To become a successful entrepreneur, avoid these personality traits (1)

The dream of breaking out of the pack, breaking all known rules and formula and becoming your own boss, running your ‘thing’ is an enormous source of motivation.

Now, before you embark on this journey, it will be important to pay attention to some of these personality traits, which have the ability to sabotage your ambitious drive. The conceptual model upon which this is based was inspired by smallstarter.com

The Idea Junkie

Idea junkies are typically smart and intelligent people. It does not take too long to figure this out. All you need is a few minutes of conversation with them and you will realise just how creative their minds really are. They could analyse a market opportunity in a second, and reveal several interesting insights. The really committed ones have a notebook that contains a long list of business ideas.

Despite their ‘beautiful’ minds, the biggest problem with idea junkies is they live inside their heads.

With all the beautiful ideas they possess, there is very little action to back it up. And because they hardly take action, idea junkies actually never start a business. Having all that knowledge and amazing ideas and not doing anything about them is debilitating.

To fight this personality trait, challenge yourself to take action on your ideas, no matter how little these actions are. By taking action, you actually see that some of these ideas may actually not work in real life, while some other ideas just metamorphose into something totally different.

Real entrepreneurs are not usually the smartest people in the room. What makes them different is action. They always take action.

The Victim

The Victim is someone who has a beautiful idea and should have built it into an amazing business but, according to them, there are a lot of people and things that are hell-bent on frustrating their move at each turn.

The government, for example, won’t provide electricity that is desperately needed to power the factory. The banks have denied them loan application several times and have refused to help with start-up capital. Friends just do not get it and are not smart enough to support a brilliant business idea.

Some Victims could go as far as blaming their parents for their poor family background. They blame God for not sending a ‘divine intervention’. They blame the weather, the neighbours, their spouse and children.

The tough truth is that entrepreneurs do not wait on chance, the create it. Otherwise, there is no shortage of reason to despair as aspiring entrepreneurs in Africa. For instance, there are potholed roads, massive unemployment, snobbish banks, corrupt government officials, and inadequate electricity, water and security, our continent has become a breeding ground of ‘victims’. The list can go on.

STEPHEN ONYEKWELU