image and an unclear image of a future self as an entrepreneur. The unclear image partly relates to the conflict between personally relatable examples of entrepreneurs and a socially constructed image of a “real entrepreneur”, presented as gender-neutral, but in practice performed as a masculine hero entrepreneur. Therefore, the study suggests that critical revision of what constitutes the image of an entrepreneur is crucial for identity work during the early stages of an entrepreneurial journey.

In addition, the study discusses identifying the self as an immigrant during an entrepreneurial journey and recognizing a liminal position that manifests in looking for belonging. The in-betweenness experienced by a migrant provokes a feeling of insecurity. At the same time, the need to belong encourages one to get involved in entrepreneuring because it is one of the ways to connect self to the society that does not require fitting in, but, instead might be a way to restore the sense of self challenged due to migration.

The methodological contribution of the dissertation lies in applying elements of autoethnography and enactive research in entrepreneurship studies. This study relies on observing myself in the process of entrepreneuring. It responds to the calls of researchers who rely on feminist methodology and suggests that entrepreneurship studies need to expose a vulnerable self for a better understanding of entrepreneuring as creative organizing entwined with practices of everyday life.