What are the main success factors that enable an entrepreneur to achieve business success? A lot of experts and institutions have studied and analyzed this topic. It’s probable that we can’t hope to find someone who possesses every quality necessary to succeed as an entrepreneur. However, combining the most crucial elements might help you create and run a profitable company.

Based on prior research, which covered more than a hundred entrepreneurs, the essential success factors for entrepreneurs or traits of a successful entrepreneur are described below.

The following are the most important essential success criteria that can help an entrepreneur succeed:

1. Willingness to take action is a key success factor.

The willingness to take an entrepreneurial action is the first and most important factor for “would-be” and current entrepreneurs. All other entrepreneurial key success factors are not necessary if you are a person who is afraid to take real action. Actions are something that can lead you to success. Without actions, you can’t expect to become a successful business owner. Sorry, it is a fact!

2. Entrepreneurial knowledge.

Entrepreneurs must have superior entrepreneurial knowledge about specific business issues for the business they have started. Your knowledge will increase your business’s potential energy and, in large part, contribute to your company’s success.

You need to learn new things. Try new things. Incorporate the new knowledge inside your daily operations. Only in such a way can you become a successful entrepreneur.

3. Entrepreneurial creativity as a key success factor.

You must be a creative person if you want to be unique enough. With the power of creativity and continuous improvement in your business, you will become close to success. Creativity will increase your business’s potential energy, bringing many possibilities for your company.

4. Entrepreneurial skills.

Each entrepreneur and business will need different entrepreneurial skills that, in some cases, can be crucial to the success of their companies.

If you have the knowledge but you don’t have skills that you can cover only by implementing what you have learned, you can’t expect that you will come to success. As you can see, you will have skills if you take action or implement everything that you have learned somehow.

5. Entrepreneurial intelligence.

You must be intelligent to manage all possible situations and solve the most complex problems that will be the most consistent thing in your business life. Your intelligence will also bring uniqueness to your company because competitors can’t copy it easily.

6. Patience is a key success factor.

You must be patient and ready to continue even if you lose the first battle. It is important because the war is still not finished. This is only the beginning of your journey as an entrepreneur. You need to understand that your entrepreneurial journey isn’t an easy journey from A to B.

7. Persistence.

Persistence is simply a refusal to give up on something or the ability to keep your actions against your personal feelings that you’re not ready for these actions. Feelings and motivation didn’t produce results. The action is something that will provide the results you want to achieve. So, remove the feelings that pulled you back, and with your full power, continue on your journey.

8. The ability for teamwork.

Nobody can achieve anything alone, so this is true for you as an entrepreneur. You are not a “Superman.” As an entrepreneur, you must be a team player for your own and your business’s success.

9. Risk-taking, but a calculated risk.

One of the most critical questions is: Are entrepreneurs taking enough risk? Yes, each business startup is, at some level, risky. However, more important is how a successful entrepreneur takes a risk. The word calculated risk is the most appropriate word for this characteristic. You need to use risk management principles if you want to succeed.

10. Self-confidence is a key success factor.

Self-confidence is a significant and key success factor for entrepreneurs. Nobody will become an entrepreneur if he doesn’t have self-confidence, primarily related to starting and managing his own business.

Read Also: What Are Online Opportunities For Entrepreneurship?

How can you expect customers to believe you if you are not a self-confident person who believes in yourself? Insecurity is your biggest enemy.

11. Having enough experience.

Sometimes experience is in a category not so required as a factor, but it will increase your business potential energy. As an entrepreneur, you must employ all present and previous experience in the business you are building.

12. Great talent.

Talent is something inborn in an entrepreneur. But, sometimes talent is something that can be easily replaced with knowledge and skills. So, it is crucial, but it cannot guarantee success if you don’t add knowledge and skills.

13. Honesty.

Honesty is vital in every case. But sometimes, honesty, being real, can be the most significant enemy of an entrepreneur in some complex conditions.

14. Connections.

More connection means more possibilities for building a successful business. Building connections through networking can help you to become a successful entrepreneur.

15. Luck.

You might not believe in luck to achieve some success, but still, some people think that they were lucky enough to build a successful business.

Luck is a psychological factor. Some people can say that they aren’t lucky people. And indeed, some “lucky people” just accidentally found themselves in the right place at the right time with the right idea. However, it is a small percentage and cannot be included as a serious factor for success.

The key success factors on this list are sorted according to their importance to your success as an entrepreneur. So, the most important critical success factor here is your ability to take action.

What 8 Characteristics do Successful Entrepreneurs Have?

It takes a lot of work to launch a business. Anyone who claims otherwise is either lying or has never actually begun one. The hours are long, the sacrifices are great, and there seems to be no end to the problems and difficulties you face every day. Your company could collapse on you more quickly than it did if you lack the fortitude to handle these situations.

