by Joy English

Created on: November 10, 2010

An entrepreneur is not an average man or woman.  The entrepreneur is an individual who has refused to join the crowd of ordinary people who work to earn a salary.  With this in mind, it is safe to state that it takes quite a number of unique qualities to be an entrepreneur.

One fundamental quality of an entrepreneur is drive.  Anybody that sets out to be an entrepreneur must have that propelling force inside that urges him or her to walk a different path.  The entrepreneur will not settle for what he or she already has.  Instead, the entrepreneur aims for what he or she really wants.  It takes a lot of drive to do this and that is why drive is a fundamental quality of the successful entrepreneur.

Another quality of the entrepreneur is confidence.  The world of business is tough.  Only those that have the confidence and self-belief can venture into the uncertainty of entrepreneurship.  So, it takes a lot of confidence to be an entrepreneur.

It also takes vision to be an entrepreneur.  As an investor, you need to visualize before you venture.  All great entrepreneurs like Bill Gates, Lee Iacocca, and Cornelius Vanderbilt have vision and this is what sets them apart from the crowd of ordinary people.

Roman Abramovich and the late John H. Johnson had vision.  As an entrepreneur, your vision is your blue print as it were.  Your vision is your road map that guides you to your destination.

Of course, it goes without saying that vision without effort is just a waste of time.  Therefore, an entrepreneur, you need tons of hard work to really actualize your vision.  No entrepreneur can make any progress if the vital ingredient of consistent hard-work is missing.  It takes a lot of work to be an entrepreneur.

Finally, it takes a great deal of resilience to be an entrepreneur.  The business environment is harsh.  Government policies sometimes are unfavorable.  There is also the fact that your competitors are all out to do you in.  Naturally, as an entrepreneur, you will suffer losses, reverses and other forms of business inconvenience.  But you are an entrepreneur.  So you need to find a way to cope.  And you can only cope by being resilient.  Keep fighting.  Keep working hard.  Keep strategizing and you will succeed at the end of the day.

So, in the final analysis, the summary of this article is simply this. Drive, Confidence, vision, hard-work and resilience – these qualities form the basis of being an entrepreneur.

Learn more about this author, Joy English.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.