The most important “ingredient” of a successful business is the entrepreneur – the person who has to turn the idea into a fully operational business. Find out below what are the key qualities you must have in order to become a successful entrepreneur and what you should NOT do if you want to become one.
What is an entrepreneur?
A number of national and international institutions, whose main activity is the study of the environment and entrepreneurial behavior, have defined the entrepreneur as follows: “An entrepreneur is a person who, on the basis of contractual terms and conditions, undertakes to perform various works (industrial, construction, etc.) in favor of another person and organization in exchange for a pre-determined reward. Usually, these works are part of a project. “
Another interpretation says that an entrepreneur is a person who wants and can convert a new idea or invention into a successful business. Specifically, an entrepreneur is someone who organizes a business or a business and takes the risk for it.
Entrepreneurs, as we can see, are people who develop a business out of an idea. In order to do this, they need to have the necessary knowledge. More than this, they need to invest their own creativity in the success of the company and to start realizing their dreams. This person must have a series of qualities in order to become a successful entrepreneur. A wealth of knowledge in the domain, skills, and competencies, as well as leadership, commitment, responsibility, and dynamism are just some of them.
Let’s dive more into these qualities that a person must have in order to become a successful entrepreneur.
Qualities of a successful entrepreneur
Entrepreneurship is both a challenge and an extraordinary opportunity for development not only professionally but also personally. However, even if you need certain qualities to be successful, there is no right or wrong way to be an entrepreneur. In each case, if you want to become a successful entrepreneur, you must first have the ability to generate new ideas, solutions and to be able to implement them. Also, you must be able to implement your analyzed ideas despite the challenges that will appear in your way. Some characteristics are natural personality traits, but there are also skills and qualities that you can cultivate only through careful practice.
Check also the most important financial KPIs to track daily.
1. The portrait of a person that wants to become a successful entrepreneur
Great entrepreneurs come from all kinds of environments. There is no single personality profile that describes a successful entrepreneur. However, there are some particularly important aspects when it comes to running and developing a business.
Curiosity
A person that wants to become a successful entrepreneur will surely need to be curious. Successful entrepreneurs have a sense of curiosity that allows them to constantly look for new opportunities. Instead of contenting themselves with what they think they know, the curious ask challenging questions and explore different avenues.
See also how curiosity can help you evolve from a personal point of view.
Structured experimentation
Along with curiosity comes the need for structured experimentation. This shows that one of the qualities that a person must have in order to become a successful entrepreneur is to be able to analyze and be realistic in his suppositions. You will need to conduct market research to validate your ideas and determine if they have potential. Also, you must be able to interpret and understand the results.
Adaptability
I think this is one of the most important qualities that a person must have in order to become a successful entrepreneur. As times are changing constantly and in a more dynamic way than ever, you must be able to adapt to these changing times. Although it seems almost impossible to be prepared for every scenario that life gives you, you need to be able to assess your situation so that your business can continue to move forward, even when unexpected changes occur.
Decision-making power
To be able to become successful, an entrepreneur must make difficult decisions and support them. As leaders, entrepreneurs are responsible for the direction of their business – from financing and strategy to allocating the necessary resources.
Accepting failure and being able to learn from it.
It is estimated that almost 70% of new startups fail. The reasons for the failure are vast – from a business model that has not been tested and validated by the market to a lack of concentration or motivation.
Here is how you can manage failure in your life in a healthy way.
Perseverance
While many successful entrepreneurs realize that failure is an integral part of the evolution process and accept it as an experience from which they can learn, this does not mean that they give up their business plans easily. Rather, they see failure as an opportunity to learn and grow.
The ability to create and manage a team
A successful entrepreneur is aware of his strengths and weaknesses. Rather than letting deficiencies stop you, you can build a team to complement your skills. In many cases, the entrepreneurial team, rather than one person, is the one leading the business on the road to success.
Creating a team means also knowing how to communicate with them. This means choosing to communicate in an assertive way instead of being aggressive or passive. Learning how to communicate with your people is a very important step in creating a successful business.
Having an organizational chart can help also in improving the communication in your firm. This will also help you know who you need in your team.
Now that we saw what qualities you must have to become a successful entrepreneur, let’s look also at what you must not do.
