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specialists in enhancement and management of human performance |
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Do you have the entrepreneurial traits you need to succeed? According to the Small Business Administration, the lack of business experience and expertise is the cause of 95% of business failures. Statistically, your chance of lasting in business for two years is less than 50%. Of those few businesses that last more than 5 years, most owners make little profit for excessive hours and many headaches. Not every business starts with the same odds. Those started by people with solid business experience, expertise and preparation have a far greater chance of success than those started by people with little or none. While there are obvious differences that depend on your industry and size, success traits hold true for aggressive hi-tech startups and small brick-and-mortar enterprises, alike. There are certainly a few wildly successful people. Bill Gates has some strengths that served him well, but if you know how Microsoft got where it is today, you also know he got lucky! Would you stake your life on good intentions and wild optimism? Would you rather stack the deck in your favor? In our work, we've found people who have no business being in business, people who develop themselves to be successful, and a very few that are already well-equipped for certain success. The following list can help you uncover your strengths, and point you toward the areas to begin developing today, so you may enjoy greater success tomorrow! The first part of this article will address some character traits and attitudes of entrepreneurs.
Do you know what motivates you? What stops you? Your success patterns? Your strengths and weaknesses? Knowing yourself is as important to a successful venture as marketing, technology, management and other acumen: you can design your business to take advantage of your strong points, and fill your team to bolster your weak areas. Are you a leader? Can you inspire others? Qualities like empathy, objectivity, and an ability to discern what others deeply care about will help you to motivate your employees. Your technical knowledge and business acumen must be balanced with great people skills. Are you a self-starter? Do you have will power and self discipline? When you're the boss, you MUST be able to motivate yourself. No one will look over your shoulder to urge you along. Successful people make things happen; they don't wait for the phone to ring or to be told what to do. Do you have an unbridled passion to succeed? Do you enjoy competition? Today's business world is highly competitive and it will become even more so. Tomorrow's winners will be those who prepared well, competed hard, and didn't coast. Do you like people? Do you get along well with different kinds of people? You will have to: customers, employees, suppliers, bureaucrats, those with different views and personalities. The larger your business becomes, the more of them you'll have to deal with. Do you have a positive attitude? With all the ups and downs in the business world, an optimistic outlook is a necessity. You have to be able to view each setback as a stepping stone to your eventual success. Do you consistently uncover resources and opportunities around you?
Do you possess tremendous confidence in yourself? Do you know you have what it takes, and that your business is a winner? This strong concept of self can be, and must be learned by an entrepreneur. We're not talking about deluding yourself: you must KNOW yourself, the realities of your business, plus possess a fierce determination that YOU will and can make it happen. Do you have abundant drive and energy? Your workload and schedule will tax your physical and emotional stamina. Are you willing to put more than forty hours a week into your new enterprise? Starting your own business can be much more draining than working for someone, since you have to solve all the problems and handle whatever others drop out. Everything is up to you. Success can demand all you have and more. If you are committed to your enterprise, it will show in the fervor you apply to it. If you love what you do, it comes easily: play is work, work is play. This is not to say you must put every hour and resource into your business to succeed. Being unstoppable is, in part, a function of your ability to keep at the task, no matter how mundane or what it takes. What are you willing to sacrifice to achieve your dream? Most business startups demand months, even years to make a profit. You may need to adjust your standard of living, or even do without a steady paycheck. How committed and confident are you in your venture? If you don't demonstrate your willingness to risk your own money in your venture, investors and banks won't invest in you! The Bay Area is the biggest concentration of "startups" and venture funding the world has ever known, but here are a few sobering statistics. 98% of all patents never even go to market! An estimated 0.5 to 4% of all the proposals that venture capitalists receive are funded. The majority of folks submitting proposals have experience and/or training in their chosen field, and have written, thought-out plans. Each VC firm looks at about 50 plans each week, sees only 10 new entrepreneurs each week, and funds only 10 deals a year. Fully 70% of VC-funded startups fail! Knowing the statistics for business failure, are you still committed to starting your own business? Are you prepared to lose your savings, and having to start over? Are you comfortable with failure? It's an integral part of achieving success. This is not to suggest you should ever settle for failure. No one I know enjoys failure. Yet it often is a breeding ground for great success. A failure doesn't mean you're defeated. It means you weren't prepared enough to guarantee success. Learn from your failures, develop new assets, come up with a new plan, and forge ahead! The second segment of this article will deal with more traits, attitudes, and habits of successful entrepreneurs. A subsequent segment will address more practical matters. (Go to Part 2 of this article.)
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"The important thing in life is to have a great aim and to
possess the aptitude and perseverance to attain it." --
Goethe