Many workers aspire to be entrepreneurs. Do you have what it takes?

Here are 11 Traits of Successful Entrepreneurs to use to measure if you’re ready to hit the cut and thrust world of the entrepreneur…

1. You enjoy the thrill of risk. A key defining trait of an entrepreneur is the propensity to take risk. It’s what makes an entrepreneur face the uncertainty of business. As an entrepreneur, you lap up the challenge of turning an idea into a working, profitable, sustainable business. It’s scary, but that’s what makes it fun. When you have food to put on the family table, the risk is even higher, but you know that it will be worth it. As an entrepreneur, you get yourself onto the stage without knowing all your lines. You’re taking a calculated risk that your skills and experience will get you through, and the buzz you get from the adrenalin-bomb each time you put yourself on the line is what you live for.

2. You are supremely confident. You’re so confident that unless you’re involved, it won’t happen. It’s that simple! Setbacks are just setbacks – not a reason to doubt yourself.

3. You are a goal-setter. You’ve got to have a clear direction – this is very important to you and your focus. You set yourself goals that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timebound (that’s S.M.A.R.T.) You set yourself a lot of goals and often across a number of projects. You can see how goals are linked, and where they have dependencies. You set priorities and you work a plan so that you deliver your goals optimally to provide you with the most residual value.

4. You have inexhaustible determination. If you say you’re going to make it happen, you will make it happen. You’ll try every trick in the book to deliver on your promises (most of which are promises to yourself) and you’ll work tirelessly.

5. You have unquenchable desire. Your determination is fed by the desire to realize the goals you have set. You can see yourself enjoying the fruits of success, and you salivate at fulfilling the opportunity.

6. You maintain a strong vision. All this effort is for a reason, and you know exactly what it is. You see the overall picture of success (and, indeed, this rolls along). You can see that every goal, every activity, every call you make is to take you towards this vision – it’s your visionary path.

7. You are carefully selective. You choose to perform the activities that will take you furthest along your visionary path. Some opportunities, projects or connections – you just know – won’t take you far along, so you choose not to take them on. Even if it means losing out on earning a buck or two. The ‘pain’ of turning away projects can seem acute at first, but over time you’ll see the benefit of using your time and resources effectively.

8. You are organized. In order to control all the moving parts of your entrepreneurial world, you have to be organized. Down to the basics of keeping your book of contacts properly uptodate, as well as keeping your diary in perfect working order. You plan your day to make sure that the priorities are taken care of. Even if organization isn’t something you enjoy, you recognize the value of it.

9. You are disciplined. Procrastination isn’t in your vocabulary – you know what needs to be done and you hold yourself to account. Discipline means you focus on the most important activities and don’t let your mind wander towards trivial matters.

10. You don’t work office hours. Entrepreneurs don’t turn off the entrepreneurial process. You’re constantly creating and assessing new opportunities, new contacts and new information. Every social engagement is another opportunity to develop or elaborate.

11. You keep their ego in check. You’re successful. And hopefully rich. Your name carries weight, and people flock around you. Plenty of sycophants around to fluff up your cushions. But you don’t let this get to your head. You don’t swan around like you own the place, even if you do.

Are You Thinking About Leaving Employment (and Going it Alone?)

So How Do You Compare?

Share how you compare against these 11 traits – leave your opinion below.

An Entrepreneur’s Toolkit

If you’re serious about losing the shackles of employment and enjoying the serious wealth and adventure of entrepreneurialism, then this is something for you:  Entrepreneur’s Toolkit: Tools and Techniques to Launch and Grow Your New Business (Harvard Business Essentials). It’s all you need to get moving as an entrepreneur. The authors demonstrate their experience and expertise of  the process of building a business. Most importantly, they know how to get investors interested in a new venture.

Buy it now: Entrepreneur’s Toolkit: Tools and Techniques to Launch and Grow Your New Business (Harvard Business Essentials)

©2012 SimonStapleton.com. All Rights Reserved.

Are you considering making that leap of faith into self-employment? Then you need to read this…

I just stumbled upon a great article on my old friend Mark McClure‘s blog: What is it You’re Escaping to? It reminded me of how nerve-racking and amazing the journey from full-time employment to becoming an entrepreneur really is.

