Q: What are the three most important traits of a successful entrepreneur?
1. Tolerance for Discomfort
The reality of entrepreneurship is that there is no guarantee that your efforts will pay off in the end. The probability of those efforts working out are often small and, at the end of the day, the money probably won't be equivalent to how much the experience will demand of you both professionally and personally. The experience can and will likely be grueling,uncertain, and uncomfortable. The ability to see the value in being an entrepreneur is essential for getting through these tough times. It is important to stay focused on the reason you ventured out on your own in the first place (i.e. for professional autonomy, to realize a personal vision, etc.) and use it as motivation. On the other end of the spectrum, there will be many times where there will be the temptation to jump on deals pre-maturely or pursue opportunities that can be more risk than reward. Successful entrepreneurs are adept at riding out hard times and making good choices in pivotal moments to yield the highest returns.
The 5th Annual Hiscox DNA of an Entrepreneur Survey offers real-time insights about both entrepreneurs’ business performance and plans as well as their attitudes and lifestyles which their peers may find interesting.
2. Adaptive Persistence
Persistence, if too rigid or stubborn, can be detrimental to an entrepreneur. While entrepreneurs are often portrayed as exemplifying perseverance, their ability to interpret and adapt to changes in the market generally receives less attention. It’s unlikely that ignoring negative feedback from consumers will lead to success, but this leaves entrepreneurs with some tough decisions. Does it make sense to cut their losses despite the time and effort already invested? Successful entrepreneurs often choose to forge ahead, but do so by adapting the idea based on this feedback. Through refinement, an entrepreneur can stay true to their original goals and motivations while producing a product that is profitable and desirable by VCs. Refinement can include rewording your pitch, redesigning your product, reassessing your target audience, refocusing your marketing initiatives, or any other aspect of your business that may be limiting your success.
3. Knowing What You Don't Know
Most of the smartest people I've met, both in industry and academia, seem to be well aware that they don't know everything. More importantly, they don't try to learn things that are outside of the scope of their ability or interest. This can be a waste of time when you're on a deadline or if other priorities need to take precedence. In business, there is always room to hire people who know about the things you don't know and being able to hire the right people to take on these roles is essential. This applies to skill sets as well.
Q: Name an entrepreneur who best exemplifies one of these traits in their life and business.
I had the pleasure of hearing Shark Tank's Barbara Corcoran speak at this year's IBM Smart Camp at the Waldorf Astoria. During her presentation she identified one of the keys to her success: a business partner who was talented in all the ways she wasn't (See a clip here: ).
She calls herself an expander, someone who will go grow and expand the business, whereas her partner is a container, someone who can manage the day to day operations in the office, such as paperwork. Finding a container or expander to complement your personal business skill is a strategy she recommends to every entrepreneur and there are countless other entrepreneurs who have demonstrated the importance of similar partnerships with people who have different skills.
Q: What are the three most dominant traits among failed entrepreneurs?
1. Valuing Image Over Substance
Believing in the image of entrepreneurship over the product or service you provide can change your perception about your success and keep you from seeing the bigger picture.
The image of entrepreneurship is often glamorized by the media and peers on their social media and personal websites. Many new entrepreneurs I know had financial backing that they leveraged to promote their ventures, rented office space, and participated in popular events, such as conferences and expos. In contrast, I worked from home and tried to generate business, constantly nervous about how long I could stay operational, but used the downtime to cultivate my technical skills, learn new technologies and refine my services. Over the past year, my business has grown while many of the other entrepreneurs I know either have reentered the workforce or their businesses have stopped growing. Their initial efforts were more focused on capitalizing, marketing and establishing their company image rather than developing their core product. Foregoing developing skill sets and learning new techniques to keep product/service-lines current and exciting can jeopardize your relationship with existing clients or harm your company’s competitive edge.
2. Belief in a "Right Way"
There is no rulebook for entrepreneurship or for becoming a successful entrepreneur. If there were, there would be perfect information, no chance of arbitrage, or quite simply, there would be no need for entrepreneurship. Starting out as an entrepreneur with preconceived notions, such as how many hours you'll work or how long it takes to become successful will be (in most cases) shattered. Only doing things that have been predetermined as successful can result in your business failing because your business may be unique or innovative and thus, in need of a new approach in order to be marketable. There is no way to know if your doing the right thing in life and similarly there is no guarantee that doing it the "right way" will make you successful.
3. Focusing on Failure
Failure plays a different role in entrepreneurship than it does in other contexts, such as school and work. For one thing, there is no one above you who can penalize you for your mistakes, but entrepreneurs can still feel tempted to cast blame on anyone other than himself or herself rather than face it. Focusing on the failure itself, rather than learning from it, will only limit your ability to move on from it. Many entrepreneurs even learn to use failure to drive their success. Failure can be used as an opportunity to investigate your internal structure. A potentially larger problem could be hiding in your business and determining the cause of a minor setback can save you from a devastating situation in the future.
Q: If we can overcome them, how?
I think it is important to start with a clear image of your product, your company and yourself. Once you have established that, it will be much easier to move your company image and products forward. This will also help you stay true to yourself when times get tough or you run into failures along the way.
Try reading the biographies, speeches or interviews of a variety of different entrepreneurs, take note of different approaches that can be attributed to their success and see if you can apply those to yourself. Also, reading about other entrepreneur’s personal experiences dealing with failure may change your own perspective on how to view your shortcomings.
For example, a business that fails to meet the year’s sales goals might discover the drop in sales resulted from losing dissatisfied clients and may benefit from creating a customer service department as a result.
If you find yourself constantly comparing yourself to other entrepreneurs who you follow, try limiting the number of times you log into your account and focus on your business instead. By making progress in your venture, you will feel more confident about your work by the next time you log in.
Q: Share the story of an entrepreneur who overcame this trait in order to be successful.
There are also benefits to failure as well as lessons we can learn from it. Take the experience of Steve Jobs, one of many entrepreneurs who have learned from failure. In his commencement address at Stanford University in 2005 he explained,
I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over. I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
Failure has the amazing benefit of giving us a clean slate to either walk away from a draining endeavor or, more importantly, help us find a renewed love for the things that we've chosen to pursue. And the more times we fail at the things we love, we feel stronger each time we decide to take it on again and each time we do so having grown a bit wiser, a bit more likely to succeed the next time. Had Steve jobs chosen to only see the negative and humiliating aspects of his failure, he might not be known as the entrepreneur he is today.
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These are excellent, thoughtful, answers.
What do you think about her answers or your own traits that have contributed towards your successes or failures?
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