Entrepreneurs are very different from one another. However, the most successful business leaders tend to have a few qualities in common. You’ll soon learn the 5 traits of successful entrepreneurs.
Discipline
If one doesn’t have the discipline to work 60+ hour weeks, carry on when the funding has dried up, or try to fix a fractured business relationship, they will not have the firepower needed to go through all of the ups and downs that comes with running a business. While it’s easy to look at the Jeff Bezos, the Steve Jobs, and the Jack Dorseys of the world and say that you want to be just like them, it’s not as easy to put in the herculean amount of effort that they did to make their empires.
You can’t Netflix and chill for 5 hours while saying that you want to be a billionaire. Billionaires don’t Netflix and chill for hours on end every night. They work. On weekends. On holidays. On the days that their friends are drinking beers on the beach. Discipline is one of the traits of successful entrepreneurs, not spending your time debating trolls on Twitter.
Having An Open Mind
Before Amazon, people who wanted a certain book either had to go to their library or to their local bookstore. If the library or bookstore didn’t have a certain book, you were out of luck. It took a dreamer like Jeff Bezos to imagine a world where you could go onto a website, select the book you wanted, and have it delivered to your home within days. It didn’t matter that the World Wide Web was barely a thing when Amazon started. What Bezos saw was possibility. Now he’s one of the richest people on the planet. When you have an open mind, almost anything can happen.
Confidence
When they started, many entrepreneurs had their friends, family, and peers laugh in their faces when they told them their business ideas. Now the laughers ask these entrepreneurs for money and business advice! The philosopher Aristotle said that if you don’t ever want to be criticized, don’t say anything or be anything. Remember that it’s easy to criticize others when you’re not putting anything of value into the world. So unless the person ridiculing your business idea is a successful entrepreneur and knows of what they speak, have confidence in your ideas and yourself. Years later, you’ll have the last laugh.
Competitive Spirit
It’s good to be nice. But to become a successful entrepreneur, you will also need a competitive spirit. If your business idea is innovative and has a minimal amount of success, the copycats will soon come around the corner. Those copycats will do anything to crush you. If you compete with everything you have, you’ll rise above those that just want to ride on the coattails of those that are more creative than them. To succeed in business, you can’t be afraid to compete. Economic competition is what makes the free world great. Be great by starting a business that serves the marketplace, creates jobs, and provides value to the world.
Perseverance
Had Steve Jobs just went off and spent his fortune after getting fired from Apple, would Apple have turned into the personal computing juggernaut that it has today? Probably not. If Sara Blakely gave up after being told “no” by hundreds of retailers, would women all over the world regularly include Spanx as a part of their outfits? No, they wouldn’t. The late Steve Jobs turned Apple into what is today a trillion dollar company. Sara Blakely is now the youngest self made female billionaire in history.
If you’re going to be an entrepreneur, giving up can’t be an option. That’s because starting a business is impossible without perseverance. Even before the pandemic, entrepreneurs always had to overcome a lot of obstacles to make it.
These days, even the biggest companies had to do major pivots these past few months. Perseverance is of the utmost importance in a business landscape where 60% of small businesses have closed permanently since the pandemic started. But whether your corporation has tens of thousands of employees or just ten, having the perseverance to see you and your business out of this and other quagmires is the sign of a true entrepreneur.