Mark shares a video interview of Pamela Skillings of ‘Escape from Corporate America’ fame by Devesh Dwivedi (nicely indexed too Mark!).

One subject covered that will hit home, if you’re thinking about this journey too, is ethical moonlighting – you know, starting a business or working independently outside of your core employment. I have done it – many people do it – ethical moonlighting is an activity that is more common than you think (so don’t worry about doing it yourself… it’s a natural part of the process!)

We’ve got to test the water, right?

Ethical moonlighting is not something we will shout out about – particularly to a current employer. If you have a conscience, you might even feel sneaky or corrupt. The truth is, though, going it alone is tough… and we won’t take the final plunge if we haven’t built up confidence in our ability to create an income stream by providing a profitable product or service that plays to our competencies and interests/passions to a market we can access.

Let me run that by you again…

Income Stream = Profit  x  Product/Service  x  Strengths  x  Passion  x  Market  x  Accessibility

There are quite a few variables here. So let me ask you, why would you NOT test all this out before you close off your current income stream?

We have to test that water before jumping in!

Don’t Feel Bad About Ethical Moonlighting

That’s my advice. Go for it. Gain your confidence. Fill your boots with experience and give yourself the opportunity.

Pamela Skillings’s book Escape from Corporate America: A Practical Guide to Creating the Career of Your Dreams shares brilliant advice on this subject and it tells you all you need to know if this is something you are going through at this time!

Photo Credit: rinidisini

©2012 SimonStapleton.com. All Rights Reserved.

Hurry! You can get a whopping $39.93 off an annual subscription of the popular magazine Fast Company – normally priced at $49.90 per year.

This is one of my favorite magazines on the news stand. It is written for the forward thinking people and innovative pioneers who are challenging normal business conventions and shaping the business world.

Fast Company showcases the individuals and companies who impact the world through creative ingenuity. It has a unique focus on innovation, design and sustainability not found in print anywhere else. It’s closest rival is Entrepreneur magazine, yet Fast Company appeals to the more dynamic crowd.

It’s freshness is what really appeals to me. You won’t find many mughsots of folks in neckties here, unless they’re politicians!

If you’re a fast mover in your company, then act fast. Take advantage of this huge discount whilst it lasts.

Only $9.97 for a whole year’s enjoyment – Buy Now.

FACT: Fast Company is printed on 100% recycled paper, and is dedicated to the preservation of the environment and makes sustainability part of its core mission.

You Could Also Try…

Entrepreneur Magazine annual subscription. Save $47.91 (was $59.88)

Buy Now for just $11.97

©2012 SimonStapleton.com. All Rights Reserved.

Most of us want to be rich. At least rich enough so that we can make our own choices of who we work with, when we work and how we work. How about you?

Despite what many marketers would like us to believe, there isn’t a magic bullet to become rich overnight, notwithstanding major inheritance or a lottery win. Building a career is like building a space rocket . But there are clear formulas for accelerating success in order to earn major salaries and become rich. These formulas are not tricks, secrets or an asset of an inner circle, which means I can share them with you with confidence that you can follow them too.

There are two ‘paths’ you can choose from in order to become a big-shot with a big wallet. These paths are somewhat mutually exclusive (i.e. you can’t do both at the same time) but they can be interchanged, at will, to become a blended success strategy. Both rely entirely on the generation of value to their organization, but each has its own different way of manifesting the value. Generating value = generating profit, hence why highly successful IT Professionals use one (or both of these paths) to create success and wealth.

In the eBook ‘The Ten Habits of Highly Successful IT Professionals ‘, I share with you tactics on effective value delivery. If you haven’t read this report yet, then I can send it to you immediately if you fill out the short form on the right of this page.

Although each path, as you will find out, has its distinctions, pros and cons, both paths have one thing in common though – they require an attitude for success:

Path One: The Rich Guru

In Information Technology (especially when starting out a career in the industry), we have the choice to become a guru in a particular technology or method. E.g. system performance, RATIONAL development, or ITIL.

A guru is a person who has developed their skills and wisdom in a technology to the point that they are a recognized expert, or guru, in its application. You probably know some, or have heard of them. These are the people who are dropped into a project for a specific purpose, enjoy all the air-time, and then disappear as quickly as they came. They become the SWAT team of problems or opportunities.

