What’s In a Word?

Written by Bill Gregory

en.tre.pre.neur: a person who organizes and manages any enterprise, especially a business, usually with considerable initiative and risk.

Earlier this year, while preparing to facilitate a “Launching Your Own Business” workshop, I thought I would do some exploration of the word entrepreneur. I googled “entrepreneur”…and got more than 14 million results. No, I’m not still reading them all, but I did decide to limit my search, perhaps, by searching the words “successful entrepreneur.” More than 15 million results this time. I noticed lots of lists:

• “8 Traits of Successful Entrepreneurs – Do You Have What It Takes?”
• “9 Qualities of Remarkable Entrepreneurs.”
• “7 Traits of the Most Successful Entrepreneurs.”
• “12 Characteristics of Highly Successful Entrepreneurs.”
• “10 Secrets of Becoming a Successful Entrepreneur.”
• “25 Common Characteristics of Successful Entrepreneurs."
• “5 Signs that you’re an Entrepreneur at Heart.”

Realizing that our workshop had its own list of characteristics of successful entrepreneurs, I decided to read through some of the googled lists and find out what others thought as well. Blog borrowing shamelessly from many, here are some qualities/traits/characteristics that appeared most often.

Passionate appears at the top of our list, and it is the most consistent quality or trait I found in all the lists. Here’s how some describe this important quality:

• A successful entrepreneur loves what she does. Whether she loves what her business does or just the idea of business itself does not matter, but a good entrepreneur must enjoy and be fulfilled by her work.
• You must be passionate about what you are trying to achieve. This means you’re willing to sacrifice a large part of your waking hours to the idea you’ve come up with. Passion will ignite the same intensity in others who join you as you build a team to succeed…and with passion, both your team and your customers are more likely to truly believe in what you are trying to do.
• Whatever they immerse themselves in, entrepreneurs typically invest fully & passionately. This extends beyond business building into many aspects of life outside the workplace.
• Line your business up with your passions.

Ryan Holmes, CEO of HootSuite calls it True Grit. He says, “You need to have passion. There is no specific DNA that makes up a specific role in a startup or to be an entrepreneur. If you’re passionate about what you’re doing, there shouldn’t be anything that can get in your way.”

Hard worker shows up on most lists, often accompanied by such traits as dedication, persistence, action orientation, overcoming obstacles:

• Success comes only from hard work. ..Behind every overnight success lies years of hard work and sweat. People with luck will tell you there’s no easy way to achieve success – and that luck comes to those who work hard.
• Entrepreneurs with a quitter mentality give up easily when they encounter resistance or setbacks. They lack the tenacity to keep going in the face of hardship. This is a primary characteristic that separates those who fail from those who succeed.
• Regardless of what the effort might involve, an entrepreneur brings a single-minded dedication to the task by being committed to a positive outcome and ready and willing to do the needful. No matter what that might mean in terms of rising to meet a challenge or acting above and beyond the call of duty, the entrepreneur shows steadfast dedication.
• Remarkable entrepreneurs simply work harder. That’s the real secret of their success.
• Entrepreneurs are action oriented. They are always working on version 1 point something. They also know if they do not do anything, nothing will happen.
• Two abilities of entrepreneurs – dedication and doggedness.

Dan Schawbel, founder of Millennial Branding, and Robert Sofia, Co-Founder & COO of Platinum Advisor Marketing Strategies, say dedication is the key. “Startup life is only for those with the right mixture of perseverance, initiative, resiliency, and vision. If you have a glamorized view that you’ll spend a few months building a website and then strike it rich, you’ll soon be handed a reality check. Be prepared for the fact that the hours are going to be long and your social life will be nonexistent for a while. Be ready to commit 100 percent.”

Risk taking and being able to manage failure show up on most lists and are described in many ways:

• Be willing to live with fear, risk and occasional failure.
• Successful entrepreneurs are risk takers who have all gotten over one very significant hurdle: they are not afraid of failure. That’s not to say that they rush in with reckless abandon…entrepreneurs are often successful because they are calculating and able to make the best decisions even in the worst of cases. There’s not one successful entrepreneur out there sitting on his couch asking, “what if?”
• Many people could be successful if they only took chances….Entrepreneurs are not immune to fear. But they prioritize their approach to life so that the fear of failure, frustration, boredom, drudgery, and dissatisfaction far outweighs the lingering fear of success.
• Entrepreneurs are able to differentiate between dumb mistakes and sensible mistakes. They value the lessons from mistakes.
• You must have the ability to absorb failure as a learning experience without getting discouraged.
• Take risks and make mistakes. Successful entrepreneurs know that a certain amount of risk in business is healthy because it provides growth opportunities and useful information for future decisions.
• Award winning founders are willing and able to take a risk. They understand the cost/benefits of engaging in what’s unknown. They have a peculiar faith to try, no matter the odds.

Finally…my favorite! Colin Wright, CEO of Exile Lifestyle, says that “Love of Circus” is important. “A startup is like a travelling circus, where everyone has a specialty but everyone is also willing to do what needs to be done to get the show unloaded, running smoothly, and then packed up again at the end of the day. Being involved in a startup requires being equally willing to manage, code, consult or empty the trash cans. Be willing, and you’ll be golden.”

Bill Gregory is a Business Advisor for the Northwest ISBDC. Bill can be reached at bgregory@isbdc.org.