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How do you Recognize an Entrepreneur?
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Many people dream of starting their own businesses, but not everyone is cut out for this line of work. Being employed by someone else offers a slew of advantages, from health insurance and matching retirement contributions to a regular schedule and the company of coworkers. If you're thinking about striking out on your own, consider carefully whether you have what it takes to be successful.
Are good leaders made or are they born? No one knows for sure, but successful entrepreneurs tend to share these traits:
To be successfully self-employed, you need to have the discipline to set work hours, meet deadlines, pursue new clients and avoid tempting distractions.
To prevent yourself from going broke when your business is new or times are slow, you must be willing to cut back, sometimes way back, on your spending. Remaining self-employed has to be a top priority above buying new clothes or other niceties. It's a good idea to be frugal not just in slow months, but in the good ones as well to give yourself a well-padded savings account to tide you over when your business isn't generating income.
To successfully sell yourself to others, you have to be your own biggest fan. If you don't believe you're one of the best at what you do, no one else will either. Business will rarely just fall into your lap, so you'll need to be willing to promote yourself and ask for work whenever and wherever possible.
Clients won't always make their expectations clear. Rather than guessing what they want, you must not be afraid to ask lots of questions. It's also a good idea to ask for feedback during and after assignments to make sure you're meeting your clients' expectations.
Few clients will expect you to be perfect, but if you can't fess up and apologize when you make a mistake, you'll get crossed off their lists. When you're self-employed, your reputation is crucial. You don't have the image of a company to fall back on or make up for the occasional bad employee. You are the company and you are the employee. Everything you do needs to reflect well on your business.
While there's no one-size-fits-all model for real entrepreneurs, there are a number of common themes. It's not a laundry list of attributes or qualities, but more about their behavior and motivation. What makes them unique is what they do and, just as important, what they don't do. Becoming a real entrepreneur is certainly not preordained, but it's not a cakewalk either. The following traits, in my experience, are what sets real entrepreneurs apart from the crowd.
Passion is the primary source of all the behaviors that make entrepreneurs successful. Their passion for their work is at their very core. It's what motivates and inspires them. It's what sets them apart.
That's what makes finding what you love to do, what makes you obsessive and crazed with excitement, so critical to becoming a successful entrepreneur. It's what drives you to work 24/7 and not give a crap that the rest of your life has gone to hell. It's what keeps you going when everyone says you're nuts. It's what occupies your mind every waking moment and keeps you hungry and focused on accomplishing that one thing.
Steve Jobs was a card-carrying control freak, a maniacal micromanager who could never pay too much attention to the details of the companies and products he built. Had he been any other way, Apple would not be Apple today. Neither would Pixar be Pixar. Nearly every great entrepreneur I can think of -- Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Mark Zuckerberg, Michael Dell, and a laundry list of those less famous -- were all passionate about their work.
If you find that you're always in need of motivation and inspiration, all that means is you haven't found what you love doing yet. Keep looking. Keep the faith. You'll find it.
Real entrepreneurs never think about work-life balance. They don't do a little of this and a little of that. They don't do things in half measures. When they hit on something they think is really cool and exciting, they go all in. They don't just dip their toes in the water. They jump in headfirst without a moment's thought about the rocks below. They're mostly workaholics because their work comes first. It's what they live for. They're not freewheeling, fun-loving people who live for the weekend. They live to do what they love, and that's work. While everyone else complains about how much they have to work, successful entrepreneurs usually have to be pried away from it.
They don't take risks for the sake of taking risks. They just don't let anything stand in the way of what drives them. Risk just comes with the territory. So does facing fear. Great entrepreneurs often appear to be fearless, but that's certainly not the case. They feel fear just like you and me -- they just don't let it stop them from accomplishing what they set out to do. They don't succumb to those voices in their heads -- the ones that taunt you with everything that can go wrong. Their motivation, their passion, is simply strong enough to overcome their fear. Or maybe they just don't think about it.
When Dan Aykroyd as Elwood Blues said, "We're on a mission from God" with that deadpan delivery, you knew that nothing was going to stop the Blues Brothers from getting the band back together. Not a bunch of angry Winnebago-driving hillbillies with shotguns, Aretha Franklin as Matt Guitar Murphy's pissed-off wife, a high-speed car chase through a shopping mall, or what appeared to be the entire Chicago police force.
Great entrepreneurs also often seem to be on a mission from God. When they speak about their vision or idea, you'd swear they've been possessed by some sort of demon that, instead of inciting chaos and mischief, inspires innovation and creation. There's definitely an aspect of fanaticism in their zeal for whatever has captured their imagination. And it's often fueled by an unnatural belief that they're special, an aspect that can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. In his seminal book Organizing Genius: The Secrets of Creative Collaboration, five of Warren Bennis' 15 lessons of what he calls "Great Groups" are that they "see themselves as winning underdogs," "always have an enemy," "have blinders on," always have "a strong leader," and "think they are on a mission from God." One of the groups profiled in the book is Apple's first Macintosh design team, which Steve Jobs famously told their purpose was to "make a dent in the universe." And they did.
When you work with successful entrepreneurs on a daily basis, you begin to wonder what it takes to influence them. They always seem to march to the beat of a drum only they can hear -- they follow no one.
To them, there's no such thing as conventional wisdom. They have no patience for the status quo. Tell them how things are done, have been done, or should be done, and you're likely to receive an intimidating stare or be summarily written off as a lost cause.
They have no interest in what anyone else says or does. The word popular has no meaning to them. They're indifferent to social conventions and societal norms. They don't have personal brands, and they don't try to be what they're not. They're true to themselves and comfortable in their own skin. Dealing with them is relatively simple and straightforward: What you see is what you get.
They strongly identify with their passion, their company, and their products. And when it comes to anything related to their work, they have their own methods, their own way of doing things.
They're generally business-savvy, quick on the uptake, and born troubleshooters and problem solvers. They're not particularly patient, don't mince words, and don't typically suffer fools lightly. They're confident and competent. They are decision makers, not consensus builders. They listen to others, but in the end, they only trust their own gut.
True entrepreneurs carve their own unique path. They're the makers of their own destiny. And they shape the world we live in.
Entrepreneurship has nothing to do with beliefs or even traits -- it's entirely about behavior. It's about starting a business and risking loss to make money. It's about organizing and managing a company with real products, customers, and employees. And until you accomplish that, it's a good idea to lose the labels and get to work.
If these four traits don't fit you perfectly, don't panic. It doesn't mean you can't own a franchise or two, a dry-cleaning business, or a restaurant. It doesn't mean you can't be self-employed or a small-business owner. But if you want to do great things, if you want to be a real entrepreneur who starts, runs, and grows a successful, thriving business, you've certainly got your work cut out for you.
Andries van Tonder
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I am a Serial Entrepreneur & Investor with over 40 Years of experience in Business and Marketing.
Business is my passion and I have established myself in multiple industries with a focus on sustainable growth
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