How To Have The Entrepreneurial Spirit?
The entrepreneurial spirit is one of those essential forces that are not taught and that entrepreneurs develop more or less according to their history, their personality, their desires, their values, their vision…
What is it to have the entrepreneurial spirit? Why is it so important to be entrepreneurial? How to have it and develop it?
Entrepreneurship is the first impetus for business creation.
When one embarks on a business creation, entrepreneurship is synonymous with financial forecasts, business plan, fundraising, startup, investments …
Yes, it is all this, but it misses an important ingredient: an entrepreneurial spirit.
It is this flame that makes a normal individual, an entrepreneur because it is not necessarily natural to undertake, to create a business. Sometimes it is a necessity to do it and an error if it is by constraint.
The entrepreneur, instead of wisely in his place in a company, at his office and drinking coffee with his colleagues, will reduce his income, use his unemployment rights, get into debt, expose himself to risks legal issues and put his couple and his family to the test.
He will live moments of anxiety, doubt, tension, fatigue, stress without having the opportunity to take paid leave or illness.
In short, I blackened the picture but it is very close to the everyday reality of the entrepreneur and believe me, when you go through this you need entrepreneurship and you understand what it is and what it brings … already to hold!
Myself, I was able to create companies with passion and energy. I always had this entrepreneurial spirit but I especially learned to develop it, to diversify it, to refine it because I often went in all directions and I could not channel my energy, to make a focus. I had to produce a lot more energy and it was very difficult to maintain consistency and constant motivation.
For some, the entrepreneurial spirit is:
- to have a vision, to love risk, to build, …
— to be rigorous, to like to juggle numbers, to manage, …
— to lead a team, to love the human, to organize,…
— create a network, synergies, communicate, exchange, …
The reality is that you have to be all of this at a time. You will then be able to delegate when your company can afford it. But for the moment, the project leader, the captain is you, so it is on the following supports that the entrepreneurial spirit is based.
The vision: The cornerstone of entrepreneurship
Peter Drucker said that “the best way to predict the future is to create it”.
The vision allows this to have an entrepreneurial spirit. Because having a foresight on a specific objective and simple, then guide its strategy and action towards this entrepreneurial goal.
It is the intention and the intuition of the entrepreneur who will forge his vision. But for some people, this is an innate faculty, for others, it will be an everyday exercise that will develop.
The vision must be worked internally and externally.
Worked internally by the individual thanks to a step back from his entrepreneurial project:
The entrepreneur will be clear with his deep aspirations. He will have to ask himself if the reasons for his entrepreneurial approach are consistent with the project. He will also have to lower his guard to better open his vision of things. Questions will come naturally like: Am I objective? Am I the right person? Is my entrepreneur’s eye fixed on the future or on micro-horizons?
Worked externally for the customers on the real value brought:
Your customers sometimes have a biased image of the real need which is theirs. Listen and understand the weak signals of the market to turn them into an adapted offer.
The entrepreneur must be visionary about his market and his strategy.
Passion: The driving force
“ Entrepreneurship is neither a science nor an art. This is a practice. When Peter Drucker said this it induced a strong motivation. It is necessary for this “practice”. Motivation does the action to implement small and large decisions.
But what brings the motivation, it is without a doubt the passion. Many entrepreneurs will tell you that entrepreneurial spirit is born of passion.
Passion makes us the task easier. It can make the difficulties exciting and it is communicative. One action carried by passion and another without, very easily show the difference in the result. Moreover, the beauty of the entrepreneurial gesture is no less sublime with passion.
The entrepreneur is often exalted by the action. That’s why he can misplace or dilute his passion en route. See some entrepreneurs during the launch period and see these same people when their project got its second round of fundraising. The creator-builder became manager-manager.
The entrepreneur must, therefore, safeguard his passion.
The rebound: Success over time
You know this expression: “I spend my time doing the firefighter”. It is surely an entrepreneur who said that. Even if it’s a bit of a caricature, it’s a bit of everyday life for some entrepreneurs.
Face difficulties do not get discouraged and bounce back. This is the necessary rebound to have the entrepreneurial spirit. This rebound ability is working, developing. You will take a step back from the failures, the tests and you will have this ability to cash the shots. You will also develop your adaptability and your business will be agile.
Entrepreneurial spirit through the rebound will forge your vision, your experience and the thickness of an entrepreneur.
Opening: The force of many
Share and give to better receive. My experience of entrepreneurship and my entrepreneurial spirit showed me that one should not be locked up and fearful in opening up to others.
It is well recognized that the positive attitude you can have attracts other positive attitudes and opportunities.
So, expand your network, co-produce, share, share … all this is much more effective and powerful than being alone in your own corner.
ONLY ONE MOVE FORWARD,
TOGETHER WE GO FASTER
To have the entrepreneurial spirit is to see the possible connections to share and produce value. It becomes an automatism because to have the spirit of the undertaking is to be on permanent standby. It takes a lot of energy but produces a lot of positive things.
Thus, the entrepreneur develops his faculties of communication and his empathy.
Optimism: The opportunity magnet
Optimism is the consequence of the points seen previously. Because if you have the vision, passion, rebound, and openness, you will have new opportunities, new encounters and certainly these positive synergies will bring you the optimism that characterizes entrepreneurs.
Like the entrepreneurial spirit, optimism is an underlying characteristic of the individual who undertakes. I know very few of the success stories of entrepreneurs who do not have that optimism.
I think it’s mostly the passion that brings optimism because if you manage to create a business, an activity based on your passion, it will make you happy and therefore optimistic. Because you will not see things the same way anymore. Rather than seeing the problems, you will see what the tests bring. It’s a little putting on glasses that transform your worldview.
And if I am asked today what entrepreneurial spirit has brought me. I will answer with this: “There is only one success, it is to be able to live your life in your own way. ” It’s from Christopher Morley
And you, do you have the entrepreneurial spirit?
Originally published at Entrepreneur News and Startup Guide.
