CHARACTERISTICS OF SUCCESSFUL ENTREPRENEURS

To launch a new venture successfully, you have to be the right sort of person, your business idea must be right for the market, and your timing must be right. The world of business failures is full of products that are ahead of their time.
The entrepreneur is frequently seen as someone who is always bursting with new ideas, highly enthusiastic, hyperactive, and insatiably curious. However, the more you try to create a picture of the typical entrepreneur, the more elusive it becomes.
Having said that, there are certain characteristics that successful newcomers to business do have in common, and you should emphasize these with respect to yourself in the business plan.



1. Self-Confident All-Around Performers
Entrepreneurs are rarely geniuses. There are nearly always people in their business who have more competence, in one field, than they could ever aspire to. Nevertheless, they have a wide range of abilities and a willingness to turn their hands to anything that has to be done to make the venture succeed. They can usually make the product, market it, and count the money, but above all, they have self-confidence that lets them move comfortably through uncharted waters.

2. The Ability to Bounce Back
Rising from the ashes of former disasters is also a common feature of many successful entrepreneurs. In life generally, only a few people are able to stage a come back after a downslide in any endeavour. Many well meaning people embark on business ventures and when they are met with temporary failure, they embrace it as a dead-end road and give up ever trying again. Nevertheless, a typical entrepreneur will always gather momentum and keep bouncing back until success succumbs to him/her.

3. Innovative Skills
Almost by definition, entrepreneurs are innovators who either tackle the unknown or do old things in new ways. It is this inventive streak, which allows them to carve out a new niche, often invisible to others.


4. Results Oriented
Successful people set themselves goals and get pleasure out of trying to achieve them. Once a goal has been reached, they have to get the next target in view as quickly as possible. This restlessness is very characteristic of a typical entrepreneur.

5. Professional Risk Taker
The high failure rate shows that small businesses are faced with many dangers. An essential characteristic of someone starting a business is the willingness to make decisions and to take risks. This does not mean gambling on hunches. It means carefully calculating the odds and deciding which risks to take and when to take them.

6. Having Total Commitment
You will need complete faith in your idea. How else will you convince all the doubters you are bound to meet that it is a worthwhile venture? You will also need single-mindedness, energy, and a lot of hard work to get things started; working 18-hour days is common. This can put a strain on other relationships, particularly within your family, so they too have to be involved and committed if you are to succeed.

All too often budding entrepreneurs believe themselves to be the right sort of person to set up a business. Unfortunately, the capacity for self-deception is enormous. When a random sample of male adults were asked recently to rank themselves on leadership ability, 70 percent rated themselves in the top 25 percent; only 2 percent felt they were below average as leaders. In an area in which self-deception ought to be difficult, 60 percent said they were well above average in athletic ability, and only 6 percent said they were below.
A common mistake made in assessing entrepreneurial talent is to assume that success in big business management will automatically guarantee success in a small business.