Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

As you already know, we all have to face our fair share of challenges, obstacles and set backs in business. Very rarely do things go to plan. And to succeed we need more than a good idea and business plan.

Here are 5 essential characteristics needed for entrepreneurial success:

1: Persistence -- Persistence is the steel of human character. It’s your ability to carry on regardless how many times you may experience temporary defeat. It’s the strength to keep going until you achieve your goal. It`s what separates the boys from the men, the girls from the women, the winners from the losers.

It’s the quality that every highly successful entrepreneur has developed over time and now possesses in abundance.

In fact...without it success is almost impossible.

Highly successful entrepreneurs and business owners don`t succeed because they are better educated, more talented or luckier than everyone else. They succeed because they refuse to give up.

How else do you think Thomas Edison kept going beyond 10,000 attempts to discover the light bulb?

Life is nothing more than a series of tests. And the most important one for your success is the persistence test. Each challenge is sent to test how determined you are to get what you say you want. If you pass, you get to claim the great rewards that success has to offer. If you don`t, you won`t. It’s that simple.

Persistence is the key to entrepreneurial success. Because with persistence, anything and everything is possible.

"Adhere to your purpose and you will soon feel as well as you ever did. On the contrary, if you falter, and give up, you will lose the power of keeping any resolution, and will regret it all your life." - Abraham Lincoln


2. Vision -- Every major achievement in history has been achieved by visionaries; people who lived in a world that was, but saw a world that could be.

This ability to "visualise possibilities" is essential to entrepreneurial success. It is the characteristic that helps highly successful entrepreneurs come up with innovative solutions to existing problems.

Bill Gates had a vision of every desktop having a computer and every computer running Microsoft software. Oprah Winfrey had a vision of a person-centred talk show that helped find solutions to their problems. Walt Disney had a vision of an amusement park that people of all ages, from all around the world could "escape" to.

To bring your entrepreneurial dreams into reality, you must first see it in your minds eye. Develop a strong vision and it will fuel your persistence.

"You will encounter many distractions and many temptations to put your goal aside: The security of a job, a wife who wants kids, whatever. But if you hang in there, always following your vision, I have no doubt you will succeed."- Larry Flynt


3. Belief -- The Oxford dictionary defines ‘belief’ as: "A feeling that something exists or is true, especially one without proof."

Highly successful entrepreneurs know that belief gives you the strength and motivation to overcome the many obstacles and challenges you`re sure to encounter along the way. They believe in their dreams.

But more importantly, they believe in themselves and their ability to make those dreams come true. They know that self belief is one of the things that bank managers and investors take into consideration when deciding whether to give you finance or not.

Highly successful entrepreneurs also know that the bigger the dream, the more people will try to discourage you from pursing it -- even those closest.

For example, When Marconi first announced in the 1880s that he`d discovered a way to send messages through the air, without the aid of wires, his ‘friends’ had him taken into custody, and examined in a psychopathic hospital. His later discoveries and contributions to the advancement of wireless radio technology earned him the title "father of radio".

It is the belief in your vision that will give you the persistence to continue on beyond temporary defeat.

"In order to succeed, we must first believe that we can." - Michael Korda


4. Focus -- We entrepreneurs are blessed with a strength that can easily become a curse and major weakness. This blessing and strength is our ability to see opportunities everywhere and in everything.

However, when this causes us to lose focus and try to juggle too many balls at once, our blessing becomes a curse, and our strength turns into a weakness.

Every highly successful entrepreneur has had to deal with this issue at sometime or other. Maybe you`re faced with it right now. And when you learn how to focus on one thing at a time, you`ll find that your vision becomes clearer, your belief becomes stronger and persistence will become second nature.

"My success, part of it certainly, is that I have focused in on a few things." - Bill Gates


5. Discipline -- becoming a highly successful entrepreneur is not easy. And to succeed in business you must develop the discipline of doing what needs to be done, when it needs to be done, whether you feel like it or not.

This is often one of the hardest things that aspiring entrepreneurs struggle to deal with. But it is also essential to your success. Discipline gives you a structured approach to success and greatly increases your chances of turning your dreams into reality.

Because Discipline leads to Focus; Focus creates clear Vision; Clear Vision strengthens your Belief; and Belief results in Persistence.

Get this right and your success is virtually guaranteed.

"With self-discipline almost anything is possible." - Theodore Roosevelt

What other characteristics/traits do you believe are also essential to entrepreneurial success?


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Ade Shokoya - founder of www.ItsAnEntrepreneursWorld.com

Free Video Reveals The No.1 Mistake That Quickly Destroys Businesses In a Recession...Click here for more information.

Great post!

If I may add a #6.
6. Support - An entrepreneur needs a support network. Support from your spouse, staff, customers, suppliers.  You can`t do this all alone, you need the help, expertise and services of other people.

Thanks Biziness,

Great one

Support is so essential to our success. Without it, it is very hard to remain focused. No wo/man is an island. And when we have the right support, it makes it easier to overcome the inevitable challenges we must overcome along the way.


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Ade Shokoya - founder of www.ItsAnEntrepreneursWorld.com

Free Video Reveals The No.1 Mistake That Quickly Destroys Businesses In a Recession...Click here for more information.

I imagine #`s 7 and 8 would be charisma and luck. Knowing what you`re doing is only half the job for the entrepreneur. Selling yourself to the people who have what you need (namely funding) is a huge obstacle. Sadly, it`s not what you know, but who, and not what you say, but how. 

Hi Matt,

Thanks for your post.

Charisma is definitly an important quality to posses as an entrepreneur. It can turn `No` into `Yes` and open doors that otherwise would remain closed.

I have to disagree about luck. Because I believe that "luck is when preparation meets opportuntity".

The average person believes highly successful entrepreneurs are lucky because they don`t see all the hard work, sacrifice and personal investment that goes on behind the scenes. They don`t know about the failures and temporary defeat experienced. Or the level of commitment and persistence required to succeed.

Things only seem to always go right for successful people because we don`t see all the things that go wrong.

I would also add that you should be careful about confusing calculated risk taking with gambling . Very few successful entrepreneurs make a "crazy gambit".

Instead - because of their belief, vision and focus - they may sometimes `risk it all to have it all`.


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Ade Shokoya - founder of www.ItsAnEntrepreneursWorld.com

Free Video Reveals The No.1 Mistake That Quickly Destroys Businesses In a Recession...Click here for more information.