As an Entrepreneur you quickly learn a number of do or die habits or personality characteristics that you have to have in order to survive or make it. Success never comes on a silver platter, you have to make the platter and place the success on it. Some of them might not be easy to accept but overtime you realize that if you want to make money these characteristics are important.

1. Passion in Business

From personal experience as an entrepreneur who had to ride at the back of a truck to give accounting services for a farm business, or at one point going to a neighbors house to use their computer whilst they slept to develop programs, I can stand up and say that passion should be one of the top characteristics if you want to be successful entrepreneur. Without passion you would quickly give up. Passion is the energy drive that you need in order to keep going or sustain an idea. One needs vision but think of passion as the engine for that vision to succeed, without it all is lost.

2. Determination

You just don’t become a successful entrepreneur you have to be determined to be successful. As an entrepreneur you have to be ready to pay rent for months before the vision takes fruit or becomes self sustainable. Determination means seeing the vision when nothing else seems real. It is almost a stubborn characteristic, when people tell you it is impossible, you act as if the word impossible does not exist and you press forward.

3. Sacrifice for the Right Investment

As an entrepreneur you will have to sacrifice the time you spend with your friends, forgo clothes that you normally buy, avoid trips you are used to and let go of several other things in order to make the dream come true. Until you are ready to sacrifice you will not succeed. Every successful entrepreneur knows that the start of success needs an investment. First you get the seed which is the idea, but you will need the land, the fertilizer, the water, the protection of the fields and more in order to finally realize the harvest.

4. Patience in Business to Make Money

What kills most would be entrepreneurs is the inability to be patient. Patience is not about time, it is about the ability to go through the necessary steps in order to get to the goal. People focus more on time yet it is about what you are willing to do. Shortcuts are the enemy of patience because shortcuts demand that you jump necessary steps. Imagine that you are building a house, you can’t avoid putting up the walls, neither can you put up the roof before the walls. Impatience is when we put up the walls and the roof and there is no foundation put in place. The result seems like a complete building but over time and stress, the structure will collapse.

5. Principled Business Ethics

In order to succeed you have to stick to your values. Most businesses are a handout from someone else who developed it but their values are now lost in the history of time, however the values they used to create the business can still be seen or recited. Values are those laws which when you are pursuing your business as an entrepreneur you are not willing to cross. They form the standard that you use to guide your ship, you stay on course as long as you keep to the values. Over time in building your business, you learn which values are key to your business and these are the ones you pass down to whoever joins you.

6. Restlessness

Part of the recipe to be a successful entrepreneur is keep thinking of the idea, it is almost an obsession. In your mind you go over and over different approaches and outcomes in order to eliminate what works and what does not work. Your imagination is your key player in this case. If you don’t use it you will not succeed. Imagination is your place of experiment and is a higher level of reality.

7. Risk Taking

If I was to calculate how much money I have lost trying out different ideas it would seem depressive but it was necessary. Being an entrepreneur means you need to take risks in different ideas in order to make your dream grow. Your risks could be in advertising, marketing ideas, packaging, delivery methods, place of operations, times of operations and so many different ideas but in the end you might win or lose. When you lose it is not a loss but a form of elimination of what does not work.

8. Fast Learners

Successful entrepreneurs are fast learners, they quickly learn what works and what does not work. If you learn slow you will die quick in business. Life is always in progress and if you do not progress, progress will bury you. Learning is about understanding what works and what does not work. In the world of business, profit is the difference between understanding your failures and your wins. In the absence of learning innovation is limited.

9. Planners for Business Models

You cannot succeed as an entrepreneur until you can plan ahead  for the business to succeed. Entrepreneurs are planners by nature and a successful entrepreneur is always restless because they are always planning for success. I learned that the economy is a dynamic place in which the market can change anytime, even whilst you are still sleeping, if you don’t plan you might be left behind by a changing economy.

10. Hardworking

Finally for this article, a successful entrepreneur is a hard working person. You work hard, sleep less and continue to work throughout different weather patterns. Who you are is a result of the work you put into your life. Your work is an investment into the value that you will create in your life. The harder you work towards the vision the greater the chances of you finding your success. In working hard if you are adhering to the other characteristics mentioned in this article that is where the smartness come in. The more you embody the characteristics mentioned in this article the more your hard work becomes smart hard work.