Episode Host: Henry Lopez is a serial entrepreneur, small business coach, and the host of The How of Business podcast show – dedicated to helping you start, run, grow and exit your small business.

Resources:

Book:

• Entrepreneurial Leap: Do You Have What it Takes to Become an Entrepreneur? by Gino Wickman

Related Podcast Episodes:

Episode 339: Gino Wickman – Entrepreneurial Leap

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Transcript:

The following is a full transcript of this episode. This transcript was produced by an automated system and may contain some typos.

Henry Lopez  00:15

Welcome to the How of Business podcast. This is Henry Lopez. This is the first in a special series of episodes related to the entrepreneurial leap, focus on helping you determine if you have what it takes to become a successful entrepreneur. This content is inspired by the book Entrepreneurial Leap by Gino Wickman and my own experiences as an entrepreneur and a business coach. In this series of episodes, I’m going to share my thoughts, tips, and experiences related to entrepreneurship and content from Geno’s book, Entrepreneurial Leap. The first episode, this episode, is focused on confirming that you have what it takes to become a successful entrepreneur. To learn more about entrepreneurship, or if you’re interested in scheduling a free coaching consultation with me, please visit thehowabusiness.com. If you’re dreaming of becoming an entrepreneur, you must first understand that there is a lot on the line when you take that leap and you launch your first business, and you have to ask yourself difficult questions. With the most important and difficult being, do I have what it takes? Do I have what it takes to be an entrepreneur? This is a topic that I’ve given lots of thought to over the years, and to which I’ve dedicated many episodes of the How a Business podcast, including most recently episodes 292, 296, and 309, where I focused on helping you determine if you are ready, willing, and able to start your first small business. It’s not always easy to determine if you are ready to become a business owner. What I have found after many years of working with other aspiring entrepreneurs is that you may dream of becoming your own boss, but you will not be successful in business until you are ready. And beyond being ready, you have to be able. You must possess the innate traits required to be a successful entrepreneur. Now, I’m going to clarify what I mean by entrepreneur in this context, and how that’s different from perhaps being self-employed. And this episode will hopefully help you begin to confirm if you have the six essential traits to become a successful entrepreneur. And here is perhaps the controversial truth: you’re either born with these six essential traits, or you are not. You can uncover them, but you can’t develop them. These are not skills which can be learned. These are innate traits that we either have or we don’t have. So what we’re saying is, you’re either born to be an entrepreneur or you are not. That does not mean, however, that you can’t operate a successful small one or two or five-person business, perhaps, or become self-employed. That’s not what we’re talking about here. And again, I’ll explain in a moment what I mean in this context between being self-employed and being an entrepreneur. And if you’re not born with the six essential traits, then it’s best that you know before you venture into entrepreneurship and become frustrated at best, or financially ruined at worst. Not to mention the unhappiness and frustration of investing years of effort on a pursuit that is simply not a fit for you, and all perhaps because you just hate your current job. As I mentioned, this series of episodes was first inspired by reading Geno Wickman’s book *Entrepreneurial Leap* Gino Wickman is the best-selling author of *Traction* and the creator of the Entrepreneurial Operating System, or EOS. I had the pleasure of interviewing Geno on this podcast back on episode 330-nine and on that episode, we chatted about his journey and *Entrepreneurial Leap* And after that conversation with Gino, I was invited and accepted an opportunity to become an eLeap collaborator, an entrepreneurial leap collaborator. As an eLeap collaborator, I’m sharing Geno’s content about entrepreneurship, along with my own experiences and knowledge, to help you decide if entrepreneurship is right for you. Because success as an entrepreneur depends on far more than just a great idea and some luck. So before I get into diving on more details on these six essential traits of an entrepreneur, let’s go back to again defining what I mean by entrepreneur here in this context. The word entrepreneur and self-employed and business owner and being your own boss, they all get intertwined and interchanged and used to mean the same thing, and that’s okay. I do that often, if not all the time on this show. But in this context, in identifying if you’re really an entrepreneur, it’s very important.