The career of a guru follows a fairly linear path of acquisition of knowledge and experience, bound together by a string of high-profile successes (and also failures). As their career progresses, they earn increasing amounts of trust in their employers or clients, and also credibility in their technology and the technology community. This is because the number of people with equivalent knowledge and experience to a would-be guru diminishes exponentially, as this illustration shows:

The guru becomes as such when their name is recognized and associated with the technology, before anything else. The very name of these people is a brand that commands respect and generates equity for the guru. They’re quoted in the press, and sought for comment on the technology they master.

For example, Jim Gray was a renowned guru in MS SQL and scalable servers

Don Page is known to be the Godfather of ITIL, and certainly qualifies as a guru.

The wealth of a guru is a result of increasing salaries and incentives (such as bonus, stock-options, etc) to stay with their employer, or be exclusive to their client. This is for two main reasons: 1) because they deliver much more value to their employer than they extract, and 2) their employer doesn’t want the guru to be made available to their competition.

Other streams of income eventually come from becoming a speaker at industry events and writing books, or it can be as simple as writing a foreword in a technology book. The power of the guru’s brand makes marketers drool, and the guru can make serious cash from endorsements.

Pros:

• The guru has total control of their destiny
• There is much esteem associated with being a technology guru
• Future opportunities are in abundance (see below for a caveat!)
• Opportunities to generate wealth are numerous

Cons:

• The value of the guru to employers, clients and the social fabric diminishes as the value of their chosen technology diminishes to the same communities. I doubt a guru in PSTN dial-up will have the same value and future prospects now as he did 20 years ago.
• It’s high-risk: one piece of bad advice or failed project could spell disaster for credibility. It could be a major fall from grace.
• It’s an insular path. Becoming a guru is an inward-looking path that focuses on the contribution to the guru’s knowledge, experience and brand rather than on the contribution to other people (which is a secondary outcome).

Path Two: Serial Contributor

The serial contributor is someone who makes it their mission to contribute to the success of other people. Wait though, aren’t we talking about personal success and riches here? We sure are, and this is path is as valid as the first.

So what I am talking about? I am talking about the path of the entrepreneur . But I want to qualify something first. An entrepreneur isn’t just someone who operates independently outside of an employers terms. Entrepreneurs can be employees too. To make this distinction, the term intrapreneur was developed. But I’ll just use the term entrepreneur from this point, and an entrepreneur’s client can be external and internal to an organization.

Examples of great entrepreneurs working inside an organization are:

• Spencer Silver & Art Fy who developed Post-It notes whilst at global company 3M.
• Ken Kutaragi pioneered the Sony Playstation during his time at Sony’s sound labs, who then founded the Sony Computer Entertainment division.

An entrepreneur is a person who makes money by continually contributing to the success of other people and their organization. The entrepreneur takes their cut, but the majority of the value created is experienced by their client.

The difference between an entrepreneur and someone who is ‘just helpful’ is that an entrepreneur thinks big. In other words, they’re helpful to many people in many ways and make enough profit from each instance that they can make it big.

How do you make ‘profit’ inside an organization? Isn’t this the key to the success of this path? Sure it is, and I want to explain how profit is generated inside an organization; Profit isn’t immediate cash, except if you’re on a sales commission of course. What I mean is that real profit (cash) occurs through the generation of equity in the organization. Equity is a measure (often intangible) of goodwill, respect, achievement, influence, power and authority. The more you gain in these things, the more real profit can be extracted in the end (i.e. through bonuses, stock options, etc).

Back to the ‘contribution’. An entrepreneur makes it his or her job to help others to be successful, and does this by using their knowledge, resources, influence, contacts, and charisma . Entrepreneurs have lots of these things, but for most, it is charisma that starts it all off.

Charisma is the ability to influence people through charm. Have you noticed that some people can get things done just by asking for it, without any formal power to enforce? These people will probably have lots of charisma. It’s an intangible quality, but you know it when you see it. It is the essence of leadership and the basis of getting things done with people who feel good about it.

