What does it take to be a successful entrepreneur?
What kind of person do you need to be in order for your business to succeed?
While every business is different, and every entrepreneur brings his or her particular strengths to their business table, there are certain qualities or characteristics that are common to successful entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurship is a mindset more than anything, and includes being:
a dreamer - having a big idea of how something can be better and different
an innovator and demonstrating how a new approach or product outperforms current practice
passionate and able to express ideas so they create energy and resonance with others
a risk-taker - a willingness to pursue the dream without all the resources necessarily lined up at the start
doggedly committed and staying with the idea through the peaks and valleys to make it work
a continuous learner, constantly exploring and evolving to ensure best practices in the business.
Seattle-area tech entrepreneur Naveen Jain, founder and CEO of Intelius Inc. believes true entrepreneurial success comes from superior execution, doing a great job of 'blocking and tackling'. In an article on Net.com, the CBS online business channel, Jain lists ten points that he believes are qualities that contribute to success for an entrepreneur. Here are five of those ten, along with the Small Business Success perspective on what this means for your business.
Maintain focus on your mission. Great entrepreneurs focus intensely on opportunities, says Jain, helping them filter out non-strategic activities and distractions. "Most companies die from indigestion rather than starvation", says Jain. "Companies suffer from doing too many things at the same time rather than doing too few things very well."
SBS Application: Take a long, hard look at your activities, and whether what you're spending your time doing is strongly aligned with your mission. Are you focusing on the priority activities that support your ultimate goal and are you executing those activities exceptionally well, or are you spreading yourself too thin and struggling to maintain quality in all areas? It's easy to get distracted, and entrepreneurs are especially prone to follow the next great idea, but maintaining your business focus is a critical component to business success.
Trust your gut. "Your heart and your feelings are your best guides to making more correct decisions", says Jain. "We've all had experiences in business where our heart told us something was wrong while our brain was still trying to use logic to figure it all out. Sometimes a faint voice based on instinct is far more reliable than overpowering logic."
SBS Application: Realistic planning and financial tools are still an important part of your business process, however, in the real world there are simply too many variables that cannot be put into a spreadsheet. According to Jain, spreadsheets spit out realistic-seeming results based on inexact assumptions, and that can give you a false sense of security. Good business decisions depend on an entrepreneur's best efforts to create a reasonable business picture based on logic and reality, balanced with a strong dose of intuition and instinct.
Be flexible but persistent. "Every entrepreneur has to be agile," says Jain, "continually learning and adapting as new information becomes available." Even so, he adds, "you have to stay committed to the mission of your business because sometimes success is waiting right across from the transitional bump that's disguised as failure."
SBS Application: It's critical to balance your ability to 'go with the flow' - adapting and changing as the business environment and economic conditions change - with a persistent pursuit of your goals. It's also critical to have the capacity to know when to hold on to those goals like a bull terrier and ride out the storms that threaten to derail you, and to know when it's time to readjust those goals, or let go of them entirely in favour of new ones that make sense, given the conditions. One without the other will leave you either flailing in the winds of change, or going down with a sinking ship.
Rely on your team. No individual can be good at everything. "Find the smartest people you can who complement your strengths" says Jain. Many entrepreneurs hire people who are like themselves, he says: "the trick is to find people who are not like you but who are good at what they do, and what you can't do."
SBS Application: Entrepreneurs who fail are threatened by talented people, or they may hold too tightly to a project and insist on doing everything themselves. Their insecurities may prevent them from hiring people who are better than they are, or hiring anyone to delegate to at all, and the result is they get stuck where they are. They can never rise above the level of their own talent and expertise. The truth is, no one person can do everything; no one person is good at everything. A smart entrepreneur recognizes his or her weaknesses and doggedly pursues people who have strengths in those areas. This creates a synergy and success that could never be possible without taking that risk.
Enjoy the journey. The road to success is a long one. Most people will tell you to stay focused on your goals, but Jain says successful people focus on the journey, and celebrate milestones along the way. "Is it worth spending a large part of your life trying to reach the destination if you didn't enjoy the journey?" Jain asks. He says this culture will help your employees focus more on the journey as well. "Wouldn't it be better for all of you to have the time of your lives during the journey, even if the destination is never reached?"
SBS Application: Too many entrepreneurs lose sight of this principle. Somewhere along the way they get so caught up in "getting there" they forget why they're on the road in the first place. Are you still connected to the passion and love for the business you had when you first started? Are you regularly celebrating the successes, even the small ones, along the way? Are you approaching every day as an amazing opportunity, having fun as you go? If not, you've lost something critical to your success, and you may want to spend some time thinking about how to recapture your original vision.
Your small business will undoubtedly benefit from developing these characteristics. If you’d like to learn more about Naveen Jain visit www.naveenjain.com.
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