This may be surprising but if you intend to move forward with any entrepreneurial venture you may run up against people who may not think that your business is the smartest endeavour ever, surprise, surprise. Remember some of the greatest inventors and pioneers went against the grain and forged forward even when people thought they were stupid, or at least their ideas were stupid.
In many ways, it pays to be “stupid” or “unrealistic”. Try not to singularly engage in so called “logical” thinking. Take a look at Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.com, many folks thought it was “stupid” to try to sell books online but he did anyways and is now reaping the rewards of his pioneering attitude. Did you ever think that people would buy shoes online? The founder of Zappos.com certainly thought so and well we all know how that turned out.
Being “stupid” is just one characteristic that successful entrepreneurs consistently exhibit. With that said there are a number of characteristics or traits that successful entrepreneurs display and if you want to be successful as well it may not be a bad idea to adopt these traits. Adopting these traits in your endeavors can certainly take you far. Tony Robbins talks about modeling the behavior of successful folks if you want similar results and I would totally agree. So, instead of telling you about those characteristics or traits in 300 paragraphs or less, I felt it would be more fun to show you some videos of entrepreneurs (and non-entrepreneurs) demonstrating those characteristics or traits. Be prepared to take some notes, there are multiple lessons in each one of these videos. Enjoy.
SKILLED
There are many lessons in this video but pay close attention to what Will attributes to his greatness, being skilled versus talented. Like him or not he is truly providing some great advice, watch the whole video, he starts to touch on traits that we will cover later on.
Source: http://www.youtube.com/themindguru
OBSESSIVE
John Nese loves soda pop. I mean, he REALLY loves soda pop. He’s dedicated his life to the bubbly beverage. Nese owns Galco’s Soda Pop Stop in Los Angeles. He sells more than 500 varieties of soda pop. Nese is also passionate about his customers and suppliers. He tries to avoid the big names. He seeks out small producers with unique, high-quality products. He believes when people have the freedom to choose, they’ll choose the best. Nese is one character you have to meet.
DRIVEN
Maria Spika is the CEO and founder of Linqia – an online marketplace connecting key decision makers of social networks to commercial partners. The name Linqia comes from the name of a starfish called the Linckia. The Linckia is known for its regeneration abilities – they are able to re-grow arms if they get severed – now that’s DRIVEN. In this mixergy.com interview, Maria talks about her background and her philosophy on business. Take some notes, she is quite a fighter, DRIVEN.
OPTIMISTIC
This is probably one of my favorite commercials and incidentally speaks to the attitude that entrepreneurs should adopt. Be optimistic – pay attention to how the kid deals with “failure” at the end of the commercial.
CHEAP
Andy Liu is a serial entrepreneur and angel investor. As an entrepreneur, he’s the Co-Founder and CEO of BuddyTV. Prior to that, he founded NetConversions, which was sold to aQuantive. As an investor, he backed Pet Holdings (which owns viral sites like I Can Has Cheeseburger and FAIL Blog), Optify and Inkd. In this mixergy.com, interview he talks about his approach to financial management in his personal and professional life. Pay attention to the desirable traits he would like to see in the CEOs and founders he invests in.
PERSISTENT
Many entrepreneurs have had significantly more failures than successes, we only usually here about the successes – so this trait is of great importance. Many feel that this is the most important trait that an entrepreneur could have.
INTENSE
Now ultimately his own pride and greed was his own undoing and I would not condone any of this behavior, but you have to love the intensity in this scene. Intensity is not for everyone but for the folks who are skewed this way being intense is essential to being a successful entrepreneur. “I DRINK YOUR MILKSHAKE”, you gotta love it.
CURIOUS
PASSIONATE
If you want to know what true passion is, take a look at this video of Gary Vaynerchuk at Web 2.0 Expo NY. Gary Vee is talking about building your personal brand within the social media landscape, a topic he is passionate about.
Assignment: Take each one of these traits and describe periods / events in your life when you demonstrated the above traits. It does not matter what the result was or what the circumstances were. Just document them, dont forget to send me the final document – jarel [at] jarelcockburn [dot] com.