Are you cut out to be an entrepreneur?
Is creating your own business from scratch really something you’re meant to do?
According to statistics, about 50% of businesses that hire employees fail within their first five years. Only about 30% of companies make it to their tenth anniversary.
Being an entrepreneur is tough, even at the best of times. When you throw in a wildcard like a worldwide pandemic or a double-dip economic recession, the entrepreneurial life can be brutal.
Nevertheless, every year thousands of driven people set up a new business with aspirations of success, wealth, and genuinely making a difference. With more than 70% of people relying on personal savings for the initial funding, becoming an entrepreneur is not a career decision to take lightly.
Is the entrepreneurial life right for you?
Should you embark on realizing that business dream of yours? Do you have the personality and mindset to make success a reality?
Here are ten signs you ARE meant to be an entrepreneur.
- You are self-starting
The most successful entrepreneurs have a history of starting things. If you look through any famous entrepreneur’s biography, you will see they created and worked on numerous projects, even in their teens. They had a self-starter attitude inherent to their core personality.
If you are a self-starter and have always been passionate about creating things and developing new ideas, you are meant to be an entrepreneur.
- You have positive opportunity mindset
You see opportunities everywhere. In other words, you have a positive opportunity mindset. Unlike most people, you see the potential for growth and development even in complete chaos or the bleakness of a recession. For you, there’s never a wrong time to build a business and make it grow.
If this describes your mindset, then you are a natural-born entrepreneur. The ability to see opportunities goes a long way to you becoming an entrepreneurial success story.
- You’re comfortable with risk
Entrepreneurs are great risk-takers. They thrive on risk and see it as a challenge to overcome. But not just any risk. A successful entrepreneur takes calculated risks after having weighed up their options and carefully planned a route forward.
If you can be comfortable with taking calculated risks throughout your career, then you’re meant to be an entrepreneur. The entrepreneurial life is not for the fainthearted and requires resilience, but it comes with great rewards for the brave.
- You’re a problem solver
Do you see challenges as opportunities to find solutions and potential growth opportunities? Or do you see them as a personal threat? If the latter, the world of entrepreneurship is not for you unless you can change your mindset.
Thriving entrepreneurs are problem solvers. They solve problems every single day and embrace the challenges associated with overcoming barriers. The ability to continually problem-solve helps you to innovate, evolve and push the boundaries toward eventual success.
- You are passionate
When work doesn’t feel like work, you have found your passion. Most people are not passionate about their work and merely see their careers as a means to an end – earning a living. But successful entrepreneurs are passionate about the process of creating and developing a business, in itself.
You have to be passionate about building businesses to be an entrepreneur. You need the passion to fuel your drive through the inevitable peaks and troughs inherent to growing a business or enterprise. Without this passion, your persistence and creativity will quickly wain.
- You have plenty of self-confidence
Confidence is an essential attribute if you’re to become a successful entrepreneur. All the great entrepreneurs have developed a high level of self-confidence and have used this strong mindset to convey the merits of their business ideas to other people.
As an entrepreneur, you will need to be confident in front of customers, partners, staff, and also investors. If you suffer from a chronic lack of confidence and low self-esteem, the entrepreneurial life might not be for you.
That’s not to say you can’t become a successful freelancer.
- You’re decisive
Are you able to come to a firm conclusion quickly, even when under pressure? If so, you are decisive, and this is a crucial quality in an entrepreneur. When building and expanding a business, making fast decisions is vital, and you’ll need to do it daily.
Dealing with a crisis is part and parcel of running a start-up company. Great entrepreneurs act quickly and effectively. They do everything to avoid procrastination. Being too slow in making a decision can be costly.
- You’re good with other people
Being an entrepreneur requires a lot of interaction with many different types of people. It’s a social career path, with lots of face-to-face meetings and group events. If you’re to grow a thriving and lucrative business, you must enjoy being around people and have strong social skills.
Being good with other people is imperative when doing typical entrepreneurial tasks such as meeting with prospects, leading a team, collaborating with partners, persuading investors, networking with industry colleagues, and even giving speeches and presentations in front of large audiences.
- You are hardworking
Entrepreneurs work hard, very hard. They make sacrifices in their lives to focus on creating and growing a business – or multiple businesses. In the early stages of developing a business, a driven entrepreneur may put in 16+ hour workdays for weeks and months without a break. Hard work pays.
If you prefer to work a set number of hours and enjoy restful evenings and weekends, being an entrepreneur is not for you.
- You’re a visionary
All the well-known entrepreneurs with whose names you will be familiar all had a vision. They knew what they wanted to achieve and why. They are known as visionaries, which is an essential attribute you’ll need in order to be a successful entrepreneur.
A vision helps you develop short, medium, and long-term goals that guide your decision-making. These goals provide a sense of direction towards the ultimate realization of a thriving and lucrative business.
What’s your vision?
Are you cut out to be an entrepreneur?
Deep down, you’ll know.
If most or all of the above signs resonate with who you naturally are as a person, then the entrepreneurial path is yours.
It’s important to be honest with yourself before embarking on building a business. Do you have what it takes to be an entrepreneur? If you don’t, you might lose a lot of money, time, and emotional wellbeing.
There are alternatives to being an entrepreneur and growing a company.
Freelancing, for example. Or solopreneurship. Both can also make you a lot of money.
But if you’re sure you have what it takes, then the entrepreneurial life can be everything you ever dreamed of and more.
