Being a Successful Entrepreneur

Being a successful entrepreneur is a task that many people wish that they could accomplish. Achieving the feat of being a successful entrepreneur means that you are in charge of your own destiny and independent in your own wealth creation. If you look at the people in the past that have achieved this dream, a common thread seems to emerge. Actually, many common threads emerge as characteristics typical of an entrepreneur. This paper will spell out some of these commonalities among entrepreneurs and relate them back to my personal experiences. Some common characteristics that entrepreneurs exude are: common sense, being a problem solver, determination, using money as a measure, hard work, complexity on thinking, being a good net-worker, and their confidence. This list seems to be all inclusive, but it isn't. These are just a few of the many characteristics that your typical entrepreneur portrays. Each of them will be described further in this paper.

Some of these characteristics can inter-relate back to one-another. Having “common sense” means that you can rationalize a situation and deal with it in a manner that is feasible and practical. This can relate to ways to solve problems in the same mannerisms. An entrepreneur has common sense and is able to make a practical judgment on a problem or question that arises. Their ability to confront, deal, and move-on with that problem is the ability to solve problems. Common Sense is not taught in a classroom, it is innate. You either have it or you don't. Although classrooms can influence the subjects you are knowledgeable about, it can't teach you the basic instinct to make a practical judgment. Relating this back to personal experience, I feel that I do have a fair amount of common sense and am able to solve problems in this manner. I deal with problems everyday at work with small loss situations on a few transactions resulting from some sort of computer error, customer service error, or even as far back as data entry error. The ability to pick the problem apart and find the most logical point of error combines both the characteristic of common sense and problem solving. I feel that I can do this with relative ease, and therefore I would say that I satisfy this factor of fitting the mold for an entrepreneur.

Going even further into the entrepreneurial psyche, you will find that entrepreneurs express a fair level of determination and persistence. These two kind of go hand-in-hand, but have different definitions. Your level of determination is what you are willing to do to ultimately get to your end goal. Persistence is being able to keep doing what it takes to get to the end goal. An entrepreneur is likely to face some sort of adversity or complexities during the life of their business. For this reason, an entrepreneur must be determined to overcome these obstacles if he/she is going to succeed. This leads directly into being a hard worker. Almost synonymous with the word entrepreneur, hard work is a must have for a successful business owner. Often time, new companies and even existing companies can require a significant level of time and work to make successful. The most prominent personal experience having to do with this characteristic would be my dedication to doing well in school. The ultimate goal is to graduate with a high GPA, and hard work is definitely required to reach that goal. There are a lot of sacrifices that have to be made and a lot of hours that have to be spent not just memorizing material, but also learning and mastering it. I feel that the work that I have done so far in my academic career would allow me to satisfy this characteristic.

An entrepreneurial quality that I feel is absolutely necessary is being able to use money as a measure. It may not be a requirement, as most of these qualities are not actual requirements, but I feel that it almost is because a successful entrepreneur absolutely has to be able to determine the health of his/her business by looking at the financial aspects. I am an accounting major as well so almost everything that I do is brought back to a cost/benefit approach, and however much the benefits out weigh the costs, the better. I feel that I have a strong tendency towards this quality and can't hardly think of anything that I don't somehow relate back to that approach. I think that in a business setting I would be able to excel in weighing the costs to the benefits of a project.

An entrepreneur's complexity of thinking is not limited to a whole lot of knowledge of a single subject. An entrepreneur usually has a fair wealth of knowledge over a more broad range of topics. An example would be management skills, networking skills, financial skills, and many more, including the characteristics discussed in this paper. At work there are many people who refer to me about many different aspects of the business that I work for. However, many times I have to defer their questions to a higher authority if it is outside of my knowledge base. Because of this I would think of myself as satisfying this entrepreneurial characteristic because while I can answer simpler questions about many topics, my knowledge is not limited to a single subject.

Networking is a strong skill that most entrepreneurs have down pat. You would be hard pressed to go back and find a successful entrepreneur that didn't rely on any help from someone else. And where do they get these connections from … networking. You can think of this as keeping a huge rolodex of people to call on for a certain expertise. I'm not sure of my ability to network so far in my life, or career. I am just now starting to realize the importance of maintaining contact with people that I might be able to tap their brain someday for any information that I might need assistance in attaining. Because of this I am going to say that I fail to have a full grasp on this particular characteristic, but I think that proper networking can come with experience and activities that will allow me to meet and maintain contact with valuable people.

The last point in this paper is an entrepreneur's confidence level. Without a doubt that is a big one. If a business owner does not have confidence that they can succeed or make the business succeed, then they are going to have to go strictly on luck, and that isn't always something to bet the farm on. Confidence can flow down the chain from an owner to everyone that comes in contact with the owner or the business. If a high confidence level is set, then employees will be more likely to put forth their best effort as well to ensure the company's success. Just as important is the way that customers and investors see in your confidence level. If a customer sees that you aren't very confident in your product or service they are going to second guess what you are offering as a good product or service. Likewise with investors, if you are not confident that you have a successful business plan, then you will not attract many investors. Confidence is an area that I am going to have to work on. I find myself second guessing my decisions and answers to questions a lot. I don't think that as of now I would fit into the typical entrepreneurial level of confidence, but I think that that will come with time and experience.

Just described were only eight of the many, many characteristics that are common threads among entrepreneurs. Not all entrepreneurs portray these characteristics in the same way or even portray them at all, but they are frequent enough to see trends among successful entrepreneurs. Also described were a few way in which I have observed myself in these characteristics. Some of them I feel that I strongly possess and some of them I could work on. But that is the beauty of being an entrepreneur, you don't have to fit a specific mold to be successful. You just have to have a proper mix of qualities that allow you to be successful in whatever industry you are considering entering. It is helpful to know what types of characteristics that entrepreneurs have though, in order to better prepare yourself to have the building blocks to be successful.