Undoubtedly, not everyone is suited for entrepreneurship. But how can you tell if it’s right for you? Because you’ll be performing most of the work upfront by yourself, you should start by asking yourself what it takes to be a leader. You won’t likely be able to guide your company and future workers through development and success if you can’t guide yourself through startup.

Stop reading now and return to your comfortable desk job if you only enjoy a few hours of actual work each day and spend the rest of the time pretending to be busy or relaxing at the water cooler to catch up on TV talk. You may also enjoy a modest but reliable paycheck and benefits.

Read on, friend, for you have some of what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur if you’re looking for a challenge fraught with risk but with a great potential payoff both financially and morally.

Successful businesspeople like Henry Ford and Steve Jobs have traits in common. Do you share at least half of these traits to see how you compare to these successful entrepreneurs?

1. Strong leadership qualities
Leaders are born, not made. Do you find yourself being the go-to person most of the time? Do you find people asking your opinion or to help guide or make decisions for them? Have you been in management roles throughout your career? A leader is someone who values the goal over any unpleasantness the work it takes to get there may bring. But a leader is more than just tenacious.

A leader has strong communication skills and the ability to amass a team of people toward a common goal in a way that the entire team is motivated and works effectively to get there as a team. A leader earns the trust and respect of his team by demonstrating positive work qualities and confidence, and then fostering an environment that proliferates these values throughout the team. A leader who nobody will follow is not a leader of anything at all.

2. Highly self-motivated
You probably know from knowing even a little bit about some of the most famous business entrepreneurs in history that leaders are typically pretty intense personalities. Nobody makes progress by sitting back and waiting for it to find them. Successful people go out into the world and invoke change through their actions. Typically, leaders enjoy challenges and will work tirelessly to solve problems that confront them. They adapt well to changing situations without unraveling and are typically experts in helping their teams change with them by motivating them toward new goals and opportunities.

Often you will learn that successful entrepreneurs are driven by a more complete vision or goal than simply the task at hand and are able to think on a more universal level in that regard. They are also often very passionate about their ideas that drive toward these ultimate goals and are notoriously difficult to steer off the course.

3. Strong sense of basic ethics and integrity
Business is sustainable because there is a common, understood code of ethics universally that underpins the very fabric upon which commerce is conducted. While cheaters and thieves may win in the short term, they invariably lose out in the long run.

You will find that successful, sustainable business people maintain the highest standards of integrity because, at the end of the day, if you cannot prove yourself a credible business person and nobody will do business with you, you are out of business. With importance in working with clients or leading a team, effective leaders admit to any error made and offer solutions to correct rather than lie about, blame others for, or dwell on the problem itself.

4. Willingness to fail
Successful entrepreneurs are risk-takers who have all gotten over one very significant hurdle:  they are not afraid of failure.  That’s not to say that they rush in with reckless abandon.  In fact, entrepreneurs are often successful because they are calculating and able to make the best decisions in even the worst of cases. 

However, they also accept that, even if they make the best decision possible, things don’t always go according to plan and may fail anyhow. If you’ve heard the old adage, “Nothing ventured, nothing gained,” that’s exactly what it’s saying: do not be afraid to fail, put it out there, and give it your best shot.  Again, there’s not one successful entrepreneur out there sitting on his couch asking, “What if?”

5. Serial innovators
Entrepreneurs are almost defined by their drive to constantly develop new ideas and improve on existing processes. In fact, that’s how most of them got into business in the first place. Successful people welcome change and often depend on it to improve their effectiveness as leaders and ultimately the success of their businesses as many business concepts rely on improving products, services and processes in order to win business.

6. Know what you don’t know
While successful entrepreneurs are typically strong personalities overall, the best have learned that there’s always a lesson to be learned. They are rarely afraid to ask questions when it means the answers will provide them insight they can then leverage to effect. Successful entrepreneurs are confident, but not egotistical to the point that their bull-headedness is a weakness that continually prohibits them from seeing a bigger picture and ultimately making the best decisions for the business.

7. Competitive spirit
Entrepreneurs enjoy a challenge and they like to win.  They would have to since starting a business is pretty much one of the biggest challenges a person can take on in their lifetime. In business, it’s a constant war with competition to win business and grow market share. It’s also a personal challenge to use all of this to focus inward and grow a business from nothing into a powerhouse that either makes a lot of money or is so effective that it is sold or acquired for a profit as well.

8. Understand the value of a strong peer network
In almost every case, entrepreneurs never get to success alone. The best understanding it takes a network of contacts, business partners, financial partners, peers and resources to succeed. Effective people nurture these relationships and surround themselves with people who can help make them more effective. Any good leader is only as good as those who support him.