Would you like to become more successful in your business? Maybe you feel that your business should be doing better than it is and you’d like to find out how others have made it? To succeed in business, you not only need the right skills, but also the right traits. As it turns out, successful people share several characteristics that helped make them that way. Here are 10 essential qualities for entrepreneurial success.
1. Drive
One of the most important traits in a successful person’s arsenal is drive. If you don’t have enough drive and determination, you won’t be up to the challenge of working harder than everyone else. As a result, you won’t be as passionate about what you’re doing and your level of success will never surpass that of the average person.
Remember that in order to move from the ordinary to the extraordinary, you have to be willing to try new things, take charge when necessary and get back on the horse when you’re thrown off. That constant drive to succeed is what will help you to align yourself with the forces that can get you there.
2. Willpower
The greatest entrepreneurs are the ones who are able to keep a consistent focus on their goals and direct steady effort into achieving them. Their ability to do this is largely the result of strong willpower. If you have sufficient willpower, you’ll be far less likely to make excuses or procrastinate when you don’t feel like doing something.
On the contrary, you’ll have the mental strength to see things through to completion, regardless of how difficult the road ahead might look. Willpower is like a muscle and it’s important to remember that just because you lack it now doesn’t mean you can’t develop it. Failing to do so could leave you prone to giving up and losing interest in your goals.
3. Self-Control
Self-control is something else you’ll find is almost impossible to succeed without. We all have cravings and impulses that cause us to want to do things we shouldn’t. Lack of self-control is the reason we eat the wrong foods and stay out later than we should.
However, it pays to remember that while you’re out having a good time, other entrepreneurs are busting their rears. Do you want them stealing away your customers? I’m not saying you should never enjoy yourself, but rather that you should be able to control these impulses enough to know when they’re getting out of hand.
4. Optimism
Optimistic people maintain positive attitudes and expect positive outcomes. This is in contrast to pessimists who complain when things don’t seem to be working out. Optimists know that as long as they keep trying, they will eventually succeed. They know there’s no conspiracy to make them fail and that even life’s most difficult challenges can be conquered.
If you’re an optimist, challenges probably excite you. You’ll need this attitude to become successful because, without it, you’ll be more likely to give in to discouraging thoughts and assume that failure is around every corner. Remember that life has both a sunny and dark side. The side you focus on is the one you’ll see the most evidence of, despite the fact that exist side by side.
5. Resilience
As you go through life, you’ll face countless obstacles. You’ll need resilience to endure these situations, so they don’t begin breaking you down. Without resilience, you may feel like running away, as soon as you are faced with difficulty. If you make a habit of doing that, you’ll never achieve success, either in entrepreneurship or in other areas of life.
Resilience will help you keep going, regardless of what lies ahead. Even if you fall flat on your butt, resilience will prompt you to get up again and keep going, even in the face of uncertainty. Remember that entrepreneurship involves making a number of mistakes, some quite costly. You’ll have to get used to dealing with these things and powering through one obstacle after another.
6. Ambition
Without ambition, you won’t get far. In fact, you probably won’t get past the idea stage. Ambitious people recognize that there’s little reward in taking the same path as everyone else. They know they are different and believe that in order to achieve success, hard work and sacrifice are absolute necessities.
Ambitious people believe in doing their absolute best to achieve the best possible outcome. They aim high, knowing that even if they don’t hit the mark, they will achieve far more than the average person. If you don’t feel this sort of drive pushing you, you won’t see the point in putting forth all that effort and you’ll find yourself settling for less.
7. Patience
The best things in life require patience and entrepreneurial success is no exception. You’re going to make mistakes at times and things won’t always go your way. If you lack the patience to keep trying, you might as well not waste your time getting started. There are easier paths and this one may not be for you.
Keep in mind that you’ll find success much more easily with patience. The reason for this is that you’ll waste less time becoming upset. You’ll think more clearly about the nature of the obstacles you’re facing and come up with better strategies that aren’t based on emotional reactions. You can’t afford to take these frustrations personally, as they happen to everyone who chooses this path.
