If you want to become a successful entrepreneur, you need to discover your strengths and give yourself every possible opportunity to leverage them each day. It goes without saying that you need to be damn good at what you do.
Great entrepreneurs have core strengths in common, such as extreme determination and a gift to create successful business models. But outside of these core characteristics, they have more differences than commonalities — how they grow to success is highly individualized.
Some will get there by being experts, some by being master salespeople. Some become successful as master managers, while others achieve success as extreme individual achievers. Some are driven by an insatiable need to compete, others solely by a mission to change the world.
1. Risk taker. “Enthusiastically takes on challenges, highly optimistic perception of risk, takes rational approach to decision making to mitigate risk.”
2. Business focus. “Emphasizes profits, goals, and metrics; aligns employees with company goals.”
3. Determination. “Tremendous work ethic, confronts and overcomes obstacles, undeterred by obstacles and roadblocks.”
4. Delegator. “Readily delegates authority and responsibility, proactively collaborates, recognizes and draws on others’ abilities.”
5. Knowledge seeker. Acquires business-relevant, in-depth information; uses knowledge as a competitive advantage; anticipates information needs.” Whether entrepreneurs or any other professionals, we all should study non-stop.
6. Creative thinker. “Thinks past boundaries, generates ideas, explores options, thinks through problems.” Think not only out of the box, think that there is no box.
7. Confidence. “Presents well, takes initiative, believes in ability to build businesses.” I believe before anyone can conquer any field or arena out there, he or she should conquer one’s self first and build up an unshakable self-confidence.
8. Promoter. “Speaks boldly on behalf of the company, communicates company vision effectively.” I always tell my college students and also in audiences where I’m invited to speak that effective communication is a magical advantage for any profession and what better way to hone your communication skills than by non-stop reading.
9. Independence. “Self-reliant, handles multiple tasks well, strong sense of responsibility.” Entrepreneurs need to be self-reliant, not emotional cry babies.
10. Relationship builder. “High social awareness; develops mutually beneficial relationships; open, positive demeanor.”
