15 Characteristics & Traits Of A Successful Entrepreneur
Entrepreneurship has become extremely attractive in the 21st century and almost everyone dreams of owning their own business one day. The sad truth of the matter is that most businesses will fail and it takes a solid set of characteristics to make in the business world.
There is good news also for any would be entrepreneurs, the task of setting up a successful business has never been so accessible to so many people. It is true that the same characteristics are needed to make it in the business world today just as much as the past but with the expansion of the internet, there has literally never been so many opportunities available and so many ways to mitigate the risks of starting up.
In the past, you would need to spend thousands on stock and a premises in the hope of making sales, now you can print on demand, get a book published for free and reach millions of people through Youtube from the comfort of your own home.
If you are ready to join the Entrepreneur revolution then read on for the key defining characteristics and traits that make a successful business person.
Burning Desire
Just like the book ‘Think And Grow Rich’ by Napoleon Hill claims as the first characteristic of a successful entrepreneur, our first trait is that of having a burning desire to start a successful business. You’re not going to start a successful business by accident and you cant just kind of want to do it.
They say that we take action when the pain of staying the same outweighs the pain of making a change and that is what it is for me. Almost everybody want to start a business but almost nobody wants it bad enough to take action.
Once you get that burning desire burning in your heart, you are well on your way starting a successful business.
They Take Action
It’s not enough just to want to be a successful entrepreneur, you have to take action towards your goal. When I started out in business, I gave myself 6 months to save enough money to get started, to rapidly increase my business knowledge and to get as much practical hands on experience as possible before the date came and when I did come, I did not hesitate to pull the trigger, hand in my notice and get started.
Taking action to start the business is just the first step, you then have to continually take action to get the business off the ground. I rang friends to ask them if I could make their websites for free to get experience and to begin building a portfolio and then I went out business to business looking for new customers.
The truth is that you will have to constantly take action if you want to succeed in business and these skilled can be learned once the desire is strong enough.
If you are somebody that likes to take a back seat, you can also get a job or become an Intrapreneur.
They Are Persistant
“Success is the accumulation of small steps taken everyday towards a worthy goal.”
To be successful as an entrepreneur, you need to show up everyday and take another step towards your goals. One of my favourite Entrepreneurs said it very well when it comes to judging how successful an entrepreneur will be when he said.
“You shouldn’t judge someone by their best 10 days in the year, you can judge someones success much better by looking at their 10 worst days of the year.”
If you are looking at your worst 10 days and there is not a good amount of work in them, you may not be persistent enough to make at the highest levels of business.
Entrepreneurship is like a rollercoaster, you can be up one minute and down the next but you need to keep pushing forward no matter what is happening in the business and take small steps in the right direction every day, even if that direction changes every once in a while.
Take Set Backs In Their Stride
Entrepreneurship is never going to be plain sailing all of the time and things aren’t always going to go your way. The best entrepreneurs, when met with a set back, take it in their stride and can turn anything to their advantage in the long run.
Set backs should be more common in your early days of entrepreneurship before you have built a strong and durable business and when it does strike, you shouldn’t break stride but keep moving forward.
Potential set backs can include losing key customers which can be difficult to deal with in your early days, Google penalties which I have been hit by, hacking, acts of God like the current pandemic which has pulled the rug from under a lot of otherwise successful businesses. Their can be various other difficulties along the road and if you react with the same eagerness you started your business with, you should be fine.
They Know How To Pivot
The plan that you start out with isn’t necessarily going to be plan that makes you successful. The best entrepreneurs are constantly building their knowledge and experience as they go and this can lead them to realising a change of direction might be more beneficial.
For me personally, I started out in Web Design and Digital Marketing as I knew these were key skills that can basically build a business on their own and we made tons of businesses super successful.
Those top spots in organic search can bring in a whole lot of customers and having mastered the process, the door is wide open for you to do the same with your own businesses and that is exactly what we did.
We became so good at SEO that we just build out own blogs that produce a full time income every month and they are completely passive as well as getting sales for our own Print On Demand E-Commerce stores for years on end through SEO.
I always planned to pivot and there are a ton of other people that have either pivoted their business or started second businesses that were much more successful.
They Are Always Learning New Skills
In the current digital age, the technology is moving faster than ever before and you had better keep up if you want to stay on top in your industry and gaining new skills is a key element of a successful business person.
For successful entrepreneurs the fun stops when they aren’t learning when you master a skill in business, it is time to delegate it and learn another skill and there are plenty to choose from.
In the online world you have Google, Youtube, Facebook And Microsoft Bing that are going to be big players for almost any business whether you are utilising free or paid traffic and then you have other avenues and social platforms that will suit different types of business.
You also have web design and as a business you need to have a good grasp on these or they will run away from you. Master them and you can make a fortune from people who can’t.
This is just one example. You could move from Residential to commercial with fitouts or you can go for Residential property to commercial property in real estate.
Whatever industry you are in, increase your knowledge, skills and experience will lead to increase earning potential.
They Are Hard Working & Self Motivated
Successful Entrepreneurs don’t need an alarm clock to wake up in the morning, they are self motivated and the vast majority of them will be up early in the morning, long before regular employees will roll out of bed after hitting the snooze button on their alarm for the seventh time.
