When business coach René Carayol took part in a 2003 BBC documentary on wealthy Britons, he was given a seemingly insurmountable task. Working with a psychologist, he had to identify 10 self-made millionaires from a roomful of 100 people. The BBC assumed the exercise would take two weeks. It ended up taking minutes.
“It was the guy shouting in three different phones at once. The impatient one. The two people cheating at cards,” remembers Carayol, who has advised the United Nations and World Bank on leadership. “All these traits of excessive behaviour … it was fascinating.”
The exercise supports a commonly held belief: entrepreneurs are a unique breed, imbued with some unmistakable traits – skyscraping chutzpah, impossible energy levels and, yes, a little cunning. Entrepreneurial folklore dictates they start young, too. Think 11-year-old Alan Sugar flogging dressmaking scraps to rag-and-bone-men; the teenage Mark Zuckerberg launching Facebook; 16-year-old magazine publisher Richard Branson; or YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki selling crafts door-to-door as an 11-year-old.
Yet we live in a time when e-commerce is creating more entrepreneurs than ever before (4.8 million people in the UK alone at the last count). Do they really all need to share these qualities to make it?
“Just because you weren’t selling lemonade on a stall as a seven-year-old doesn’t mean you’re not cut out for it,” says Emma Jones, founder of Enterprise Nation, which has helped thousands of people start and grow businesses. “Anybody can start a business, but you do need some entrepreneurial traits to run a company.”
Whether these characteristics are innate or can be taught professionally is a moot point. In 2013, University of London (UCL) identified genotype rs4950, which suggested leadership was “in part, a genetic trait”.
Our fixed natures could play a role: “You can learn the mechanics of entrepreneurship, but can’t change your basic personality,” says business psychologist Mark Parkinson. “When push comes to shove, we revert to our default personalities like an elastic band, especially when stressed. If you’re a risk-averse character, when [difficult times occur] you’re likely to return to that.”
The who-dares-wins appetite for risk is seen as the cornerstone of an entrepreneurial spirit, but it’s more myth than reality, reckons Parkinson: “The view that entrepreneurs are wild, gambling types isn’t correct.”
But, according to Jones, there is at least one trait that is universal among entrepreneurs: a sunny optimism that could charm birds from the trees. “Anybody starting their own business needs to have the most positive mindset,” she says. “I’ve never actually met a negative entrepreneur.”
Equally important is persistence; consider the dogged determination Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington summoned after her book was rejected by no fewer than 36 publishers. Or the impressive 5,126 failed prototypes James Dyson went through before finishing his first Dyson vacuum.
“If most of us had a failed business, we’d give up and get another job,” says Parkinson. “Entrepreneurs just borrow money and start again.”
Comb the backstory of many entrepreneurs and it’s not difficult to find hardship fuelling perseverance. Carayol was once enlisted by the Botswanan president to search for entrepreneurs in the prosperous southern African nation. He didn’t find gutsy ambition in entitled, educated graduates. Instead, it was palpable in immigrants from nearby countries “who’d arrived packaged in hunger – they were prepared to wake earlier and take risks ordinary Botswanans wouldn’t”.
In the UK, an estimated one in seven businesses were founded by migrants. Studies have also shown a disproportionate number of entrepreneurs with dyslexia – 20% of British business self-starters identify with the condition. The late Anita Roddick and Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad were both dyslexic, as are Jamie Oliver, Alan Sugar and Richard Branson.
Many entrepreneurs, particularly among the Silicon Valley behemoth set, haven’t needed academic honours either – see university dropouts Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Elon Musk. Look at key players on Dragons’ Den – Deborah Meaden, Karren Brady, Hilary Devey – and you won’t find many degrees either; none attended. But they’re not necessarily the rule.
“The college dropout personality is a myth; most entrepreneurs are actually college-educated,” notes Keyvan Vakili, assistant professor of strategy and entrepreneurship at London Business School.
Rather than the influence of education, people are more likely to enlist for an entrepreneurial life if they have a self-employed family member. “If you have an entrepreneur in your circle, especially parents, it increases your chances,” says Vakili.
Statistics also show that entrepreneurs don’t need to start young. A 2018 MIT study revealed that the average age for successful business founders in the US is 42, while the mean founder age for the one in 1,000 highest-growth enterprises is 45. “By this age, you have a network, capital and personal skills,” says Vakili. This life-long accumulation of contacts can be crucial. “More diverse interaction leads to more idea generation and better access to capital – you know who you need to talk to about raising money and hiring employees,” he says.
Ultimately, go-getting characteristics may help future entrepreneurs, but a strong idea and, of course, access to funds are equally important. “If you are thinking of starting your own business, you don’t have to fit these traits to do it,” says Parkinson. “But you need to be somebody who can cope with potential problems, such as running out of money.”
The truth is that, in the end, nothing beats hard work and ambition. “Entrepreneurs aren’t innovators – instead, they spot a gap in the market, then push and never give up,” says Carayol.
“That’s what separates great entrepreneurs from normal ones. Great entrepreneurs go beyond the pale. They have to.”
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