Effective Entrepreneurs: 5 Traits They Have in Common

Being an entrepreneur is not as simple as having a great idea, getting investors, and opening the doors to your new business.  It requires a lot of hard work and planning to open a business and you simply might not have what it takes to get it done.  However, that doesn’t mean you can’t do an honest assessment of your personality traits to see if you might harbor the winning combination needed to become an effective entrepreneur.  Here are just a few of the traits that must be present if you want to succeed in the professional enterprises you decide to tackle.

1. Inspiration.  In order to be a successful entrepreneur, you need to have the next great idea on the backburner at all times.  You not only have to embrace innovation, you also need to be flexible enough to flow with the changing tides of consumer taste.  It can be tempting to stick with the one good idea that takes off, but keep in mind that economics are cyclical.  Since consumer goods tend to go in and out of fashion, an effective entrepreneur always has a lot of irons in the fire.
2. Resolve.  There are going to be a lot of times when you fall on your face as an entrepreneur, and everyone from Bill Gates (Windows Vista) to Donald Trump (Time has a Top 10 list!) has had these types of professional failures.  But what all effective entrepreneurs have in common is that they pick themselves up, dust themselves off, and try again.  They may fail nine times out of ten, but when they make it, they make it big.
3. Business sense.  You don’t have to obtain a business degree to have common sense when it comes to business (although pretty much everyone can benefit from taking courses in economics and business planning).  But if you can’t see why it’s a bad idea to open a high-end retail store that specializes in luxury goods during a recession, then you probably shouldn’t set your sights on becoming an entrepreneur.  You have to be realistic, level-headed, and most of all, aware of the market.  Without a solid understanding of why some businesses fail and others succeed, you can’t hope to compete as an entrepreneur.
4. Charisma.  A good entrepreneur is something of a large-scale panhandler.  At some point, you may have enough capital on hand to funnel into new startups.  But when you’re just starting out, you’re going to need help from investors to get your business ventures off the ground.  This could mean borrowing from banks or other lenders, taking on partners, or gunning for venture capital firms.  But in order to convince these people to cough up the dough you’re going to have to know your stuff and present it in a way that gives them confidence in your ability to succeed and make them a profit.
5. Organization.  You don’t necessarily have to fill your office with color-coded bins and put tamper proof labels on privileged files in order to be an effective entrepreneur, but you do need to create a solid business plan and have all of your ducks in a row when you pitch investors.  And when you’re in business, you either need to keep meticulous care with records or hire someone that you trust to do it for you.  Once you open the doors to your business, effective organization is a must if you want to keep them open.

Carol Montrose writes for SeaReach, a manufacturer of labels, tags, and security documents.