Entrepreneurs are of a different breed, adn they want their work to succeed at all costs. Here are 14 qualities that Entrepreneurs must have in order to be exceptional.
1. They hate playing politics.
Entrepreneurs can’t stand playing politics–and to some degree, people who play politics. They don’t care about jockeying for promotions or trying to be “right” in a meeting.
2. They love when others “win.”
Politically motivated people hate when other people earn praise or recognition; they instinctively feel that diminishes the light from their “star.”
3. They desperately want to see ideas come to fruition.
Maybe they love to dream up their own ideas. Or maybe they love to help others build out their ideas. Either way, entrepreneurs want to make things happen–new, exciting, crazy, groundbreaking things.
4. They’re meta-thinkers.
Entrepreneurs spend a lot of time thinking about thinking. They like to think about the best way to think about a goal or challenge or problem. They like to think about how to think differently and develop a different angle or approach or perspective.
5. They prefer to make or enhance the rules.
Meta-thinkers instinctively evaluate every rule–and look for ways to improve it.
6. They believe nothing is sacred.
Entrepreneurs don’t say, “Well, that’s just the way it is…”
Entrepreneurs never feel what is must always be. Perspectives can be shifted. Laws of physics can be broken. Conventional wisdom may not be wisdom at all.
6. They love solving problems.
Entrepreneurs constantly look for problems to solve: sometimes little, sometimes big, sometimes technical, sometimes business- or team-related… drop entrepreneurs into a static situation and they’ll create “problems” they can solve.
7. They’re great at self-assessment.
Why? They constantly evaluate what they do… and then work hard to be even better tomorrow than they are today.
Entrepreneurs are honest with themselves.
8. They embrace non-technical feedback.
Entrepreneurs readily take input from others. And they definitely don’t put up barriers to feedback–feedback, especially critical feedback, is just another problem to solve. Becoming better is more important than their egos.
9. They actively create their future selves.
In general, entrepreneurs realize they are often their own worst enemy. They don’t see themselves as controlled by external forces; they think the barrier between what they are and what they want is almost always them.
10. They adore taking things off their plates.
Look at pictures of Albert Einstein and you would think, “Dude never changed clothes?”
Nope–but he did have a lot of identical clothing. He didn’t want to waste brainpower figuring out what to wear every day.
11. They’re awesome at leveraging self-reward.
Entrepreneurs almost always do the things they have to do before they tackle the things they want to do. They use what they want to do as a reward.
12. They believe they’re in total control…
Many people feel luck has a lot to do with success or failure: if they succeed, luck played a part; if they fail, the odds just didn’t go their way.
13. … So their egos don’t suffer when they fail.
Entrepreneurs don’t see failure as a blow to their ego. Failure can be fixed. A future self will figure it out.
14. They do everything with intent.
Like Jason Bourne, entrepreneurs don’t do “random.” They always have a reason for what they do because they’re constantly thinking about why they do what they do.
They’re not afraid. They’re not emotionally attached to ideas or processes or ways of doing things.
They just want to be better… and to make the world better.
And best of all, they know they can–and will.
