Did you know that at least 30.7 million small businesses existed in the United States in 2019? While it’s claimed that nine out every ten startups fail, most American businesses continue to show impressive resilience decades after inception. Nonetheless, starting and sustaining a business isn’t a child’s play.
While financing is at the core of business startups, it takes a special set of traits to be a business owner. Do you have a burning desire to start your enterprise soon?
Being your boss can be a rewarding journey. However, these seven traits of an entrepreneur are a must-have for any potential business owner, hoping to survive beyond the shakeout stage.
Here are some qualities you need to nurture in your quest to drive your startup company towards growth.
1. Risk Taker
Starting a business requires guts. You have to put in money and time and hope to reap profits in the medium and long-term. Successful entrepreneurship requires you to try out things that other people would consider too risky.
Whether you are venturing into a virgin market or trying out a new product, you need to be a risk-taker to thrive. Most risk-averse would-be entrepreneurs don’t survive beyond the shakeout stage. The reason for this failure to reach maturity is due to the problem of risk-averseness.
Are you hoping to venture into business soon? You might need to assess your appetite for risks beforehand. If you’re overly uptight with risks, then you aren’t ready to become your own boss.
2. Open-Mindedness
Most businesses go through a recurrence of changes and innovation over the entire lifecycle. Without an open mind, change can easily overwhelm you. There’re products you’ll launch that will fail to make the cut.
How well you deal with such situations, determines your venture’s success—open-mindedness involves developing a positive receptiveness to new ideas. It would be best if you were willing to learn new progressive ideas while unlearning the business approaches that don’t seem to add value.
Most successful business owners have an open mind when it comes to technology and its impact on business. Broad-mindedness is among the traits of an entrepreneur that matters in a business.
3. Positivity in Failure
90% of startups in the United States fail. Whether this takes 20 years or one day, failure can be a moment of reckoning for any business owner. Nonetheless, most startups experience a recurrence of failures before eventual success.
Are you considering starting a business soon? Failure will be part of your journey. The problem isn’t the inherence of failure, rather how you deal with such setbacks. Most successful entrepreneurs use failure as part of the critical lessons in the management of their businesses.
If you want to succeed as an entrepreneur, you might need to understand that failure is part of the game. How you deal with such failures will set you apart from your close competitors. Dealing with failure is among the critical traits of an entrepreneur you need to consider.
4. Knowledge
You won’t be able to keep up with the market if you can’t learn the trends. Part of the reason most startups fail is due to the over-reliance on old knowledge. Are you wondering what traits of an entrepreneur you need to run a successful business?
A successful business owner is always hungry for new insights. Building a business requires constant contact with business management consultants to tap into new insights and knowledge. Scaling with systems is a perfect place where you can tap into valuable knowledge.
Further, being a reader is one of the most important traits in your journey. Reading not only offers you insights on the various trends in your industry but also helps you learn from other successful business owners. You can keep an active readership from business journals to help you enhance your understanding of business management.
5. Passion
When starting a business, hard work gets you to the top. However, only passion can sustain your position at the top. When in business, the bottom line is not only about profitability. It is also about fulfillment.
What keeps you grounded even when the business is not profitable is your passion. Passion is the fuel that keeps most business owners’ eyes on the price, even amid adversity. Most startups that fail to survive past the initial stages of their lifecycle experience such setbacks due to a diminishing passion.
6. A Successful Entrepreneur Plans Ahead
A successful entrepreneur should be a good planner. Every stage in the management of your business involves planning. You can’t fail to plan and expect to thrive. Whether it’s the drafting of your business plan or allocating resources through a budget, planning is vital.
Further, planning is integral for any entrepreneur, given that it helps you decide on how and where to position your business. Through a plan, you also get clarity on your vision and how to execute it. A successful entrepreneur should be a meticulous planner.
Being a good planner minimizes the risk of surprises when managing your business. With proper planning, you’ll be able to allocate your resources through prioritizing.
7. An Entrepreneur Should Be Overoptimistic
While this might sound far-fetched, you need an equal measure of lady-luck and optimism to succeed. Overconfidence is a cognitive bias that can help entrepreneurs to remain motivated even amid hardship. You might always need to initiate action with immense confidence and optimism as an entrepreneur.
Success, when launching, depends on your inherent, will power. However, it would be best if you had a fine balance between resolve and optimism for you to thrive. For most successful businesses, the determining factor is always the commitment to exhibit overconfidence, especially at the initial stages of inception.
With These Traits You’re Ready to Venture Out
Starting a business is not only about capital. So many other factors go into launching your startup. Key among these factors are your personal traits.
While some individualities are inherent, you must learn some overtime. Some of the traits of an entrepreneur that matter include a pang of hunger for knowledge. With the right business management consultants such as Scale with Systems, you can develop imperative knowledge about building your business and getting on the path to success.
