A young freelance indoor soccer referee asked me the other day what I thought were the qualities of an entrepreneur.
He couldn’t decide whether he wanted to become an entrepreneur or take up mechanical engineering.
On one day, he said, he would think being an entrepreneur was the right way for him.
The very next day he would convince himself that a career in mechanical engineering was the way to go.
What can you say?
Decide what you really want. You’ll spend the best part of your life doing your chosen calling or profession.
Combine entrepreneurship with mechanical engineering. Why not?
Elon Musk, genius innovator, combined physics and business. He took degrees in both.
It’s strange anyone wants to be an entrepreneur. To be is a state. A label. A title.
An entrepreneur does things.
He or she is a doer, not a “be’er”.
An entrepreneur is in a state of “doing”, not “being”.
One quality or survival tool for an entrepreneur is hunting out and spotting opportunities and exploiting them.
Without that nothing will happen.
To exploit opportunities will require many qualities and skills.
But you learn them quickly as you progress doing entrepreneurial business.
Or you will find out. Get hold of someone who knows.
You can find information you need online. Even watch YouTube videos on your tablet in your bed dressed only in your underwear.
But you need to talk to mentors for the real stuff that counts.
Their approaches. How passion works. How you solve problems. Their conviction.
Dolly Singh, a member of the team at SpaceX, describes how Elon Musk esponded to the third successive failure of the Falcon rocket launch. Coming out of the control room, he spoke to devastated employees telling them why they had to lift themselves and keep trying, Fortune magazine reports.
“I think most of us would have followed him to the gates of hell …. It was the most impressive display of leadership I have ever witnessed,” Singh said.
Your number one survival tool is you. And the people who help you realise your vision.
