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Steve Jobs Perseverance shows the real entrepreneur
Steve Jobs Perseverance shows the real entrepreneur
"I'm convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance." - says Steve Jobs.
An observation I fully subscribe to. Of course there are many characteristics that are part of the make-up of an entrepreneurs, but determination sets aside the business owner from the rest of the world. What makes an Entrepreneur is not easily qualified - he or she must have many different skills, financial insight, sales, marketing, Human Resources, creativity, vision and many other matters . Perseverance is the extra element you will need alongside all of those skills if you want to succeed. In that sense, you can compare a top athlete with a top entrepreneur - and often you do see the first make the transition to becoming the latter quite successfully. In both cases, you need to be able to "attack" rather then defend, be creative, take risks... and above all, continue where others stop.
How often are you not confronted with situations that seem hopeless, in your business - lack of money, economic recessions, personnel that leaves you in the lurch, or all of them at the same time.
I have often enough been in a situation where people around me really thought my company and/or I were through, finished, like in 1993 when the bank called its credit line and I couldn't pay any of the salaries of some 1000 employees, couldn't pay the lease cars, inland revenue got impatient and creditors were knocking on the doors. In those moments, you are almost on your own and have to fight upstream to survive. I luckily had Johan, my CFO, at my side - he was also a true entrepreneur, the last Mohican if you like - and fought the battle with me. The struggle lasted 9 months in total - an inordinately long time to survive - and we were triumphant in our victory. A mere two years later we sold the company to British Telecom and delivered a 400% ROI to our shareholders - everyone was happy. The continuous fight against seemingly impossible conditions is the key characteristic of a true entrepreneur.
These days you find more and more would-be entrepreneurs, people tempted by the smell of gold hoping to get rich quick by setting up their own company, or people that lost their jobs and think being an entrepreneur is the same as a being an employee. You often see this as in times of recession, when most of these "entrepreneurs" really don't know how they have to deal with the situation they are facing and when they end up in difficulty all they understand and know is how to protect themselves as a first step and end up hiring (expensive) lawyers to try and move the risk off their plate onto someone elses - instead of using common sense and try and sit down with creditors to reach a new agreement, look for new financiers, go to the bank and renegotiate their credit lines, sit down with management and personnel alike to see how they can all bundle forces to get through this downtime. No, instead, they only see the path that protects their own ego.
Time and time again - the edge of the precipice will be further away then you think. There are a ton of measures you can take before you actually fall off the cliff - so dig in deep and fight!