By using charisma and their other tools, entrepreneurs influence other people to take actions to help themselves and others. The role of the entrepreneur is to solve problems in order to contribute to a successful outcome, and the benefit is felt by the organization. In turn, trust, respect, influence and equity grows in the entrepreneur. It becomes a virtuous cycle.

The entrepreneur cashes in their equity at various point in their career by negotiating bonuses, options, as I mentioned above.

Pros:

• Very fulfilling and rewarding from a point of self-esteem
• Future opportunities are very diverse as entrepreneurialism is largely industry-independent
• Contacts and relationships can be exploited in the future
• Failure is very much part of entrepreneurialism, and therefore has less stigma attached to it

Cons:

• Because this is about people, success is not totally in control of the entrepreneur, and is dependent on culture, morale and the zeitgeist of the organization
• Susceptible to major organizational changes or mergers/acquisitions. Equity could disappear overnight if it isn’t spread across the organization to cope with organization restructure. E.g. a team leader will lose all her equity if it is just stored up in the relationship with her boss, and then her boss retires
• Success can be at the mercy of resource availability (I found this article which explains more: Creative Entrepreneurship in a Downturn )
• Unsteady work patterns
• Can be very stressful

I mentioned that you can interchange between paths at will. Nothing will stop you except for your own intuition and the goals you have set yourself. When and how you interchange them will be dependent on your own situation. It is perfectly viable to focus on a single path. Many people do this to great success and wealth. Most of us will choose different paths at different times.

Which do I think is the most successful path?

I tend towards entrepreneur, but in truth I use both paths at different times. I have learned how to make the best use of each path at the right time. For example, when developing my blog, I require both:

• Continue to research my subject and grow my knowledge about the industry and technologies (guru)
• Learn more about how technology is applied to business and its impact on people (guru)
• Write useful content that will solve the problems of my readers (guru)
• Apply my solutions to my readers problems (entrepreneur)
• Promote my blog to people who are experiencing these problems (entrepreneur)
• Connect with other bloggers who are addressing people with similar problems (entrepreneur)

Get the picture?

Whichever path you choose, having a path is what it is all about. You won’t get rich by focusing on yourself without building significant knowledge and experience you can apply in business. Nor will you become wealthy if you’re helpful but don’t make sure you earn equity in your organization. Choosing a path means you know how you will generate value, and more to the point, so do other people who will be your paymasters!

What about Recession?

In an economic downturn, you won’t see an abundance of bonuses and discretionary payment. (If you do, such as in the case of the banking industry, the press descend like vultures!)

However, this doesn’t mean that equity isn’t accrued. In fact the opposite is true. Value contribution to an organization is even more important during an economic crisis, and those people who generate the most value will eventually reap the rewards, albeit sometimes by a deferred payment. In many cases, promotion or other financial incentives are offered which can result in significant payback once the economy recovers.

How do I start my journey on a path?

Well, first I think you need to have an idea of what success means to you, and let this guide you in which path you choose at this moment. You might need to do some intense soul-searching and ponderation (I think I just made that word up) to come to a conclusion on the path you will choose. Remember, you don’t need to stay on one path forever, but you should only tread one path at a time.

Coming Soon…

I will be talking to some gurus and entrepreneurs about their experiences on their path, and also I will share some insider tips on how to move quickly along your path. Receive notification when I write about these subjects by subscribing to my RSS feed

©2012 SimonStapleton.com. All Rights Reserved.

Do you know what it takes to be an entrepreneur? If not, here’s how you can find out.

Dave Crain is someone I have ‘just met’ in the blogosphere and I’ve just read his latest post on Entrepreneurial Qualities, and I was so impressed I wanted to share it with you. Dave’s research has arrived at the quintessential personality traits that an entrepreneur must possess to fulfill the role definition as such. Dave has empirical evidence to tell us about the make-up of an entrepreneur or a thought-leader. 

Take a look at Dave’s post, and you might want to help him out by answering his question on humor.

My personal view is that humor is an excellent tool for building rapport with people and selling ideas and thoughts without appearing over aggressive. Using humor creates a ‘grey area’ in a conversation where people can choose to engage or disengage without an awkward experience.

©2012 SimonStapleton.com. All Rights Reserved.