3. What a successful entrepreneur should NOT do
Having confidence in your knowledge and skills is essential. Unfortunately, not all business people are born with healthy confidence. They may not know who they really are and what they want from life.
Developing healthy self-confidence and maintaining your firm beliefs is an important entrepreneurial trait. If you want to succeed, there are also a few other things you need to pay attention to.
Do not waste your time
Successful entrepreneurs don’t waste time, they act fast! You don’t have to waste time on repetitive tasks. You should reflect more on how you can delegate some of the tasks. If you look to do everything yourself, then when and how will you have time to improve and grow your business? Lack of organization decreases motivation.
Also if you work continuously and in a chaotic way, over time, you may miss some tasks. This will surely not help you on your way to becoming a successful entrepreneur. Once you know what to do and how to do it, the tasks do not seem so overwhelming.
Don talk just about your business
If you’ve met entrepreneurs who only talk about business anytime, anywhere, the end result is that people will most likely avoid them. This may sound confusing, but it will help you in so many ways. Focus more on building real, lasting relationships. It will be more likely that a friend will do his best to promote you more than anyone else. Potential customers and investors are not interested in boring conversations and sales presentations. Instead, they are attracted to interesting, attractive, and empathetic people. They want to do business with honest entrepreneurs because, in the end, they want to like the people they buy from or the people they choose to invest in.
Do not act in an unprofessional way
As an entrepreneur, you must always act in a professional and polite way. Be empathic to others’ needs, listen to them, and in this way you might find out more about your potential customer. Also, always remember that you have only one opportunity to create a first good impression. On the other hand, looking in the online world, if you have a website, don’t set it up with free, non-professional themes, but rather work with a professional web developer to make sure you don’t have database security issues or another kind of mistakes that might influence your business in a wrong way.
As we saw, there are quite some amount of qualities that you must learn if you don’t have them. I strongly advise you when starting your way to become an entrepreneur to invest in a quality entrepreneurship course. In this way, you will be more prepared and less likely to fail in your way of creating a successful business. Also, this will give you solid ground if you want to become a successful entrepreneur.
As a bonus: Every entrepreneur needs to master public speaking and networking
Since I started my own business I’ve seen that there are two things every entrepreneur needs to master: public speaking and networking.
1. Every entrepreneur needs to master public speaking
Although public speaking is really scary it’s one of the things which you will need to master as an entrepreneur. There will be many times that this skill will be of real use especially if you have a team or if you have clients or want to grow your image.
If you want to lead teams, there is no other way to have an impact. The impact as a manager is directly proportional to the number of people you influence. If you are a leader, you must expose yourself, there is no leader who does not expose himself. And whatever can be said, is worth saying well. It is an exercise in contribution, with an idea, a cause, or a passion. It is not egocentrism, but contribution.
By practicing public speaking, you learn how to prepare a specific message for each type of audience. For example, you will prepare a different speech for a fundraising dinner than you would for a meeting with investors. Over time, you will learn to quickly adapt to the situation and juggle information. You will also be able to change your communication patterns to suit the occasion. These are just some of the ideas that empower the idea that every entrepreneur must master public speaking.
How to master public speaking? Well, there are a couple of ways:
- Invest in some books about mastering public speaking.
- Invest in some courses about public speaking or better – find a public speaking coach.
- Practice, and expose yourself to different experiences in order to gain experience.
These ways to increase your public speaking abilities depend a lot on how much are you willing to invest. Try to remember that you are investing in yourself and you are worth all the money.
2. Master networking as an entrepreneur
Networking, first of all, consists of people talking to each other and exchanging ideas, resources or information. This is the fastest and easiest way to get information. Okay, and why would we need this action, to participate in networking events or meet new entrepreneurs and link some long-term agreements? Here are some reasons why any entrepreneur, manager, or person who wants to learn and develop continuously would want to increase his level of networking:
- to build your own image and consolidate it;
- to build a strong, own sales force;
- you diversify and/or grow your business;
- to polish and practice your promotion and sales speech;
- is important to your career;
- it opens up a world of possibilities;
- to be ahead of the competition;
- to find out the latest information from competent persons;
- enter into mutually beneficial partnerships or collaborations.
From what I’ve seen this is one of the fastest ways to grow your business or your image. So this fact is a must to accomplish: every entrepreneur needs to master networking.
Courses that will help you increase your online business development level:
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