The #1 Characteristic of Successful Entrepreneurs

The #1 characteristic of successful entrepreneurs is resourcefulness.

In today's business world, there is not a more important characteristic to possess. Entrepreneurs have to adopt an attitude of resourcefulness if they want to achieve success, especially during the beginning stages of growing their businesses.

The harsh reality is that 9 out of 10 startups will fail. These statistics aren't meant to discourage you. Rather, they are meant to educate and motivate you! There are many reasons for why businesses flounder. However, one reason is that a lot of entrepreneurs don't realize how many moving parts are involved in running a business.

The ability to be resourceful is what helps entrepreneurs navigate the highs and lows of the entrepreneurial ride. Resourcefulness is a mindset. The more that you can develop it, the greater the likelihood that you will achieve success.

In the words of Tony Robbins, “Resourcefulness is the ultimate resource.” Do you think that you are resourceful enough to achieve your business goals? If not, now is the time to educate yourself and master the #1 characteristic of successful entrepreneurs!

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In his book, Coach Wooden’s Pyramid of Success, Coach Wooden defined resourcefulness as, “using our wits, proper judgment, and common sense to solve problems and meet challenges. It is using initiative in difficult situations and involves inventing, creating, imagining, synthesizing, evaluating, classifying, observing and analyzing solutions to overcome the trials that life throws at us.”

Becoming a successful entrepreneur is a journey. You need to learn how to enjoy the process or else you won't get far. In the beginning stages, you can expect that your workdays will spill over into your weekends, your resources will be limited, you will make mistakes, and you will need to juggle a myriad of tasks.

Some days it will feel like you just can't get through your to-do list, and you probably won't. Finding a way to get things done, when all signs point in the opposite direction, is a skill that makes for an effective entrepreneur. When it comes to achieving business success, the determining factor is YOU.

It's your ability to effectively manage your emotional state, take advantages of opportunities when they arise and solve problems that stand in your way of success. In my opinion, when you have resourcefulness, you can overcome anything.

The billion dollar question is, “How do we develop the #1 characteristic of successful entrepreneurs?”

There are many different ways that you can develop the skill of resourcefulness. However, I would like to share 5 ways that have helped me become more resourceful in my business.

1. Work Smart, Not Hard

As an entrepreneur, you need to learn how to leverage your time effectively. In any business, you will encounter a million different activities that you need to do. However, you need to identify which of those activities will generate the most money for your business or make the most impact. The 80/20 principle states that 20% of what you do produces 80% of your results.

In his book, The One Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results, Gary Keller states that the best way to avoid distractions, prioritize work and stay focused, is by focusing on the “one thing” that matters most to your business success.

When I started my online business I was doing EVERYTHING. When resources are limited, sometimes you need to juggle a million different hats. However, if you continue to play every single position on the team, so to speak, then you won't be able to master and accelerate the one core position.

I decided that I was going to focus all of my efforts on content creation because I knew that it was what I was best at in my business. More importantly, it was something that only I can do. I knew that if I could hire other people to do things, like my social media marketing, SEO, and bookkeeping, then I could master my core strength.

Figure out what you can outsource and delegate in your business so that you can work on your business, not in it. This is how to become the online entrepreneur of the future.

2. Adopt A Growth Mindset

In today's ever-changing world, entrepreneurs need to be constantly growing and evolving. It comes down to adopting a growth mindset. These types of people come from the belief that their intelligence can be developed through hard work.

The secret to business success is committing to waking up every day and learning something new. It's about being ready and willing to learn in different ways, based on the resources that are available to you. Let me share a personal story with you that best reflects this mindset.

My brother, Andreas worked in my Dad's family business for years. When he left, he ended up getting himself into a ton of debt. In order to make back the money, he got into construction. He was so good at it that he decided to pursue his own renovation business. Eventually, he became a multi-millionaire.

However, this wasn't something he was passionate about, long-term. He saw the success that I had achieved and he had a desire to build an online business. I coached him and he went on to succeed faster than anyone that I've seen. In 4-5 months he was making $5-6,000.

Today, he makes up to $80,000 per month. He has a coaching company, a Kindle publishing company, and continues to create new businesses. I believe that a large part of his success has been due, in part, to his growth mindset.

He was already a very intelligent person, but his work ethic, commitment to continuous learning, and ability to transform problems into possibilities allowed him to go the extra mile. He is proof that when you have a mastery mindset and understand what the principles of success are, anything is possible.

3. Be Proactive

If you want to be a successful entrepreneur, you can't wait for the perfect moment to take action. Waiting will get you nowhere. Nobody is going to build your dreams for you. You need to wake up every day, be resourceful and take massive action, even when you don't feel like doing so.

Research has shown that a “proactive personality” predicts entrepreneurial success. If an opportunity arises that could potentially take your business to the next level, take it! Resourceful people aren't passive. They take advantage of anything that can help them to grow and expand themselves and their business.

When you encounter problems in your business, you can't take a backseat and expect the someone else will fix them for you. Get in the game, find solutions, and always focus more on what YOU can do to be successful, instead of what others can do for you.

When you play an active role in your business, not only will you feel more confident, but you will also get more things done. In the words of Kathy Hopkins, “Don't wait for your ship to come in. Swim out to it.”

4. Don't Give Up

If you want to be resourceful, you can't give up when things get tough. This is referred to as dabbling. Unfortunately, I see a lot of entrepreneurs fall into this trap. Dabblers love the initial rush and excitement of starting something new. However, when things get challenging in their business, they throw in the towel and give up because they don't know how to be resourceful.

Sure enough, they don't achieve success.

Alternatively, a master is resourceful. When they don't know how to do something, they seek out the help of others who can teach them how to implement the skills that they need to know. When they commit to doing something, they are all-in. They welcome new challenges because it provides them with opportunities to learn who they are.

Jeff Bezos explains that resourcefulness is critical for anyone pursuing a big dream because it’s inevitable that you will run into problems. He says, “As a lot of entrepreneurs know, the whole point of moving things forward is you run into problems, you run into failures, things don’t work. You have to back up and try again. Each one of those times that you have a setback and you back up and try again, you’re using resourcefulness. You’re trying to invent your way out of a box.”

There will be a lot of times in business when you will fail. I've failed thousands of times, and I plan on failing more in the future. It's all a part of the process of success. Failure is a good thing because it's proof that you are trying. If you stop trying before you even attempt to solve a problem, then how do you expect to accomplish anything?

As entrepreneurs, we all have a choice. We can view challenges as obstacles that hold us back, or we can use them to propel us forward to something bigger and better. Which path will you take?

5. Be Open-Minded

In today's world, change is the only constant. If you can't embrace uncertainty, then the business world is not for you. As an entrepreneur, being successful requires that you are open to new ways of thinking and behaving. If something isn't working in your business, you need to be resourceful and come up with a better solution.

Sometimes this means demonstrating a willingness to receive feedback and suggestions from other people. Looking at your business from different angles may provide a fresh perspective. If you fall into expert mode, it can get you into trouble. I always say that the three most dangerous words in the human vocabulary that hold people back from success in business are, “I know that.”

If you think that you know everything, then you close yourself off from learning altogether.

Dr. Victor Otatti is a professor of psychology at the Loyola University of Chicago and the study’s lead author. He said, “In our society, we tolerate more forceful and dogmatic expressions of opinion when the speaker is an expert than when the speaker is a novice. So, when the situation makes us feel like we are an ‘expert,’ it activates these role expectations in our mind, and we feel more entitled to dismiss, ignore, or disparage opinions and viewpoints that differ from our own opinion.”

A successful entrepreneur doesn't have an ego. He or she is comfortable existing in the unknown and modifying his or her business strategies if something better comes along. In the words of Mark Perrett, “If you don't go through life with an open mind, you will find a lot of closed doors.”