Henry Lopez  04:36

It’s critical that we understand what we’re talking about here. So let me kind of paint the picture. There, there. You can think of it as an arc, an entrepreneurial arc, or a range. And at one end is someone who is self-employed, maybe a one-person carpenter or handyman or a consultant like myself, or a business coach. And on the other end of that spectrum is an entrepreneur, someone who. Builds an organization, brings in other people, and a group of people through that business provide a product or service to customers. There is a range there, and what we’re talking about here with the essential traits is that to become an entrepreneur, one of those people that creates an entity that becomes larger than themselves, that generates revenues and creates profits, even when you’re not there. That is becoming an entrepreneur. It’s about leveraging resources, people, money, and the idea to create something larger than ourselves. Now, that doesn’t mean that that is right for everyone, and that’s what we’re talking about here. For a lot of people, for those of you who are thinking, “I want to be my own boss. I hate my job. I hate my current boss. What you have to be careful with is that you understand what you really are cut out for. What what are your innate traits, and what are you best suited for? And that’s the point that we’re making here. So it doesn’t mean that if you don’t have all six of these traits, that you can’t be your own boss. That’s not what I’m saying here. What I’m saying is that you’re going to have a heck of a lot of struggle and are likely not going to be successful if you try to be an entrepreneur. And again, what do I mean by an entrepreneur? Let’s say I own a donut shop or a pizza shop, and I run it day to day. It’s one location. I get up every morning. I may have employees to help me, of course, but it’s me. It’s my recipe. I’m the one that makes the donuts every morning. That that’s a small business, which is very common, very good. Might exactly be what you’re looking for, and it doesn’t require all of the skills or the traits of an entrepreneur. Conversely, if you were an entrepreneur, you would grow that bakery. Let’s say to continue with that example to having 20 locations, or to have 200 franchise units around the country or around the world. You would have a whole bunch of other people that you have to develop and lead to work together on this mission of delivering this product for the customer-a completely different set of skills and traits that are required to be successful as an entrepreneur. And what we’re putting forth is that you can become self-employed, you can become a solopreneur, you can become a solo practitioner, you can even own a single location of a particular business, but if you have aspirations of going beyond that, and it’s it’s okay if you don’t. Now you’re moving into that other end of the spectrum, which is becoming an entrepreneur. And to be successful as an entrepreneur, you need these six essential traits. Now let me share a bit more detail on the six essential traits of successful entrepreneurs, number one is being a visionary. So it’s about being imaginative, creative, inventive, ingenious, enterprising, innovative. All of those words apply. And if you don’t have this trait, this visionary trait, then you’re not going to be able to see the big picture as it relates to being an entrepreneur. You’re not going to be able to say, as Gino says, connect the dots. You’re going to struggle with creating something from scratch. You’re not going to be able to to come up with the ideas or or put it all together in a bigger picture. Now, I struggled with this a lot in understanding if I have this trait or not because I used to think that it meant it was binary. It either meant I had to be like Steve Jobs or nothing, but that’s not what this is about, right? There are different levels of visionary.

Henry Lopez  08:26

What I do know that I have now that I understand it better, this trait of being a visionary is that I do have the ability to see the bigger picture, and that’s what you have to ask yourself: Do you have that ability to be creative as it relates to business and to be enterprising and to figure things out and to imagine new ways to do things. That’s the question. That’s the trait we’re looking for there when we say visionary. So that’s the first trait. Trait number two is passionate. This is a tough one as well, and we’ve talked so many times about this on this podcast. I’ve asked this question of lots of entrepreneurs because it can be so confusing. You know, there’s so much talk nowadays about being passionate about what you do, being passionate about the business that you go into. And what I’ve clarified with a lot of other successful entrepreneurs is, you don’t necessarily have to be passionate about donuts. In fact, sometimes it helps if you’re not, but you do have to be passionate about this thing that you’re building, this idea, the the where it’s going to take you, how how it helps you get to where you want to go in life, because if you’re not passionate, you’re not going to have what you need to get through to through the tough times. It’s what has to motivate you and persuade you and inspire you, and is what gives you that ability to sell others to act, to move forward, to to lead them to work together. Remember, when we’re talking about entrepreneurship, we’re talking about a team of people that you’re leading to work together for this common goal. So that’s what we mean by passion. So that’s trait number two. You have to be passionate. Three is another big one. They’re they’re all big, so there’s no. They’re just in these numbered order, but but they’re equally important. So number three is problem solver, which is is describing someone who who leans into problems, who’s obsessed about solving problems, and they generally get excited. I get excited about being challenged with solving a problem instead of looking at as as oh my gosh another headache another problem to solve. And if you tend to lean towards oh I hate trying to solve other people’s problems or I hate solving the problems of team dynamics or getting people to work together, that’s what it takes to be an entrepreneur. In part, the way that I’ve always looked at it, and I’ve just I do have this innate ability, this trait, I should say, that I embrace decision making. So ask yourself, when it comes to making the tough decisions, either in what you do today or just in life in general, do you embrace them? And what I mean by that is, it’s not that there’s not a lot of stress that can come with making those big decisions, especially those big decisions that can determine whether your business survives and thrives or fails. But do you feel confident and comfortable that you’re willing to take that on? You’re willing to be the person that makes the tough decisions, and that’s the other thing that sometimes entrepreneurship, business ownership can be a lonely pursuit. And so, understanding that and accepting that you enjoy making decisions-that’s what we mean by being a problem solver. If this isn’t you, and this is one of those traits that you don’t have, again, you have to have all six. Then this is where you might think about instead of trying to be an entrepreneur, you become an owner maybe of a single unit franchise because there in the franchise system and a good franchise, a lot of those problems have been solved for you ahead of time, and you’re going to have help solving the new problems that present themselves. So a franchise sometimes is a good route to go if this is a trait that you don’t have or you don’t feel you’re strong in.