While some successful entrepreneurs will be night people who do their best work past midnight, the majority will find peace in the early mornings when there is no distractions and their mind can fully engage on the task at hand.
There are plenty of books like The Miracle Morning that explain the importance of waking up at 6 or 7am and getting in some meditation, exercise or your most important work.
Successful entrepreneurs know that success will come because of their daily habits and one that they all share is hard work. Plenty of successful business people I know will work 14 hours a day/7 days a week (Including myself) and this compounds over the years into stunning returns, despite any number of setbacks along the way.
The time is going to pass anyway, you may as well put it to the best use possible.
They Read A Lot Of Books
“The average CEO reads 50 books per year, the average employee read 1”
Which do you want to be?
With the popularity of Audiobooks and coaching programs these days, many modern Entrepreneurs turn their cars and travelling time into mobile university, increasing their knowledge in time that would have otherwise gone to waste.
Every Entrepreneur is bound to make mistakes on the journey to wealth and they often record their wins and losses in books and coaching programs.
Successful business people can learn from years of wisdom and identify their mistakes early, correct them and achieve far greater success in their businesses and lives.
Learning from your own mistakes will make you rich, learning from other peoples mistakes will make you wealthy.
They Are Passionate About What They Do
The honeymoon period of owning and running your own business is something that pass very quickly if you have no interest in the topic you are working.
If you have a mild interest you can be extremely successful but all the really successful period have a passion for what they are doing and this love for the work drives them forward even when they are having doubts or going through the inevitable ups and downs of being an Entrepreneur.
If you love what you are doing, you can find new ways to expand as you are constantly seeing new opportunities. Your target market is just like you and you have a deep understanding of what you want.
Having helped businesses to grow for over 10 years, I have seen people whose hearts aren’t in the work and it is like a job for them, there is no passion. I have seen a 30 year old male with no children setting up a business for new mothers and it is something that might make money but it is not going to satisfy you long term. Remember money is just a measure of success in business. Happiness, abundance and love are the measures of wealth in your life.
They Write Down Their Goals & Visualize Their Attainment
Writing down your goals is a powerful exercise that all successful use to steer the direction of their lives. Grant Cardone is a billionaire investor and one of my favourite Entrepreneurs. He writes down his goals daily.
The people who write down their goals and actually can visualise and imagine them clearly in their heads will tell you with surprising regularity about how the goals they wrote down actually came to fruition.
Your mind is listening to everything you say and your subconscious mind will believe whatever you tell it once you believe it and the world will conspire to help you achieve those goals.
Writing down your 1 month, 1 year and 5 year goals can help you extensively in reaching your goals and becoming successful.
They Are Calculated Risk Takers
“Taking no risk is the biggest risk of all.”
Entrepreneurs understand this more than anybody else. Sitting in a safe, secure yet unrewarding job may provide you with financial stability but you will regret this approach in your old age if you go to the grave with all of your music still inside you.
This is not to say that successful entrepreneurs will go to the casino and gamble all of their wealth on red or black at the casino. It means that they will get as much information and security as they possibly can and then trust their gut that they can turn the opportunity into a winner.
Entrepreneurs will often fail in their first venture but come back with more knowledge and experience for their second, sometimes third attempt and hit it big.
Risk is always going to be a part of business and you have to take on some element of risk to be successful in anything you do, especially in business.
They Cut Out Bad Habits And Limit Their Expenses
You are going to find it hard to get to the top with bad habits like drinking, taking drugs and partying. These not only take your mind off the task at hand, they put you in contact with the wrong people and eat up your money.
Successful Entrepreneurship is about taking care of your money and learning to multiply it over time. If you live a moderate lifestyle, your money will build up steadily and if your income far exceeds your expenditure, you will have a lot more cash to invest when the opportunities do come around.
Expensive cars and fancy houses are often shows made by people who can’t really afford them, to impress people they don’t like and they are often bought on finance from the bank.
Remember that houses and cars can’t be an asset for you and the bank at the same time.
They Know What An Asset Is
Successful people know that Assets put money in your pocket and liabilities take money out of your pocket.
Buying a house to live in can be one of the worst investments you can make because it doesn’t produce any income. If you want a really good understanding of what an asset and a liability is, I suggest you read Robert Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad Poor Dad. This book has given millions of people around the world, the financial educate that the school system has failed to give them and will help you to acquire assets.
They Know How To Network And Keep A Small Circle Of Good Friends
“If you show me your friends, I will show you your financial future.”
It is no secret that we become like the people we spend the most time with and if we spend time with that are on or above our level, they will challenge us to up our game and improve our standards.
If we spend our time with people who are not striving for improvement or pushing for greatness, we will start to drift in that direction also.
Successful Entrepreneurs go to events and build a solid network of successful friends that will help them to build their business, careers and wealth over time.
They Are Big Thinkers
“We become what we think about everyday.”
If you are dreaming about owning a small business or see yourself as a bit time player, that is what you will end up as or even worse, you will be out of business. If you thinking about dominating an industry in your country, that is probably what you will achieve and if you dream to have a global brand, you will probably get exactly what you wished and put the work in for.
The most successful entrepreneurs set out with big goals and they backed their ambitions up with the work required to make them a reality.
It takes the same effort to achieve a big dream as it does to create a small business so you may as well shoot for the stars!
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