10 Traits Every Entrepreneur NEEDS To Be Successful

There are currently 582 million entrepreneurs in the world, but according to lendingtree.com, 44.5% of them will fail after 4 years and 56.8% of them will fail after 7 years. But I don't want you to think about this being a matter of winning or losing. This is really a matter of not giving up. And not settling with a life that's okay. It's so-so. I guess I'll just do this. Chances are you went into entrepreneurship or you're considering pursuing entrepreneurship because you wanted more out of life. You're listening to this because you want more out of life and you're going after this because you saw other people doing it and thought, I'm going to give it a shot. I'm going to go for something bigger than just living 9 to 5, doing what my parents always did, or my family has always done. I want to do something different, something special with my life. I want to make a difference in the world, to be your own boss, to have freedom in your life. Whatever it is, I don't know where you're at, but I know that you do want more. And those people that succeed, the people that don't, it really just comes down to them never giving up. So today I'm going to help you build up some resilience, some mental, emotional resilience, and I'm going to share with you 10 traits that every entrepreneur needs to be successful. Let's dive in. Welcome to episode number 20 of the Profit Your Knowledge podcast. I'm your host, James Allen, here to help you turn your knowledge, passions, and skills into an online business so that you can be your own boss, do work that you love and ultimately live a life of freedom. And hey, if that's you, you want to pursue entrepreneurship and you want to live a life of freedom, I highly recommend you pick up my 5-step action plan. It's going to walk you through how to earn your first $100 or more in passive income. Now, that may not sound like life-changing money, and truthfully, $100 is not. But this guide is going to walk you through the exact process that I use in my own business and I've learned from my teachers, my mentors, and invest a lot of money to actually learn. But it's going to teach you how to create passive income if you have knowledge, passions, skills that you want to teach in an online space and create a business that runs for you hands-off. Maybe you're a service provider, you want to create a passive income side to your business. This guide is going to walk you through it. Earn your first $100 or more in passive income. Because when you get that first sale, like, like I've done $5,000 phone calls and $10,000 sales on the phone and things like that. But when you make your first hands-off sale, even if it is just $100, it is an amazing feeling. And you realize that if I could do that one time, I could do it 100 times over, I could do it 1,000 times over. And the truth is that you can and you will. You just need to know the process, the systems, the the automations, and this guide is going to walk you through all of it. Okay. To pick up your guide, go to profityourknowledge.com/guide, or there's also a link in the description. When you click it, just go over to a page, put in your best email, and I will send it right over to you right away. So let's dive into 10 traits that every entrepreneur needs to be successful. Just a quick preface. I, I'm not some ultra successful entrepreneur. I am an entrepreneur. I've been in this for over 4 years and I have had many highs and probably 3 times the amount of lows. I've gone through so many different phases in my life and I've grown so much as an entrepreneur. And these are 10 traits that I firmly believe are going to help you be more successful because I know they have helped me in my life to really just not give up and to better myself every single day. It's like that book Atomic Habits. When you're making these small incremental changes over time, you're going to end up being miles and miles away from who you were back in the day when you first started. Okay? It's just a matter of staying in the game long enough to succeed. That's really what it comes down to. Okay? There are many different traits that make a great entrepreneur. Again, these are just 10 that I feel from experience and from learning from other people, from pursuing this in my own life. That have really helped me in growing as an entrepreneur. Because if, I mean, honestly, I thought about throwing in the towel many different times, but if I had given up and just done that and went into the army, I even thought about, 'cause I'm a physically fit guy, I was like, I could just do that. I could just be a firefighter. Like I could just pursue something else. But I always knew that there was something, it was like, no, you're meant for more, James. You are, you can do those things, but you're meant for more. And if I did, give up on this and threw in the towel, went into those other things, I wouldn't have been able to make those, like those sales that I had stayed, like have my first $10,000 day. You know, like, I wouldn't have been able to make passive income if I had came, if I had just given up back then, I wouldn't have been able to do all the cool stuff that I get to do nowadays, because I decided to stay the path to stay in it. That's what today is all about. So Let's dive into these 10 traits that every entrepreneur needs to be successful. Trait number 1 is a willingness to experiment. I think this is really big just to be willing to experiment. What I'd recommend in terms of experimentation of being an entrepreneur is to have some sort of good foundation first. That could be that you have cash reserves that allow you the flexibility to experiment, to try different approaches. Maybe you have a job that's bringing in some money on the side while you're pursuing your entrepreneurial endeavors, or at least have a proven business model that you know works for your niche and what you're working at pursuing from having mentors and learning. But try different things. You know, I think that that's what makes a really good entrepreneur. Even if things are going really well and you are successful and it's like, why would I change it? You can. I mean, if it's really working for you. Stick with it. But I still think that it's good to experiment, to try some different things in your life. But I, again, when you experiment, there's