Number four is driven. Are you driven? Do you have that tenacity? Are you competitive? Are you self-motivated? Are you that goal-oriented person? You’ve always been that person who’s always looking to grow, who’s always setting new goals. You’re never quite satisfied, right? You’re always setting the bar higher, and you never give up. The people who have this drive, this trait, entrepreneurs-they’re always hustling. They’re always working. You want to succeed more than anything. Sometimes, really badly, you want to succeed. That doesn’t mean that that you’re necessarily a sore loser. We’re not talking about ego here. We’re talking about that drive to be better related to yourself. Be better than you were yesterday. Certainly, be better than you were a year ago. Continue to make your business better. This trait of being driven is essential to being a successful entrepreneur. Five is another challenging one. Risk taker. I am always kind of caught by surprise when people will say to me, “Wonder, you’re you’re you’re a risk taker. I’m just not a risk taker. I could never be an entrepreneur. And I take pause, and I and it’s interesting because I don’t think of myself as a risk taker necessarily. I I for example, I hate gambling. If there’s anything wrong with it, just I hate it. I hate that feeling of potentially losing my money, I don’t like that feeling, and I’m not saying that that decides whether you’re an entrepreneur or not. But the point I’m making is that I it took me a long time to understand what people were saying because I don’t think I take risks in that general term. I think I take calculated risks, and. That’s what an entrepreneur does, and as a risk taker, you know then you have to accept rather that you are going to fail, but that that failing doesn’t scar you for life, and then you’re never going to take a risk again because then you’re not an entrepreneur. You have to be willing to take that calculated risk, be willing to fail. Adapt. Try again, and do it again, and do it again until, fortunately, you accumulate more successes than failures. Taking big risks isn’t for most people. It petrifies a lot of people. That’s why so few take that entrepreneurial leap. That’s why a lot of people get hung up in that analysis phase and overthinking it and talking themselves out of an idea or out of a business that may be because innately you do not have that risk taker trait. When all else is done, when all the analysis and planning is done, as an entrepreneur you take a leap of faith and you you are willing to take on that risk. So, risk taker is essential trait number five, number six, and the final trait is being responsible and blaming no one. I think this is such a huge one, but I do think that to an extent, perhaps we’ve become a society where we don’t want to take responsibility or accountability. And I can tell you, man. If there’s anything else here, the trait that’s most powerful, in my opinion, is this one: you have to take responsibility for your actions or lack of actions, for your successes, but also for your failures.

Henry Lopez  16:34

If you’re the type of person who is always looking to pass the blame to someone else, or is always thinking about how others have done wrong to you. Do we take responsibility for that to some extent, and we look at well, how could I have been better prepared and pivot, and we can move forward to the next business venture or get our business through it? Being responsible is about taking the ultimate responsibility. It’s about being accountable to ourselves and saying it’s because of me. I’m not going to blame anybody else for my failures. I’m going to learn from them. I’m going to pick myself up and I’m going to go at it again. And so that is the sixth trait for successful entrepreneurship: is being responsible, blaming no one. So let’s recap the six traits. These are the six required traits. You have to be born with these to become a successful entrepreneur. One was visionary. That’s about having ideas, connecting the dots, having that that sixth sense, seeing around the corners. However you want to say it, but it’s a having that vision of where you need to go next, where you take your business next. Number two is passionate-that strong belief that what you’re doing is worthwhile and that it’s in alignment with where you want to go, your why. You’re passionate about it. It’s what gets us through the hard times. No passion, you’re going to give up. Number three is: Are you a problem solver? Do you have that innate trait of the problem solver? You are creative at solving problems, dealing with setbacks. You’re optimistic. You see solutions where others might give up. Number four is being driven. That internal fire, that urgency, that competitiveness. You need to succeed, and you’re yourself motivated. You don’t need a lot of other people to tell you to get motivated. You are motivated. You wake up every day motivated. Number five is you’re a risk taker. You don’t freeze when it comes to making the hard decisions. You embrace decision making. You’re rebellious, perhaps, and you’re willing to fail because you know that every decision you make is not going to be right, but you’re not afraid to make the decision. Number six is you are responsible and accountable. You blame no one else, and there really are two types of people here. So be honest with yourself. You look in the mirror and you take accountability for your actions and the results of what happens in your business, those are the six traits, and you either have them or you don’t. Again, you can uncover them, but you have to be born with them to be successful as an entrepreneur. All right, so let’s wrap up this episode. You know that I always like to leave you with at least one thing that I want you to take away from what we’ve talked about, and that is I keep repeating it, but it’s so essential here. Be honest with yourself in assessing if you’ve got these six essential traits. And yes, as controversial as it might sound, as contrary to what you may have heard before, I am not here to tell you that you can develop these. You can’t. The honest truth is to be an entrepreneur, and remember, within the context of what we defined here, the difference at one end of the range with being self-employed and the other end of the range being an entrepreneur. If you don’t have these innate six essential traits, then you will be frustrated. You are highly likely to fail. You will not. Enjoy the process or the journey. So it’s a matter of determining it. It doesn’t mean that you can’t be your own boss, but it means that you’re probably not cut out for being an entrepreneur. And so that’s what I want to leave you with. This is Henry Lopez. Thanks for listening to this episode of the How with Business. We release new episodes every Monday morning, and you can find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and at our website, thehowofbusiness.com Thanks for listening.