Characteristics of an entrepreneur

**Anthony Tori** · 07-05-2010 04:46 PM

I remember looking up characteristics of an entrepreneur ALL the time when I was younger. I always wanted to be one. I've read a lot of articles about characteristics and decided to write my own blog post about it since I took a different approach. I would like to see what other entrepreneurs on the board think about it. Feel free to leave your comments on the post. It would be nice to see what other people feel are good characteristics.

Characteristics of an Entrepreneur | Innovatively Simple

**KyleXY** · 07-05-2010 06:06 PM

Of course there are always exception to any rule but I think some key characteristics that I think are important is:

1. Having no fear regardless of what it is you're dealing with or facing. MANY MANY MANY people can't handle stress or pressure or all sorts of other things yet each and every one of them think they can. It's almost a joke until they run into some issue and then they try to justify why their concern or actions are warranted when in reality, you should never have to stress or worry about a single thing. Failure or any other problems or issue, is common no matter what you do. The ability to accept it, move forward, is crucial. Not panic or worry.

2. Being relentlessly resourceful and creative. Few people can do this. Most, especially a ton of people on here, ask for a handout. There's nothing wrong with stuff like raising capital, but learn to do it properly.

3. The ability to recognize talent, vision, ideas, etc... This is almost an innate ability and unfortunately some people have it, some people don't. In these situation, you either recognize you suck at this or you're completely oblivious to it entirely. Best remedy is finding someone who has this ability to work with or hire if you can see it in any way. It's not as obvious as someone who obviously can't write or program or anything like that. Although much more subtle, much more vital.

These are some initial thoughts. Of course a real list is much longer.

**Save the Roaches** · 07-05-2010 10:31 PM

In my future business, I feel the strongest characteristic is the ability to blaze trail ways.

When there is someone in your way, you move them and go on. If something hurts you, you brush it off. And if a door closes, you find another. This means no exceptions. All ideas of failure should be banished. If you want it.. one needs to find a way.

**KyleXY** · 07-05-2010 11:13 PM

Originally Posted by Save the Roaches

In my future business, I feel the strongest characteristic is the ability to blaze trail ways.

When there is someone in your way, you move them and go on. If something hurts you, you brush it off. And if a door closes, you find another. This means no exceptions. All ideas of failure should be banished. If you want it.. one needs to find a way.

There is some bad advice within this and some good. Some ideas just won't work and that's why many companies iterate. You can NOT be stuck to something like that and expect it to work. Many great companies (PayPal, Yelp, etc..) changed their business model almost completely to be able to make it succeed. Being stuck to an idea is not the way to go sometimes.

**Anthony Tori** · 07-05-2010 11:24 PM

Being stuck on an idea is good. Being stuck on doing that idea one way is bad. Like you said, PayPal changed their business model, but offered the same basic idea. I've done this many times. I'm doing it right now. I had an idea and created it, but found out it wasn't exactly the way other people wanted. I went back and changed the business model and plan on launching the new version in a couple weeks. I'm still offering the same idea, but had to be creative and change it up. I think some people would have considered it a failure and gave up. However, I'm really passionate about it and feel like the new business model is WAY better than the first.

**KH_Global** · 07-06-2010 01:24 AM

Here are some characteristics:

Risk Taking
Confidence and Courage
People Management
Business Acumen
Visionary
Planning
Thinking
Belief

**jonn655** · 07-06-2010 08:42 AM

I think that entrepreneurs need the support of one another and in that sense a business partnership can also be forged.

**StockDC2** · 07-06-2010 03:13 PM

I believe an entrepreneur needs to have ambition and realize that doing something is better than doing nothing at all.

**jonn655** · 07-08-2010 08:13 AM

Thanks members for you varied insight. And the other characteristic of an entrepreneur is learning (may I say?). There is reason why the books written by Dr Stephen Covey, Napoleon Hill, Zig Ziglar, Brian Tracy and Dr Walter D. Staples have become internationally popular.

**KyleXY** · 07-08-2010 08:19 AM

Originally Posted by jonn655

I think that entrepreneurs need the support of one another and in that sense a business partnership can also be forged.

Yes and no. You should be generally helpful to people as a person. Not just supportive of someone because they're another entrepreneur. And this does not guarantee by any means that a business partnership would succeed just base on how much you'd support someone.