The cruel truth is that entrepreneurship does not suit all people. To be successful in business, one must have specific, basic, personal skills and characteristics. Successful entrepreneurs may be quite different (how much can Steve Jobs look like Richard Branson?) but there are certain characteristics that they have in common.
The road to entrepreneurship is not easy. So, if you have a business idea and you are thinking of implementing it, it would be very useful to make an honest, sober and cool assessment of your own personal characteristics, compared to the entrepreneur characteristics that follow. See which of these characteristics you possess, which you can acquire / learn and then proceed to your own evaluation.
So successful entrepreneurs…
are emotionally strong. They are not afraid to lose, they do not feel sorry for themselves and they do not find excuses. This means that they are also optimistic by nature. In everything they see the opportunity and not the problem. But beware! The successful businessman is optimistic, not utopian. Realism and contact with reality are also crucial to a businessman’s success.
are flexible. In other words, they are not afraid of change and learn to adapt. We live in an age where everything changes very quickly. The most valuable personal skill nowadays is flexibility, let alone entrepreneurship. A technological innovation, a new business model (such as the sharing economy and Airbnb) can change our daily lives and the reality around us. The entrepreneur understands that the future is unpredictable and that he will have to overcome obstacles he has not foreseen.
have a vision and passion for what they do. There are very few cases of entrepreneurs who rose to the top, with money being their only motivation. Most had a greater vision of creation. If you do not have vision and passion for what you do, then you will easily give up after the first difficulty. And it is inevitable that there will be difficulties and obstacles in your business course. To succeed, you need to have clear goals, to know with realism where you are and what you want to achieve in the next two or five years.
are disciplined. Success is not a given. It is won. This means that entrepreneurs are fully focused on their goal. Absolute commitment and dedication are critical to business success. No one succeeded in doing business… in their spare time.
are trainable. A businessman knows… that he does not know everything. It goes without saying that for many issues he will seek the help of partners. This does not mean, however, that he stops trying to learn. The successful entrepreneur understands that he needs to have basic knowledge of everything, even the areas he has outsourced in order to know what to ask of them and to be able to control them. For the successful entrepreneur, training is an ongoing process. “ability to train” implies another key feature: the ability to listen and understand your interlocutor. In other words, to listen to understand and not just to answer. Only if you really listen to what others tell you can you better respond to the needs of your customers, you can find solutions to problems, you can evaluate the people and situations around you.
are creative. Since you will be working alone and you will not have any manager above you telling you what to do, you need to be able to think creatively. The most basic rule of entrepreneurship is that whoever does not grow dies. To achieve this enduring growth, however, the entrepreneur needs to invent proposals, solutions and come up with ideas.
think strategically. Successful entrepreneurs need to be able to “see the big picture”. They look at a subject from many different angles. They can also predict trends, guess how the market will move, see where there is a gap and opportunity to position themselves. Strategic thinking is not divination. It is based on very good data collection, complete information, multifaceted knowledge and plain common sense.
