Entrepreneurs are everywhere, from your next-door neighbor running an online tutoring side-hustle to the well-established commissioned real estate agents, each one of them has their own unique ventures and expertise. However, people often build a misconception around these business-minded individuals, claiming that their end goal is just turning a profit and that it’s luck that plays an essential role in success.
Frankly, it takes more than just the goal of profit and lady luck on your side to secure yourself a foothold in the industry and make it sustainable. And beneath all that motivation and determination is a person carrying the burden of expectation and uncertainty every day.
It’s Not Easy
The word “struggle” is a common term in the entrepreneurship space, and for a good reason too. Nothing ever comes easy with a fresh start-up, and even if you got some extra bit of help from your parents or some money saved up, you still do all the heavy lifting to secure a successful launch.
Sadly, it only takes a simple misstep or slight overlook for a problem to turn dire when left unattended. Being new to everything means you have zero experience in handling intense situations. Thus, resulting in copious amounts of stress and anxiety to deal with at the beginning and throughout the process of carving yourself a spot in the industry.
However, there are vital entrepreneurial characteristics that go unnoticed in the public’s eyes, and these innate skills and talents often draw the line between the good and the exceptional.
#1 Self-Reliance
Despite the common denominator of entrepreneurs doubling down on the significance of having a team of like-minded people beside you, building strong bonds from networking at the get-go doesn’t happen overnight. Successful entrepreneurs need to practice self-reliance because they will often meet multiple challenges in a day, under a single project, and must accomplish each often independently.
- Desire Responsibility: An entrepreneur feels a deep sense of personal responsibility for all their ventures and projects. They prefer being under control and using the resources at hand to achieve their self-determined goals. It is their desire for responsibility that gives them the drive to accomplish objectives.
- Self-Confidence: Entrepreneurs often find themselves in rock-bottom situations where they have no one else to rely on but themselves. However, a successful entrepreneur does not rely on extrinsic motivation to keep going but on their own self-confidence and believing in their capabilities.
#2 Critical
Critical thinking is another essential trait of a successful entrepreneur. They need to be capable of discerning a good opportunity and knowing when to tolerate their risk appetite to improve their chances of success. Their skill over governing their thinking process and analysis enables them to go farther and manage sustainable growth over time.
- Values Feedback: Successful entrepreneurs heavily value constructive feedback in gold because feedback identifies areas of improvement that one can work to fix. So if a newbie starts a new drop-shipping company, a quality trait that defines their capability of being critical is going over and understanding customers’ responses.
- Admits Shortcomings: Before success comes multiple failures, and a hallmark of a great entrepreneur is being able to admit to their own shortcomings. For example, suppose they have the perfect location for emergencies and decides to put up an urgent care center. In that case, a good entrepreneur will only handle the business side of things but won’t deny an experienced medical professional’s help.
#3 Prefers Moderate Risk
Despite common beliefs, entrepreneurs aren’t the naturally born risk-takers you see sensationalized on movies and TV shows. And while calculating risk is a big part of the job, no entrepreneur would jump the gun on every single opportunity that comes their way. Successful entrepreneurs prefer moderate amounts of risk, and they practice good risk management.
- Weighs Opportunity Costs: Every decision comes with a positive and a negative. An entrepreneur’s job is to consider both actions’ opportunity costs and decide which trade-off is more convenient or more profitable for them. Not all opportunities offer a good return on investment as risk increases. And a good entrepreneur will identify this threshold and further downsize according to their risk appetite.
- Doesn’t “Gamble”: While betting everything and increasing your earnings by a hundredfold makes for a great story, these go past the standards of a good entrepreneur and is outright gambling. No sane entrepreneur would gamble away all of their invested time, money, and effort on just one trade, business deal, or opportunity alone.
#4 Values Achievement Over Money
A true entrepreneur isn’t driven by a monetary goal but is motivated by his achievements to continue striving and pushing forward. Money is merely a means of “keeping score,” assets that hold them accountable, and another tool they use to realize their goals. While money is essential, a great entrepreneur enjoys the experiencing of creating, innovating, and solving problems.
Adopting An Opportunistic Mindset
Entrepreneurs aren’t born, but they are built through experience and hard work. So if you have plans to start your own venture, don’t forget to adopt an entrepreneur’s opportunistic mindset and practice the good traits the separate the great from the exceptional!
