Are entrepreneurs born or made? This is one question no one has found a satisfactory answer to yet. Some say that entrepreneurs are just born that way – ambitious, independent, with keen business acumen. They point to people like Rockefeller, Bill Gates, and Steve Jobs as examples. But alongside these entrepreneurial geniuses, there exists a class of successful businessmen who worked in managerial or backend jobs for years before the entrepreneurial bug bit them. These people, they say, are “made” entrepreneurs.
But all these people – born, or made – have some qualities in common, qualities without which it is pretty much impossible to be a successful entrepreneur:
1. A strong sense of independence
Entrepreneurs, by default, are independent. This is the reason why they are willing to leave cushy jobs and promising careers behind and pour their energies into their businesses. They are driven by a fierce sense of independence, to the master of their own destiny. Pretty much any successful entrepreneur will have this quality.
2. An ability to stay focused
Starting a new business can be incredibly hard. One has to keep track of hundreds of things – finances, inventory, employees, marketing, etc. Unless you can stay focused on the goal, you will find your mind, and your profits, straying. Being successful in business requires a disciplined, focused effort – a quality that all successful entrepreneurs have.
3. A strong motivation to be successful
Unless you are really motivated about your business, you can easily stray off course, lose morale and run yourself out of business. Running a startup can be very difficult, especially in the early stages when clients are hard to come by and one has to focus on hundreds of things. The entrepreneur’s job is to not only stay motivated throughout the bleak periods, but also keep his employees happy and upbeat about the business.
I could probably list a dozen other qualities that an entrepreneur must have – creativity, patience, business acumen, even luck – but these three, I believe are what sets a successful entrepreneur apart from an unsuccessful one.