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Not everyone can be an entrepreneur; but everyone can be if they wanted to. Being an entrepreneur isn’t about getting out of college and picking up a job where you are probably hand-held, trained and taught things. You are backed by ardent support from your seniors up in your company and you have peers to share things with.
Business owners forego all of that. The path of entrepreneurship has its own pedagogy; its own way of teaching the ways of business to those who take it up. To be able to survive the punishing ways of entrepreneurship, you got to have the following traits:
- Paranoia: Yes, paranoia. Constant fear of competitors, of business going down the tube, of employees leaving your company and of economic slow-downs and a hundred other externalities you have limited or no control on. Paranoia induces fear which is powerful. Conquer your fear and you have success sitting there coyly waiting for you to do what you want to do with it. If you aren’t paranoid, you will be complacent. Complacency can kill.
- Hunger and Thirst: How badly do you crave for success? Assuming you had already thought of what you want out of your business, are you well on your course to get that? Do you have a fire raging in your stomach? How badly do you need to get where you want to go? To be successful in business, you got to have a degree of hunger and thirst to go for more. More customers, more profits, cut expenses even more, bigger offices, more branches, International expansion. More is everything. More is the mantra. No thirst? Go back to that job.
- Doggedness and Determination: It won’t be easy to get there. You will be mocked; things won’t happen as you expect them to happen; partners cheat; customers walk away; brand takes a hit; employees join competition; economy slaps right across your face. What will you do? Keep at it. Continue doing it no matter what. If you don’t have this trait, you can’t do pretty much anything, anyway.
- Decisiveness and Accountability: You don’t have all the time in the world. You got to make decisions and all decisions you make might not be the best ones. You should be able to live with the bad ones and ride on the good decisions. You are solely responsible for the success of your business. Suddenly, you transform into a payer, an employer and you would be responsible for many peoples’ livelihood. Can you handle all that?
- Social: You will be doing business with people and some more people. If you aren’t a people person and can’t develop rapport with them, you will find it difficult to cut it. I am not saying that you should be an extrovert and talk endlessly; all I am saying is that you got to work assiduously to build a network. A regular remploye can afford to be grumpy their whole lives, but not entrepreneurs. Sorry, you don’t have access to this perk.
It isn’t easy; but it is worth every penny ever made. Entrepreneurs are the pillar of capitalism. Entrepreneurs make money, everyone else spends it. So, do you have it in you? Which side do you want to be?
