5 Signs you’re an Entrepreneur

Just do one simple search on Google and you’ll find an endless list of entrepreneur qualities, all described as the trademarks of a successful entrepreneur: passion, business focus, drive, confidence, innovation, persuasiveness, determination, independence, curiosity, risk-taking, adaptability, self-discipline and the list goes on.

Not even Bill Gates have them all.

Luckily, the real determining factor, according entrepreneurial researcher Jesper Moe, is not whether or not you’re born as a “super-individual” with all these qualities, but rather whether or not you choose to develop these entrepreneurial qualities throughout your life. Thus, your attitude.

According to his paper, A Meta-analysis on who become Entrepreneurs, “becoming an entrepreneur is a possibility even if the individual is not in possession of the traits needed” as it’s more than possible to get help towards becoming entrepreneurial.

That’s why we’ve compiled a list of 5 real signs you’ve chosen the road to entrepreneurial success, rather than a list of qualities that you could Google in anyway. Here you go!

1) You want to learn something new everyday

You’ve got the secret all figured out: knowledge is power and we all start out knowing nothing. Even Richard Branson had to start somewhere.

To you, finding the road to success is a matter of soaking up as much know-how and info as soon as possible.

You read books and business articles; you attend workshops; you watch YouTube videos on entrepreneurs and you dive into conversations with leaders in your industry or people you admire.

The only real failure is going to sleep tonight with the same amount of knowledge you had yesterday.

2) You’re on a daily mission to improve yourself

Just like anyone else, you were born with a set of strengths and weaknesses that you did not choose. It’s how you use those strengths and how much you underplay or work on your weak points that determine how much you can achieve with what you’ve been given.

According to Vivek Wadwat, a research director at the Duke Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization in North Caorlina, it’s still one of the most common misconceptions that people are born entrepreneurs.

“Although some research indiciates that entrepreneurship skills are genetic qualities, anyone lacking theses skills can learn them or develop weak qulities into strong ones,” explains Wadwat.

If you’re dedicated to honing those entrepreneurial skills that don’t come naturally to you, for e.g. business focus; confidence; innovativeness or self-discipline, you’ve chosen the road to success.

3) You’re willing to take action, even if it’s risky

“Anybody can think up an idea for a business, but not everyone can put rubber to the road and actually grow something that both matters and earns money,” explains entrepreneurial blogger Caleb Wojcik. “Taking action is the difference between entrepreneurs and non-entrepreneurs.”

Sure you can fail, but Rome was not made in a day. It also did not build itself. A great idea means nothing if you don’t invest the time, money or effort needed to see if it can actually work and that usually requires taking some sort of risk.

Whether that means going into your own business full-time, investing some of your saving or simply sacrificing your free time to develop your business in the evening, while you pay your bills with your day job.

4) You have a passion to change the world for the better

One of the most common entrepreneurial traits mentioned in business research is opportunity spotting. This simply means you have the ability to spot problems in the world and solve them – like a real-life superhero.

Finding needs that are unmet within your community and investing your time and energy to find sustainable ways to fulfil those needs on an on-going basis is not only the basis of a good business plan, but also a sure-fire way to better the world.

5) You’re ready to get up after failure, every time

If you Google quotes on success, you’ll find an overwhelming amount of them are focused on overcoming failure. The reason being, failure is both inevitable when you try new things and it’s necessary to finding new and better ways of doing things.

Hollywood director Steven Spielberg was rejected by multiple film schools, Steve Jobs was fired from his own company, Apple, back in the day and the famous fashion designer Vera Wang was a figure skater who never made the Olympic team.

Former UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill summed it up perfectly: “success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm”.

That’s why adaptability is one of the key qualities associated with successful entrepreneurs. You have to have the willingness to take risks and then you need to be willing to get up and change things up when they don’t work out as you planned.