like a difference between experimenting and having a good foundation of something that's reliable, that allows you the freedom and flexibility to experiment, compared to you just randomly experimenting. Because then you get, well, what's like analysis paralysis, and you start doing the shiny object syndrome. So you have to find that happy medium. But I think it is really great to experiment. A great example is when I'm working with people, I'm coaching them, I teach them about content marketing, creating lead magnets, bringing them over to our website, making sales, some simple automations. And people ask me, what if— what about this? Like, how come you don't do this or don't try this? And it's like, I either have tried it or I tell them, like, go for it. If you want to, like, do paid ads, then go for it. I've done paid ads and I'm not the paid ads guy. I'm more the content marketing guy, the slow growth guy personally. But I'm like, go for it. Like, try it. It's your business. But I think it's really important to be able to experiment in our business and in our life and be willing to experiment and be open to other options. So that's tip number 1, trait number 1. Number 2, and I believe that entrepreneurs, successful entrepreneurs enjoy investing in themselves, even if it could not work out, even if it could not work out. I was afraid to invest in myself for a really long time, and now I like investing myself. I like paying for courses. I like paying for coaches because you don't know what you don't know. I don't know what I don't know. The more that we can invest in ourselves, the time, the money into different things, into learning more, the more that we get to learn, the more we get to share, and the more that we get to earn. Whether you are successful with your investment or you're not. You learned, okay? It's either I win or I learn. So no matter what, you're winning. So you win or you lose by any means. So I think that that's so, so important is that you enjoy investing in yourself. And if you're nervous about investing like I was for so long, because the reason I was because I got burned so many times in a repeated manner, it was just terrible. And that's a story for a different day or stories for a different day. But I really just learned to enjoy it because I realized that I became so much more from all the debt that I accumulated in making those investments in my business. I learned about how to hire the right kind of people, what things to look for, what are red flags, and I would never have been able to know that unless I made those investments and pursued it. Okay. So that's the biggest thing. Enjoy investing in yourself. I think that's really big. Keep learning. Keep getting better at it. Even, even if it could not work out, if you're not willing to put the $5,000 down for something, then, you know, don't do it, I guess. But you have to take those risks as being an entrepreneur. And you have to invest in yourself because if you don't know something, you don't know it. And you can either put the time in to try and figure these things out yourself, which is going to take you way longer, or you can make an investment, it's probably going to fall through and just accept the fact that it can and that it may. Okay, it's okay, because this is going to happen to you no matter what. If you finally just took my advice, you're like, that's it, I'm going to invest myself, and you made an investment, it could just go straight to the crapper. But that leads us to our next point, which is tip number 3, or trait number 3: emotional resilience. Even when you fail, because it's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when— when you fail, when you fall on your face, you get back up. Entrepreneurship is like the biggest— I think Ed Mylett said this, he said when you become an entrepreneur, it is the best personal development program that you can put yourself through. And it really is because you are challenging yourself, you're stretching yourself every single day, and you need to have that mental and emotional resilience to just get back up when you fall on your face. Not if, when, when you fail. Harrison Ford has one of my favorite quotes about this where he said, if you simply didn't give up, you would outlast the people who came in on the bus with you. So good. If you simply didn't give up, you would outlast the people who came in on the bus with you. Don't give up. Be emotionally strong. You are going to become successful with time. Go through the ups and downs, ride it out. It's like a relationship. Every relationship goes through crap. Every marriage goes through crap. This is like a marriage with yourself, entrepreneurship. If you just gave up on it, on your marriage, that could have been a great relationship, but you had some bumpy roads and you left, you're just going to stay in this cycle of doing that with every relationship. Okay, it's like the same thing with entrepreneurship. You can't give up. You have to ride it out and pursue it. And apply this to the other traits and tips I'm going to share with you. But just don't give up. Be emotionally resilient. Keep getting up. Trait number 4 is a passionate love for people. Success comes from solving other people's problems. That is what entrepreneurship really is. It is a matter of you finding the problems that people have and finding the problem specifically that you passionately want to solve because you want to help people. A passionate love for people. When you do that, when you love solving those problems for people and it genuinely brings joy out of you, you will be successful. Trait number 5 is an uncanny obsession with success. It's uncanny. It's kind of weird to people. It's like, this guy is something else. He's just like, brain's going, or this girl, they are on one because they want to succeed. They believe in themselves and they know that they can do this. People are going to think you're crazy. If and when you pursue entrepreneurship. And if you have been pursuing entrepreneurship, you know what I mean. People are like, oh wow, like when you tell someone, oh, I'm going after this, I'm starting a business, or I'm pursuing this thing that's not a 9 to 5, you're not just being an accountant or doing whatever job you may be doing or have done. People are going to think you're crazy. I used to be in construction