Yahoo Finance 3 ways to tell if you would be a great entrepreneur
Entrepreneurship is considered a very risky career path with a high failure rate. Some people spend years in their office cubicles dreaming of starting their own venture but are paralysed by fear - permanently held back by ‘what if it doesn’t work?’
Over my short, but action-packed entrepreneurial journey there have been a handful of personality and character traits I've identified in highly successful entrepreneurs.
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Here are the top three signs to forecast your entrepreneurial future.
1. You're delusionally optimistic
What is delusional optimism? This is simply where an individual is so focused and determined on a single positive outcome that they blatantly disregard the reality of the situation.
Entrepreneurs use this to fail fast, keep their morale up and manifest the outcome that they want.
Author and psychologist Daniel Kahneman has a great saying: “If you rationally weighed the odds of success, you'd never start a business.”
The reason this skill is so important is just that - the odds are not in your favour and you need something to give you an edge over other business owners.
2. You have an ability to untangle strings
When starting a business you might have nothing, however hopefully you have some skills, you may have some relationships and possibly even some cash.
An interesting way to view this is the classic earphones in the bottom of a bag analogy.
Some people put the headphones away to untangle later, some listen to music with tangled headphones, but very few put in the time to untangle them.
I like to view starting a business the same way. When you have a tangled nest of skills, relationships and resources, it’s your job to untangle it and and see see how to create synergy.
Success is sometimes just about looking at the sticks you have on the ground and then trying to build a fire. This is a skill very few possess which is why only a few succeed.
3. You have a healthy understanding of failure
The odds are never going to be in your favour, which is why it’s imperative to your success that as an individual you accept that failures are going to happen.
As the Rocky Balboa quote goes: “It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward”.
Cheesy as it is, something only becomes a failure when you give up.
This is why you have successful entrepreneurs who start five, 10 or even 15 businesses until they get that win. Because it only takes one.
As a great example check out Australian entrepreneur Fred Schebesta who had 39 business failures until he hit the nail on the head with Finder.com.au.
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