ENTREPRENEURIAL TRAITS

Entrepreneurial Traits

Discover The 15 Traits of Successful Entrepreneurs

ENTREPRENEURIAL TRAITS
Are great entrepreneurs made or born? Many individuals struggle
with this question in the quest of starting and operating a
business. It is not an easy task growing a business from the idea
stage to a big business with huge profit margins.

The trend of life shows that even the individuals born with a silver
spoon in the mouth, hard work beats talent anytime. It is for this
reason that an entrepreneur must be willing to work hard as well
as smart to realize the success of their ventures. Do you think you
have the necessary traits to become a success entrepreneur?

According to Entrepreneur.com, all entrepreneurs come from the

same cloth; they hail from different geographical backgrounds,
upbringings, education levels, social classes, et al. While there is
no proven blueprint to entrepreneurial success, all the individuals
that have been successful in business have the following traits.

ENTREPRENEURIAL TRAITS
Craves Learning

Credit: Pricenfees

Entrepreneurs must be witty and sharp, and that means they must
always be learning. In the modern era, sectors and industry are
experiencing constant change while evolving very fast. Through

ENTREPRENEURIAL TRAITS
continuous learning, you will be able to stay ahead of the
competition and abreast of the market and industrial trends.

Regularly read books and wake up early in the morning to

familiarize yourself with the news shaping your industry and do
everything in your power to learn and gain more information. This
will help you in warding off competition and having insight into
innovations.

Visionaries
All the successful entrepreneurs that come to mind are
visionaries. It is a defining trait of entrepreneurship to identify an
opportunity and envision reaching unimaginable heights by
others. Being a visionary enables the entrepreneur to have a
particular curiosity that puts their businesses at the forefront of
emerging fields and leaders in innovation.

There will be obstacles along the way, Net Optics Founder, Eldad
Matityahu who sold his business for $190 million says,
“Entrepreneurs will face naysayers, but because we have the
ability to see the eventuality before it plays out, you have to be
several moves ahead of the market and the world.”

ENTREPRENEURIAL TRAITS
Risk Takers
The entrepreneurs making headlines in the world today and in the
days of the past like Bill Gates, John D. Rockefeller, Henry Ford,
Barbara Corcoran, Donald J. Trump, Richard Branson, and much
more took significant risks to get what everybody else dreamed of
acquiring. Unlike most people in the world today who have ideas,
they are constantly afraid of taking risks that will increase their
margins.

Successful entrepreneurs have a tolerance of ambiguity, which is

the ability to withstand the fear of uncertainty as well as the
potential failure. Michael Sherrod, the entrepreneur - in –
residence at the prestigious Neeley School of Business at the
Texas Christian University says, “it all boils down to having the
ability to manage fear successfully.”

Calculated risks are the way to go instead of blindly making leaps

of faith. As the adage goes, you do not test the depth of the river
with both feet, so it is necessary that you be careful with the kind
of risks you take and always have a plan.

ENTREPRENEURIAL TRAITS
Understand That Failure Is Part of
Success
It does not matter how many you times you fail, but what is
important is how many times you stand up, brush off the dirt and
soldier on and concur. Richard Branson once said, “Very few first
ventures take off. It is how a first-time entrepreneur deals with
failure that sets them apart.” Failure is among the secrets to
success since some of the best ideas rise from the ashes of a
failed business.

Understanding the above proposition, as an entrepreneur, you

must view the failures as learning experiences. Failure teaches
the willing entrepreneurs more than they learned from a
classroom.

Planners
Many people go into entrepreneurship for the freedom of
managing their own time and resources. It is a good reason, but
one needs to plan their entrepreneurial journey. This allows one
to get clear the vision and objectives of their business.

ENTREPRENEURIAL TRAITS
Planning gives the entrepreneur the ability of foresight enabling
one to allocate resources for any outcomes.

Fully Determined
After the creation of the plan of action, all entrepreneurs must
make a decision to commit and maintain a high level of
determination to attain success. Growing a business, hiring new
employees, and increasing profits amongst other logistics require
that you create goals and be determined to see them finished to
the last positive outcome.

Sustaining a business involves taking on a heavy workload, and

the buck stops with the entrepreneur. This challenge is enough to
discourage many would-be entrepreneurs. Before you embark on
the journey, you must be fully determined to see the business
through, and this will prop you up even when the pressure of the
business mounts.

The gist of running a business is in learning from failures and

having the determination of seeing the business turn a profit and
become successful. When failure happens, you have to start over
again, and the tenacity of building a better business is the
motivation to many successful entrepreneurs of our age.

ENTREPRENEURIAL TRAITS
Passionate

Credit: Pricenfees

Passion is the fuel that drives commitment and determination

necessary to succeed on the entrepreneurial journey. As an
entrepreneur, you have to appreciate what you do, and it starts
with knowing why you went into the business.

Passion based on your business’s particular mission is an intrinsic

drive that carries you through the long days and the long nights
that consume your energy for life. Without passion, you will easily
cave into the stress, and the pressure and your entrepreneurial

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journey will be a short lived one. Passion provides the
entrepreneur with an internal reward that sustains them between
paydays.