work making right around 6 figures, and I told people I was going to leave and start my own business, teaching people things online. And everybody looked at me like I was freaking crazy. So I ended up telling just a select few people. I didn't start telling everybody, but I was obsessed with— I just knew that this is what I want to do. And if I'm going to spend my life doing anything, it's going to be that. It's going to be pursuing. Even if I died in the process or everything fell apart around me, like, I'm still going to pursue this because I'd rather die trying All right, uncanny obsession with success. It has to become— you have to be driven from within, and it just has to be that obsession of, I just want to do this, and listening to oneself. I think that's so important. Trait number 6 is self-belief. Just like I said before, it's just believing that you can do it even when other people think you're crazy. Eleanor Roosevelt has another one of my favorite quotes where she said, all the water in the world can't drown you unless it gets inside of you. All the water in the world can't drown you unless it gets inside of you. That is self-belief. What she means by that is that people didn't believe in Eleanor Roosevelt. I mean, you can look up stories about her, truly an inspirational figure and just woman, you know, but just person in general. She had all these people doubting her and she was incredibly intelligent. And that's where this quote really came from. All these people are saying that she can't do it, that it's not possible for her, that she's not going to be successful, that she shouldn't have any voice because she's a woman in that time. And she never let it get inside of her, or I'm sure she did, but she built up that emotional resilience by remembering this, that all the water in the world can't drown me unless it gets inside of me. And that's what kept her going because she believed in herself. And a greater cause as well. Tip number 7, or trait number 7, is persistent learning. Read and study every day. Like we talked about before, it's investing in yourself. Do invest money. Invest in coaches and courses and mentorship and the things that you don't know, because if you don't know something, you just don't know. If you don't know how to get clients yet, you don't know how to get clients yet. If you don't know how to do it consistently, you don't know. If you don't know how to create passive income, you don't know, which is why you should download the 5-step guide. FYI, but read and study every day. There is a monetary investment that we make, and then there's the time investment that we make as well. Reading, studying every single day, just something small, even just a little bit. You do that for 5 years, you just had compounding effect of every single day over the course of 5 years. You're going to be a completely different person in that 5 years. So a good rule of thumb that I'd recommend— I love listening to music and it actually used to be difficult for me. I would listen to music and I knew that I wanted to learn personal development or learn something, I kind of felt guilty that I wasn't doing it because I would just revert back to music, which is fine. Like, it's okay to listen to music. A good rule of thumb and something I'll challenge you to do if that is you, is to consume something productive like an audiobook or a YouTube video or a podcast or just a book in general. Consume something productive like that that's leading to that dream life that you have. Before you listen to music. If it's one podcast episode before you start listening to music, that's fine. Then you spend the rest of the day listening to music if that's what you like to do, okay? Or doing whatever else that it is you like to do. But make sure that you're learning something that contributes to that dream life that you have every single day. Tip number 8, trait number 8. I keep saying tip. Trait number 8, strategic planning. I think it's so important to always have a plan, whether it's good or not. Don't just wing it. Don't just get out there and I'm just gonna start doing something. Always have a plan. And I, it's funny that I even have to say this because it's like, well, duh, James. But so many people don't, they just start to wing it. Even if you are kind of just winging it, like I'm just going to leave my job. I'm just going to go into this even though I don't know exactly what I'm doing. Still come up with some sort of plan and you can look up how to make a good plan and things like that. But always have a plan. Have like 3 to 5 steps that you can follow that are going to— that you just know are going to lead you to success or lead you at least towards success. But always plan strategically. I think this is so important. Don't just act randomly. Think about things. Pause. A great practice I heard from Brendon Burchard. Was he said when you're thinking about doing something, tell yourself no. Because when you say no, it forces you to justify why you should do it. Okay, so I think that would really help with strategic planning. It does for me. So think before you act, execute on the plan, even if it's not the best plan in the world, just execute on it, get it as good as you can and follow through. That is the most important thing. Tip number 9, open-mindedness. This is one of the biggest tips. Tip number 10 is by far the biggest one, by the way. Open-mindedness, listen to people whether they're successful or not and show empathy towards other people. Meet people where they're at. Listen to people though, even though you could think like, who are you? Like, I'm like, or I already know this. If you're going through a course or something and you're at a part in the course where you're like, I didn't buy the course for this because, oh, I already know, like, how to film myself on camera or whatever it is, still listen, be open-minded, because you could get that one little nugget that you least expected in a time that you least expected. When you're open-minded with people and with the things that you're consuming as well, you're going to build better relationships, you're going to create more connections, and you're going to find more opportunities and insight along the way. Because again, you never know when a winning idea is going to strike. You could be talking to someone business-related or not, and