8. Commitment
You can’t expect to achieve success without making serious commitments. Successful people know it will take everything they’ve got to achieve such lofty goals. They know that only someone who has invested everything they have in the process can be counted on to make the necessary sacrifices. If you’ve left yourself an easy way out, you’ll probably end up taking it.
You have to truly know what you want, in order to make such a commitment. You have to believe you’re doing the right thing for the right reasons, so doubts won’t interfere with your ability to commit. When you believe in the “rightness” of what you’re doing, it’s easier to give it your all. You’ll need to be sure about this before getting started, so you won’t lose focus and give up.
9. Belief
When you first decide to become an entrepreneur, no one will believe in you. You might think that your family will support you, but chances are, some of them will also tell you that you’re nuts. Some will actually care what happens to you, but because of their limited mindsets, they’ll think you’re doing the wrong thing. Then there are those who will be envious and not want to see you succeed, even if they do think you have what it takes.
Your job will be to believe in yourself when no one else does. You’ll have to learn to trust your own judgment, even when those closest to you try to say that you’re out of your mind. Entrepreneurial success requires a relentless pursuit of the goal. This means ignoring critics and maintaining unshakable trust in both yourself and in a difficult process that will deliver, if you’re willing to do the work.
10. Courage
From the moment you decide to go into business for yourself, you’ll rely on courage to push you into the unknown. One of the biggest differences between entrepreneurs and employees is that employees tend to favor certainty. They want guarantees, which do not exist for someone who is running their own show. You have to come to terms with this and understand that difficulties will always lie ahead.
Chances are, the least successful people you know are in that position because of fear. When you fear failure, you’ll take the easiest road you can find that provides the bare minimum of what you seek. Settling for less might seem safer, but you’ll never find out what you could have done. Your willingness to accept risk is proportional to the level of success you can expect.
Remember that no one sets out to accept mediocrity. The potential for success exists, regardless of where the entrepreneur comes from or what the circumstances of their life might have been. What it comes down to is how prevalent qualities like these are in a given person. Fortunately, they can be developed, allowing the aspiring entrepreneur to become the person who can achieve success.
These qualities are what all successful people have and I think that they are all interconnected and some can be interchanged. Like having optimism can give you the motivation and willpower to work on what you need to do. Which of these do you think are the most important and how do they relate to the others?
I would have to say that the most important one, at least for me, is belief. Regardless of what your “bigger” beliefs are (life, religion, etc…), you have to at least believe in yourself and your abilities. You also have to believe that success is possible. For me, that part came from constantly reading stories about people who started with less than me and took their businesses to great heights. I’m a voracious reader, so I’m always encountering stories about people who just didn’t give up and eventually found success.
As a youngster, my biggest problem was never finishing what I started. The result was never realizing what I was capable of. When you give yourself no avenue of escape and you have no choice but to succeed, you’ll figure it out somehow. You’ll just DO what has to be done. Before you know it, you’ll be your own best example of what happens when you see something through to the end. You’ll accumulate small victories along the way that will bolster your belief in yourself and in what is possible.
Mark
Sometimes things don’t happen fast enough for me, I feel my drive going down. How do I keep that drive going?
The optimism is mostly positive, but there are times where I find myself wondering why am I even doing this. Most of us as entrepreneurs online want success right away.
If it doesn’t happen fast enough we start searching for a new shiny object. Your post is a great read as it shows me where I’m lacking in my abilities as an entrepreneur.
I feel one of the strongest points here is ambition. I have a lot of ambition, I just need to focus it towards my goals. Enjoyed reading your post.
I can actually relate to what you’re saying. I’m sorta the same, but it’s taken some time to get a handle on it. I’ve figured out that I have to switch things up regularly. It doesn’t mean I have to switch what I’m doing completely, but at least how I’m doing it. If it becomes too routine, I begin having difficulty staying focused on it. The reason this happens is that I’m no longer enjoying the process when it becomes monotonous and enjoying the process is critical to doing anything of this nature.
The thing is, you probably won’t see results as quickly as you would with a regular job. The job might have a dependable paycheck, the first of which you’ll get in a week or two. So that keeps you showing up. But the salary will eventually cap out and you won’t be able to make more than they’re willing to pay. So the trade-off with entrepreneurship is the ability to be able to earn far more and have far more control, at the cost of the certainty and predictability you get with the job.
