The #1 Secret to being a Successful Entrepreneur in 1 word
ByI was skyping with a young entrepreneur that I have been coaching on a start-up and I told him that I felt he was missing the #1 secret to being a success in his start-up. So then he started guessing what it was and a couple of times every hour throughout the day he would skype me another WRONG answer.
Here is a list of some of his answers and while they are all good and important, he was missing the key ingredient to start-up success.
- determination
- confidence
- money
- faith
- persistence
- vision of the goal line
- knowledge of the market
- patience
- attitude
- positive outlook
- concentration
- skills
- an energized outlook
- motivation
- guts
- ability to take risks
- momentum
- instinct
- willingness to go against coventional wisdom
- focus
- adderall
- getup and go
- knowhow
- character
- discipline
- ambition
After 8 hours I finally told him. While all the above is great and important, there was one thing he was missing. The one ingredient that separates the deadpool from the successful start-ups. That one ingredient is…
PASSION
PASSION – You must be pationate about your product or business! You must eat, sleep, and drink your company! It is not good enough to be passionate about making money or being an entrepreneur! You must be passionate about your business!
That is the secret to being successful. That is what gets you up early in the morning and keeps you up till 2am every night. It is what lets rejection bounce off your chest as if they were bullets and you were Superman. It’s what can get you through a year or more without a salary and having to borrow money just to keep the electricity on. Without passion, you just won’t be a successful entrepreneur.
Now this doesn’t mean you won’t be able to open a clothing store or some other small business, but if you want to be a game changer, if you want to make a real difference in the world, without passion it’s not even worth starting.
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3 Comments
August 17th, 2009 at 2:09 pm
Nachum – while I believe you are right about Passion (and I certainly have it for my work and am told so over and over again), even passion doesn’t always get you through the rough times. And even with all those other good qualities on the list, things don’t always work out the way they “should”… MUCH depends on the industry or segment of society into which you insinuate yourself.
My advice – for a product or service, always pick something people NEED, not necessarily what they WANT…
August 17th, 2009 at 5:25 pm
What you are saying is true, but I’m talking about more from the Start-up position as opposed to an existing business. There are always ups and downs in every business and sometimes things happen that you have no control over. I once started a Gift Baskets business and spent a lot of money on advertisements that came out on September 11, 2001. Guess how many ordered I got that month? But if you have an idea or an invention that you want to launch, well passion is what will help get you to launch or to see your product come to life. Whether that product or idea will sell will be determined by a bunch of factors as you mentioned.
August 27th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
suztours – I think marketing is taking a NEED (e.g. shoes) and turning it into a WANT (e.g. Nike). It’s much easier than trying to convince people they need something.
September 8th, 2009 at 7:34 pm
Good point Richard…
I would say that passion is extremely important and definitely is a success driver!
thanks for sharing your post!
David