that moment of inspiration pops up inside of you and you're like, oh my God, like just the one thing that you said, just because I was open-minded and I listened, whether they were ahead of you or not, it doesn't matter. Okay, just be open-minded to the possibilities, to the opportunities that can show up to you. And use that to help you with that strategic planning piece. Okay. It doesn't mean, it doesn't mean you're weak or that you're scattered or anything like that. Being open-minded is just a matter of listening to people, showing empathy towards people, and, um, being open even just to just the insight inside of yourself. You're meditating or something as well, but be open-minded. I think that's really, really a key trait. Trait number 10. This is the biggest one. By far that I believe every entrepreneur needs to be successful. Taking inspired action, not just taking action, just random action, taking inspired action. This is the one that puts every other trait together. Action is the separator between those who succeed and those who don't. The statistics I shared with you, the 40 to 50%, the 4 to 7 years from LendingTree, Those are the people that gave up, that said, I'm not going to do this. I'm throwing in the towel. It's just not for me. I don't want to keep doing this. And they finally just said, I'm done. Maybe they went bankrupt. Who knows what happens? Take inspired action always. Okay. Act on the things that intuitively light you up when they light you up. For example, you could hear an idea. Maybe you're being open-minded. You're reading a book, reading some new book. Talking to someone that you don't feel is going to be beneficial to you when you're, you know, growing your business or being an entrepreneur or something like that. And then that one little nugget that they said or the way they said something just pops inside of you and you're like, oh my God, that's actually a genius idea. I'll get to it later. No, do it right now. Write it down. That's an action step. Just write it down somewhere where you can easily access it so you can take action on it. Later, or if you can take action on it right now. If you're going through an online course, for example, reading a book, you're running through it and that light bulb moment strikes you. You're like, wow, that is genius. Take action on it right then, right then and there, because that inspired feeling that comes up from inside of you, not me telling you what to do, but that thing that came up inside of you that says that is genius. That's, that's what I know, that that's going to get me closer to my goal. That's the action step that I want you to pay attention to, that I'm encouraging you to pay attention to and to take action on. You can have two different people, one person with the best ideas, with all the different resources, but they keep planning. They don't really take any action versus the person who doesn't have the same resources, but they act on the things that light them up, that they know and feel are going to move them towards the direction of the thing that they really want, that ideal life that they really want. And they act on the things that they learn, that person is going to be so much further than the person that has all the goodies but doesn't take the action. Taking action, taking inspired action, whether you believe in, you know, God or you have a higher power of some kind or not, there's— you know what I'm talking about. When those moments come up inside you, say, that could help, that could work. That's the stuff to pay attention to. Because that's going to move you closer to your goal and always paying attention to it, looking inside. All right. So those are my 10 traits that have helped me be a better entrepreneur, that have kept me in the game long enough to see the success that I have been able to achieve. Again, I'm not the biggest entrepreneur in the world or anything, but I've been in the game for quite a while. I've had a lot of wins and a lot of losses, and for a while I had a lot of losses and thought, I'm going to throw in the towel. But I kept going and then I had a ton of different wins. And that has created many, many opportunities and a business that really I love and that supports me. Okay, let me do a summary of these 10 traits. Number 1, a willingness to experiment. You enjoy investing in yourself, even if it could not work out. You just, you like to invest in yourself because it's bettering you and you enjoy working on yourself. Number 3, emotional resilience, getting up even when you get kicked in the face. By life, or when life throws you curveballs, whatever it is, you fall on your face, you get back up. Number 4, passionate love for people. 5, an uncanny obsession with success and with winning. Number 6, self-belief. 7, persistent learning, studying and learning every single day. Number 8, strategic planning. 9, open-mindedness. And number 10, taking inspired Action. Those are 10 traits that I guarantee that you, you abide by these. Maybe you're already doing some of them. These are going to support you massively. And again, if you enjoyed today's lesson, you enjoyed this episode and you want to pick up that 5-step action plan that's going to help you earn your first $100 or more in passive income so you can learn how this stuff works, go to ProfitYourKnowledge.com/guide or click the first link in the description. Bring you over again to a page. Just put in your best email and I'll send you your guide right away. My gift to you. It's free. It's in the description. First link, ProfitYourKnowledge.com/guide. I want you to think about these 10 traits that I shared with you today. If this was really helpful, please give me a thumbs up because that helps me see that this was valuable for you tangibly. And secondly, I'd love to hear from you in the comments section if you are on YouTube. Which one of these traits, if you could just pick one that you could focus on, do you feel from inside that would inspire you to move closer to your goals? Which one of these traits could you really work on to move you closer to that goal? That's all I got for you today. Take what you learned here, get out there. Please don't give up, not just for me, but for all the people that you can help in your entrepreneurial pursuits. And, uh, yeah, that's all I got for you. I will see you in the next one.