The 3 Qualities All Great Entrepreneurs Have In Common

Having worked at large corporations like PepsiCo and Mondelez, I used to wake up every single day to try and grow billion dollar businesses.

Through my work on the show Cleveland Hustles, however, I’ve since turned my focus to helping and investing in small businesses and entrepreneurs, in the hope of revitalizing neighborhoods across the country.

Several weeks ago, I sat down with Michael Farber and Graham Cohen of a startup company called Breakout, which is empowering small business owners through social impact travel. I’ve been really impressed with what they’ve been doing, so when they invited me to one of their events in Newark, I just had to go.

There, I got the opportunity to meet a lot of great entrepreneurs who are working to build the future that will be Newark, New Jersey, and I asked each one of them a simple question:

What are the 3 things you would tell yourself if you had to start this journey of entrepreneurship all over again?

Here are the things that they all had in common:

1. Passion

As an entrepreneur, you have to do what you’re passionate about, because at the end of the day, if the money doesn’t come immediately, you still have to wake up and go to work. When you’re actually passionate about the thing you’re working towards, that’s enough to keep you driven in an of itself.

2. Patience

Building off of that first thought, another thing being an entrepreneur really requires is patience. Simply put, what you’re working on is not always going to be in and out. It’s not always a quick flip. Success takes time, and the sooner you can reconcile that, the better off you’ll be.

3. Planning

And lastly, as an entrepreneur, you need to have a plan. What is your plan for growth? What are the goals that need to be achieved in order to get to where you want to be? How can you take your business and scale it to the next level?

That last point is an area where I really want to help small businesses. I want to help them adopt the big business thinking I’ve come to know and apply it against their small business agenda.

To catch a glimpse of my day in Newark, watch the video here: