Many people usually wonder whether it takes brains to become an entrepreneur. Before tackling this issue, it is important to define the meaning of brains in this context. For most people, brains mean someone who is good academically, someone who scores top grades in class. In case you have such thoughts, but fear that you are not so good in academics, here is some good news for you. When it comes to entrepreneurship, you need more than skills and brains. In fact these two are pretty much irrelevant when it comes to entrepreneurship. Here’s why.
- Entrepreneurship is about seizing opportunities
For you to be a successful as an entrepreneur, you need to be good at seizing opportunities when they arise. In fact, most of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs are not graduates, they are just ordinary people who happened to see an opportunity and took it. They didn’t sit and start analyzing as most skilled people would do, they just take the chance, and the rest as they say is history.
- Entrepreneurship is about endurance
No matter how educated you are, no class will teach you the skill of endurance, yet this is a prerequisite for success as an entrepreneur. In fact most successful billionaire entrepreneurs have stories of how they almost went bankrupt, but they still persevered. If you don’t have the strength, or the will power to keep going even when everything around you is falling apart, you are unlikely to make it as an entrepreneur. This probably explains why most successful entrepreneurs are ordinary guys, and not professionals, or Ivy League university graduates.
- Entrepreneurship is about courage
Many are times when entrepreneurs delve into uncharted waters even though they have no idea of what to expect. It is not uncommon for an entrepreneur to take a personal loan from a company such as NorthCash and pump it all into an untested business. If the venture succeeds, then the entrepreneur emerges a winner, rich and happy. Unfortunately, this has nothing to do with skills and brains. It takes courage and the ability to try out new things even though you know too well that you might fail. Even the most skilled person who doesn’t have this courage cannot be a successful entrepreneur.
- Entrepreneurship is about passion
No matter how skilled or brainy you are, if you don’t love what you do, it will be very hard for you to succeed as an entrepreneur. All you need to prove this to look at some of the most successful people in the world. Look at Bill Gates as an example. While he is brainy, it is his love for software that has brought him to where he is. In fact, he dropped out of college to follow his software passion. The same applies to Mark Zuckerberg who dropped out of college to follow his Facebook dream. This passion to follow your dreams is something that you can’t learn in any classroom. It has nothing to do with skills. In fact, if you are very skilled, but lack the passion to follow your dreams, you will end up working for those who take the chance to follow theirs! It’s just the nature of entrepreneurship.
