Paul Brian
Not everybody has the entrepreneurial spirit or a desire to innovate and build businesses.
But for those who do, that desire is strong and persistent.
Here’s how to tell if you have an entrepreneurial spirit burning inside you.
1) You’re highly perceptive
Many of the best businesses started with a simple question:
What do people need?
By answering this question in new, more effective and transformational ways, entrepreneurs became millionaires and visionaries.
This is why the first of the signs you have a truly entrepreneurial spirit is that you are highly perceptive.
2) You’re creative and innovative
The next key indicator that you have an inner entrepreneur just waiting to come out is that you’re highly creative.
You constantly have new ideas and new projects on the go, and you love meeting other people who are also passionate about their ideas.
You don’t just want to talk, you want to discuss specifics and practicalities.
You want to bring your ideas out into the real world and possibly turn them into money-making ventures.
This is the mark of a true entrepreneur:
You are deeply creative and innovative, but you’re also able to tie these ideas and this passion into real-world ventures and business ideas.
3) You think outside the box
An entrepreneur thinks outside the box and loves approaching typical ideas and concepts from new angles.
Whether it’s a new way to do taxis (hi, Uber!) or a new form of payments (hi, Stripe, hi, Wise!) the entrepreneur doesn’t just copy-paste:
He or she thinks outside the box, building on great ideas from the past and making them exponentially better and more flexible.
4) You find joy in working
Next up in the veritable signs of an entrepreneurial spirit is that you actually enjoy working.
This isn’t one of those things where you psyche yourself up into enjoying work or have some kind of long-term vision that makes work tolerable.
It’s where you genuinely love working.
It’s where going on vacation almost feels like a punishment because it’s a separation from doing the work that means absolutely everything for you.
The entrepreneur doesn’t work hard and innovate out of necessity.
He or she does it because of a true and abiding love for working hard and progressing in business.
5) Your work is aligned with your purpose
Working hard is one thing, and it’s certainly necessary.
But hard work is not sufficient for entrepreneurship and success in business.
You also have to be pursuing progress in a job or industry that’s aligned with your purpose.
The matter of finding your purpose is another matter.
Suffice it to say that your purpose isn’t random and it’s true when you hear the idiom that your calling is something you’d do even if you didn’t get paid.
No truer statement has ever been spoken.
6) You love learning from others in your industry
The next of the key signs you’re an entrepreneur at heart is that you love learning from people in your chosen industry.
You’re endlessly curious and open to receiving new insights and information about the fields you want to enter.
You don’t consider any of this a waste of time, even if one ends up being an area you don’t enter.
If somebody is opening up to your about their business and their industry, you’re listening.
If it doesn’t connect directly to what you want to work in, no problem. Chances are it lines up indirectly with something you’re interested in.
7) You don’t give up easily
There are many great ideas and inspirations which occur to many people.
The dividing line between and entrepreneur and a fake tends to happen around the point where the rubber meets the road.
Simply put, the fake tends to give up and play the victim, while the entrepreneur doesn’t give up.
History is full of people who’ve given up, or more accurately it has forgotten about them.
But those who keep going are inscribed in black and white on the pages of our most important dates and events.
The reason is that what they did actually mattered. The businesses they started made a difference.
Their ideas blazed a new trail.
That matters.
8) You take lessons from failure
The next of the key indicators that you have an entrepreneurial spirit is that you take lessons from failure.
When things don’t work out how you planned, you see what you can learn from what happened.
Maybe there’s nothing; maybe you didn’t reach your goals due to pure bad luck or an unforeseen circumstance.
But more often than not there is something you can learn from what went wrong.
It may lead to trying again in a different way or planning a new entrepreneurial venture.
But either way you don’t take failure personally. You stop and try again.
9) You see opportunities where others see nothing
It’s not only failure that provides inspiration and lessons to you if you’re an entrepreneur.
It’s also nothing.
You look at an empty street downtown and see a potential thriving commercial district.
You look at your old toothbrush in the garbage and have a brilliant new idea for how to design and market toothbrushes online.
You see opportunities where others see nothing.
Your perceptiveness and creativity can find a new idea in the simplest of things, which is part of why you come up with so many brilliant new projects and ventures.
10) Your ego isn’t tied to your vision
When you have an entrepreneurial mindset it’s almost second nature to see new opportunities and ways to create and shape your own business.
You love setting your own schedule and taking on big challenges in pursuit of bold objectives and ideas.
But the key thing is that your ego isn’t tied to your vision.
You want to succeed badly. Of course you do.
But you don’t feel that it’s about you being great or horrible based on how your business does.
It’s about starting and running a business, even in some cases a business you may have taken over from others.
Your ego isn’t tied to it, which means you learn lessons from failure and enjoy success with modesty and grace.
Tapping into your entrepreneurial side
If you have an entrepreneurial side, then tapping into it is a matter of putting ideas into action.
You may find that partnering up is the best way to do this, or you may elect to prioritize your ideas that have the greatest potential or get you the most excited.
Being an entrepreneur is exciting!
You are a creator who is helping to build a new world, and your ideas have the impact to shape the future.
