Six Personality Traits Of Successful Entrepreneurs

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What does it mean to be a successful entrepreneur? Is it being a born go-getter? Is it having an extroverted personality? Is it being charismatic enough to persuade customers?

While some entrepreneurs hold these traits, they rarely define the characteristics of every successful entrepreneur. Not everyone is born with a drive to change the world. In fact, many successful entrepreneurs today are people who you may have underestimated in high school or college.

A living example of this is Bill Gates, who famously said, “If I had a dollar for every time someone made fun of me in high school—oh, wait. I do!”

Anyone can become a successful entrepreneur. However, there are a few key personality traits that all (or almost all) successful entrepreneurs have in common.

1. Robust Work Ethic

Successful entrepreneurs know a thing or two about work ethic. Most of the time, they’ll be the first to arrive at the office and the last to leave. If there’s unfinished business, they’ll show up at the office on weekends and holidays and work until the job is complete. These are the people who always have work on their mind, even if they’re enjoying personal time.

2. Deep Passion

Work ethic and passion go hand in hand. It takes work ethic to keep the business strong, and it takes passion to feel motivated enough to maintain a good worth ethic.

I believe passion is easily the most significant personality trait any successful entrepreneur has, and for obvious reasons. They’re successful because they choose to do what they love.

Did you ever feel so passionate about a school project that you ended up getting an A? That feeling of success is priceless, and it’s how entrepreneurs feel when they see great outcomes from the effort they put into their work.

3. Creativity

Companies that thrive are often built from the wild creativity of their creators. With aggressive competition these days, entrepreneurs are forced to come up with original ideas that differentiate their companies from others.

Creativity can mean thinking of unique business ideas. It can also come into play when finding a relationship between two unrelated things to solve a problem. Creative entrepreneurs consider the possibility that the traditional solution isn’t good enough.

4. Motivated Self-Starters

A self-starter doesn’t settle for a draining 9-to-5 job. A self-starter doesn’t give up at the first sign of struggle. A self-starter doesn’t hold things off until it’s too late.

A self-starter is someone who does what needs to be done without being asked or encouraged to do so. They take the initiative on their own projects and lead themselves. They recognize that when things get hard, it’s a challenge that helps them grow as an entrepreneur and make the business stronger.

Entrepreneurs have to be self-starters to help their businesses scale rapidly in today’s cutthroat business world.

5. Easygoing Attitude

Change of plans? Do you need to redo an entire project? A successful entrepreneur will shake off any inconveniencies and start from scratch without getting into a huge rut. In fact, many entrepreneurs will tell you that their businesses turned out much differently from what they had originally envisioned. They’ll also likely tell you that they wouldn’t want their business to have turned out any other way.

Being easygoing is all about going with the flow, taking new opportunities as they come, not getting stuck in a certain mindset and being receptive to changes and even criticism. Successful entrepreneurs can take a bad situation and spin it around to their advantage.

6. Eager to Learn

No one knows everything. A new business doesn’t often have staff in every department due to lack of funding. It takes time and resources to build a team. That means entrepreneurs need to learn everything from accounting to marketing from the get-go.

This kind of experience is what makes accomplished entrepreneurs so well rounded. They’ve seen it, been through it and learned it all before.

Whether you hope to become an entrepreneur, are fairly new in the game or are now a seasoned entrepreneur, you can become successful. Although adopting these personality traits will help you in the long run, it’s likely you already possess them if you’re following the entrepreneurial path.