In this short Ask Evan video, Evan Carmichael answers a viewer’s question about the most important personality traits for successful entrepreneurs. He dismisses common myths that entrepreneurship requires exceptional sales skills, genius-level intelligence, wealth, or elite networking. Drawing on his research and observations of many founders, he identifies three core traits that consistently appear: (1) the willingness to get started – taking the first step despite fear or external pressure; (2) genuine passion for the work – caring deeply about the product or service rather than chasing money; and (3) persistence – staying committed through repeated setbacks and learning from mistakes. He frames each trait as essential, explains why it matters, and encourages viewers to focus on these actionable qualities. The video ends with a call to like, comment, and stay tuned for future episodes.
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Hi, I'm Evan Carmichael and welcome to another edition of Ask Evan. In today's video, I'm going to answer a question from one of my readers, Jackie, who asked, "What do you think are the most important personality traits in successful entrepreneurs?" So I get asked this question a lot and my answer isn't normal, I guess. Most people think to be a successful entrepreneur you have to be really good at sales, you have to be a super genius and have done really well at school, or you have to have had a lot of money and be in the right family, you have to be really good at networking, you have to be really good with people. And the fact is, if you look at successful entrepreneurs and how they got started, and I've done a ton of research on this, most of those aren't true. Some of them are really good at sales, some of them aren't. Some of them are really genius inventors, and a lot of them aren't. And a lot of them failed out of school and didn't do well. And so I wouldn't attach any kind of worry to that if you're not really good at sales, you don't think you're a genius inventor, you can still have a lot of success as an entrepreneur. What I've seen be successful and what works are 3 main things that every entrepreneur has gone through that I've noticed. The first is that you got started. And a lot of people think they have the next great idea, they want to be an entrepreneur, but they don't do anything about it. Right? And you have to take that leap, you have to get that jump, you have to get started if you want to be an entrepreneur. Even if it's part-time, small-scale, whatever, you're taking small steps to move your business forward, and every entrepreneur did that. They overcame the fear, they overcame whatever pressures, social pressures or family pressures that were on them at the time, and they got their business started. So that's step 1. Step 2 is you have to really have a passion for what you're doing. And if you look at any successful entrepreneur, you'll see that they really cared about what they were doing, and they were so super excited and passionate about it, and that passion helped drive them towards building a successful company. The ones who do it just for the money, trying to get rich, usually don't. So make sure that whatever you're doing, you can add a lot of value to it, it really excites you, it gets your day going, and you want to just really go out and build a successful company because you love what you're doing day in, day out. And step 3 is they stuck with it. It rarely works the first time. You make so many mistakes, what you think is going to happen doesn't happen, people, you know, give you the wrong answer, and it's a lot harder to start a business than most people think, right? You have a lot of enthusiasm and energy at the beginning, And you have to have that passion to help guide you through all the roadblocks that you're going to face. But the successful entrepreneurs push through all those roadblocks, broke down all the brick walls until they were able to achieve that success. So you have to have that motivation to want to keep on going. So for entrepreneurs, again, my 3 tips: 1, get started. You got to have that drive to want to actually launch your business. 2, make sure you're super passionate about it. And then 3, you have to have the persistence and keep going until you become a success. I hope that helps. If you guys like the video, please give it a thumbs up, and I'd also love to hear your thoughts and feedback. You wanna leave a comment below? And stay tuned for the next episode.
