by Carmel Brulez

Created on: October 19, 2009

Being a successful entrepreneur is not easy. There are certain skills, qualities and characteristics you need, some of these you can learn, others you must be born with. What are they?

An intense drive and desire to succeed. A feeling that you deserve and must have the better things in life. A willingless to sacrifice spare time so that you can achieve this. Patience to stick with it no matter how long it takes and how difficult it gets. If you have problems with raising money, finding premises, sorting out staff or working out prices these are all normal problems for the owner of a business. You must be willing to take on problems and have the ability to think logically to quick work out a solution to them. If you are going to run to your accountant (and pay him for his time), Bank manager or friend every time there is a hiccup then you are not cut out to run a business and be an entrepreneur. An entrepeneur is a leader. He leads and others follow. He should not care what his friends or family think, especially if they are not successful entrepreneurs themselves. Entreprepreneurs are full of confidence. It never occurs to them that they will not succeed. They believe that provided they do things right things must turn out the way they plan.

A successful entrepreneur is realistic. Not living in a dream world where they fantasise that in a few weeks they will be rich. If it was that easy to be rich everyone would have become rich years ago. If they are looking for some quick way to become rich then they are never going to succeed. An entrepreneur has to realise that in order to earn more than the average joe he has to work smarter and harder than the average joe.

A successful entrepeneur is willing to put his money where his mouth is. He may have to save hard to rent a shop, or buy in goods. He would not expect his family or friends to pay for this for him. If he really believes in his plans and his product he will do it himself. If he has not got the money he is willing to do 3 jobs and work every hour possible to raise it.

A successful entrepeneur will provide a service or product which the public need at a realistic price. If he wants to provide something that is already flooding the market, or which you cannot sell for much and does not bring in much profit, then it cannot work. He should pick something that interests him and which he is good at, but put costs and profit first. If he chooses something which is fun like running a club simply because he loves the idea of standing around laughing and chatting to punters, then he is not really realistic enough, he is looking for a way to get paid to enjoy a hobby.

Successful entrepeneurs are few and far between and it may take them a long time to succeed with their plans, but with the right attitude they get there in the end and should be able to retire much younger than someone who works for someone else in a reliable safe job with a gauranteed wage.

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