That means you’re going to have to enjoy the actual process, in order to wait it out patiently, as it requires. I can’t enjoy doing anything the same way for long, so I have to experiment creatively to trick my brain into feeling like it’s not just the same old thing. For example, sometimes I write my blogs on a laptop, whereas other times I use dictation. When I dictate, it feels more like I’m giving a lecture and it fills another need I have regarding learning how to speak more clearly. There are even times when I do it all on my phone. As long as I’m not doing it the same way each and every time, I can discover new tools and ways of doing what I do and keep it interesting.
Hope that helps!
Mark
Hello Mark,
We often see something here or there about the need to have patience or perseverance when we start our own business. You have taken this a few steps further and looked at more qualities required such as optimism, resliance and commitment.
Without all these qualities it is very hard to be successful when starting your own business. There are so many potential pitfalls along the way to a successful business that we need to be mentally prepared for anything. It might take longer to get off the ground than we expect. It might not work out at all and we have to change directions. Successful entrepreneurs always fail a few time or many times before they hit on a winning concept. If you don’t have the optimism, commitment, belief, patience, resilience and other qualities listed here, you won’t be able to survive the rough patches on the way to success. No one gets an idea to be an entrepreneur, starts a business and is immediately a great success. The most successful are the people that try a ton of ideas and methods, therefore maximizing their chance of finding a highly successful combination.
Do you struggle with any of these qualities yourself? From reading the stories of entrepreneurs it seems most of them have struggled with some of these at some point along their career.
For me I could see early on that many of these qualities would be required and some of them like optimism, ambition and drive were already natural to me. Self-control is one of my weaknesses. I know I would be more successful if I was more consistent in producing quality content. I have to remind myself of this constantly.
Thanks for this great reminder of what we need to succeed.
Jessica
Oh yes, absolutely! I think I’ve struggled with most of them, at some point or another. I was never the most patient person out there, by any stretch. One of the hardest lessons I’ve had to learn is that the road I’ve chosen requires it and there’s no way around it.
I pretty much set out to reinvent myself, some time ago. I had to, in order to make this thing work. I had to become the kind of person who could do it, because the person I had been for most of my life didn’t have what it took. That struggle is what inspired me to start this website, as well as my other one, The Strongest Mind.
If there’s one trait I’m probably stronger in, it’s optimism. I’ve always believed in the possibilities and that there’s a path for every direction that a person could possibly want to go with their life. I think what I’ve had the most trouble with is maintaining the same level of drive when things are either slow or at a standstill.
Thanks so much for your insight, Jessica!
Mark
I believe Belief is the most important quality to have. It is a matter of believing in your skills, experience, and knowledge. Furthermore, if a skill or knowledge is missing, then you must have a belief in your ability to find and get it. The level of belief should reflect goals or dreams that others would consider crazy or unachievable.
So true, Glen. That makes perfect sense. I think one of the biggest reasons why people don’t go after what they want is that they don’t actually believe in themselves enough to think they can get it. Thanks for stopping by!
Mark
Hello there, thanks for sharing this awesome article i know it would be of great help to the public as it has been of help to me.Business is an art, and not everyone knows to master this art. Ssome people have the inborn qualities to be a successful entrepreneur, and others work to develop these qualities. Thanks for sharing this awesome article..
Glad you found it helpful! Thanks so much for stopping by!
Mark
Hello there! This is an amazing article you have got here. I am sure this information in your review will be of great help to any one who come across it as it is to me. I have already saved this post so I can go over it again so I can use it as a guide and also share it with my colleagues in work. Thanks!
Thanks, Joy! Yes, feel free to share with anyone you think my benefit from it. Thanks for stopping by!
Mark
I must say that this article has been a source of inspiration to me. the tips that you have shared are so important. i do believe that optimism and belief are really important as they are the driving force of anyone to do great things. thank you very much for this awesome article. it is really helpful.
Glad you enjoyed it, Lucas! Yes, sometimes they make all the difference. Thanks for stopping by!
Mark