Self Discipline
One trait that is common with many successful entrepreneurs is
that they are masters of self-discipline. In the beginning, the
entrepreneur is motivated and puts in the hours as well as the
work to turn the business into a successful venture. The early
stages are full of intrigue, and the entrepreneurs feed off the
intrigue.

It takes a high level of self-discipline to maintain the motivation in

any situation of the businesses whether things are good or going
bad. Self-discipline is the trait that carries the entrepreneur
through when the glamour and the motivation of being an
entrepreneur are waning. It makes sense to be self-disciplined
and self-denial to achieve a much bigger reward especially when
it comes to finances.

ENTREPRENEURIAL TRAITS
Highly Confident
Ask any entrepreneur what gets them through the day, confidence
will inevitably crop up. Entrepreneurs that have a high level of
confidence have an added advantage and can get the job done
irrespective of the state of the conditions of the business.
Significant challenges result in big rewards.

Confidence is the one trait that enables the entrepreneur to see

opportunities where others see challenges and no chance of
success. It is confidence that makes the successful entrepreneur
visualize a reward when others see intractable problems. As the
founder of FragranceNet.com, Jason Apfel, a successful
entrepreneur must have a lot of confidence, be willing to take a
risk but be conservative.

Highly Adaptable
Times are ever changing, and this means that the business
landscape is constantly shifting ground. It was a shock for Nokia
and Kodak who refused to realize the changing times and got
phased out to near extinction. As an entrepreneur, you cannot
see what is coming even with the best plans and strategies that

ENTREPRENEURIAL TRAITS
are why the best entrepreneurs are highly adaptable in the
modern era.

Adaptability and intuition will help you to cope and respond

quickly in any situation. Being adaptable helps you to make
decisions that navigate you out of oncoming trouble. It also helps
you to thrive in certain environments that would sink your
business.

Over and above to be a successful entrepreneur, you have to be

willing, to be candid with yourself as well as accept what is not
working. This will allow you to be a pivot and weigh options that
will carry your business into the future with profitability.

Expert Networker
In the modern era, you are worth as much as your network.
Contrary to opinions, having a collection of business cards with an
equally huge contact list does not mean you have a strong
network. Successful entrepreneurs know practice to build value-
based relationships. Such networks are what lead to mutually
beneficial business opportunities.

ENTREPRENEURIAL TRAITS
Successful entrepreneurs are constantly engaging with individuals
who will impact their business today as well as the future. The
single rule of networking is that you should not be selfish. To build
a strong network, always seek to help someone out before the
relationship can become beneficial to you.

Good at Sales and Marketing

You might have the best idea, products, or services, but the
numbers from your margins are what count most. From the
popular TV show Shark Tank, Mark Cuban is always stressing on
the fact that knowing how to sell is a crucial part of growing a
successful business.

Successful entrepreneurs are always on the lookout to find the

best way to express what makes their product or service the best
solution to a customer’s problem. This is only possible through
practice, and your employees will take your cue when you
demonstrate how to make money.

Manage Fear
There are many fears associated with going into business. From
the fear of failure, humiliation, running out of cash, missing

ENTREPRENEURIAL TRAITS
payroll, et al. to many successful entrepreneurs, it is fear that
makes them work hard and achieve their targets. Blashack
Strahan, the founder and CEO of Tastefully Simple, say, “the
ultimate entrepreneurial test takes place on the battlefield found in
the mind.”

To be a successful entrepreneur, you must commit mentally, and

it is the basis for the action that follows. Learn to manage fear
even in the face of adversity and have the conviction that you
have control over the outcome of the situation.

Rule Breakers
The essential goal of starting a business is to bring a different
solution to the problems that users phase and the current systems
are not in a position to offer them. It is for this reason that
entrepreneurs exist to challenge conventional wisdom. Starting a
business is itself a way of breaking the rules with less than 20% of
the population engaging in entrepreneurship.

In a survey by Yona Rubinstein of the London School of

Economics and Ross Levine of the University of California,
Berkeley discovered out that of the incorporated entrepreneurs,
they all have a combination of illicit risk-taking activities,

ENTREPRENEURIAL TRAITS
aggressiveness, and smarts. Engaging in the activities that the
majority is not doing is the essential nature of entrepreneurship.
To be a successful entrepreneur, you must be out to break the
rules of conventional wisdom but with a goal of making things
better.

Team Players

Photo Credit

An adage goes, if you want to go fast, go alone, if you want to go

far, go with people. The aspects of running a business are a
stressful lot and many entrepreneurs decide to go at it alone.

ENTREPRENEURIAL TRAITS
Successful entrepreneurs, on the other hand, know the value of
having a team of talented people who walk the journey with them
and the experience is more fulfilling, unlike the individual
entrepreneurs.

Do you have the above traits? The only way to discover out is to
start actualizing your business ideas and build a business.

Successful entrepreneurs who have stuck with the traits above

have gone to become serial entrepreneurs. Notable
entrepreneurs include Elon Musk, Richard Branson, Daymond
John, Mark Cuban, Barbara Corcoran, Robert Herjavec, Kevin
O'Leary, et al. These successful entrepreneurs show that getting
successful in one venture is not the end of the entrepreneurial
story.

As you figure out the winning formula in business, ensure that you
collect experience, talent, and resources as you scale your way
up to entrepreneurial glory.

ENTREPRENEURIAL TRAITS