When you think about an entrepreneur, you usually think about someone who is all about business. The reality is that a true entrepreneur is about change, creation and much more than business. He is all about doing something good in the world.
Here are ten words that describe an entrepreneur:
Passion: An entrepreneur needs passion just like an airplane needs fuel. They both travel at high altitudes but have to stay grounded once in a while to deal with the world. To sustain that flight, an entrepreneur needs to fuel his soul with passion. As a businessman, you need to be excited about what you are doing every day to keep moving forward.
Perseverance: When you are fighting the fight, you will get knocked down. The one who wins is not the one who not only avoids the punches but also keeps getting up and keeps fighting day in and day out. It is all about learning from each time you get knocked down, getting smarter and rolling with the punches. When you keep moving forward, you eventually get to your goal.
Values: A stable foundation is something that every great building needs. When you are building an empire, you need something you can hang on to. Understanding the values that are important to you will help you stay strong when the going gets tough. Everyone has values, but some people have not discovered theirs yet. Once you discover your values and use them as strengths, your entrepreneurial spirit starts to shine.
Empathy: People are driven by feelings. Emotion is the source of action. If you want to be successful, you must understand your feelings and be able to understand the feelings of the people around you. Entrepreneurship is all about channeling your emotions and connecting with the emotions of people around you. You can have all the knowledge in the world, but if you don’t take action it won’t get you very far.
Skills: Your value to the marketplace will depend on the skills that you have. It will also depend on how you use them. People that want to improve their value must improve upon their skills. There are skills in all areas of life and understanding how to develop skills and how to use them will help you grow as an individual. Entrepreneurs are skill-hungry, they want to improve the skills they have acquired and they want to learn new skills every day.
Hard Work: The harder I work, the luckier I get. Too many people want to get rich quick, lose weight fast and take the easy way out. Being an entrepreneur is about working hard and working smart. You need to be willing to do what other people don’t do so that you can have what other people don’t have.
Creativity: Being creative is about being confident. You need to be willing to have a bad idea and understand that it is about the journey and not the destination. Creativity is stifled when people try to be right all the time. Be brave and make strange connections with ideas that don’t go together. Bring ideas to places they have never been before and suddenly you will find yourself creating change.
Humility: The greatest people are also the most humble people. To reach greatness, you need to make yourself small. The more you know, the more you realize how little you know. People that know nothing often think that they know everything. Once they learn something, they realize how little they know. That is the moment that they can either become humble and keep learning or they can create a wall with fear. Great entrepreneurs are confident enough that they can show humility. Be strong and be humble.
Vision: Everyone can see, but few have true vision. Entrepreneurs need to be able to see into the future and envision something that others cannot yet see. They need to be able to understand the opportunity and live it, breath it and create it. With vision comes many of the other traits that it takes to be an entrepreneur.
Commitment: At the end of the day you can have all the traits, all the skills, all the vision, all the confidence and all the creativity, but if you are not committed you will not be able to succeed. Commitment is the key to excellence. You cannot have anything if you are not committed. When you are committed, everyone can feel it. When you have commitment, suddenly everything else falls into place. The day you commit is the day you start your journey to be an entrepreneur.
What words do you think describe an entrepreneur? Please let me know in the comments below.
Biography: Joe Apfelbaum is the CEO and co-founder of digital marketing agency, Ajax Union. He is a public speaker, certified Google Trainer, and published business author. Joe enjoys speaking and writing about a broad range of business topics in his seminars, webinars and articles. Joe is a member of the Board of Directors of the Entrepreneurs Organization in NY, a group with over 10,000 CEO’s. Joe is a trusted advisor for the Vistage community of 18,000 CEO’s and a contributing member of the INC Business Owners Council, a community of the fastest growing companies in the United States. Joe is proud of all his accomplishments, but most of all he is proud of his successful foodie wife and beautiful four kids.
