Humility Goes Before Enterpreneural Success

A few days ago, I had a chat with a highly respectable personality in business and I had the opportunity to pick up a few points on the requirements for a successful adventure into enterpreneurship. I would be sharing one of these with you as I consider it a major trait that determines whether you are enterpreneur potential or not.

Humility. If you want to be a succesful enterpreneur, you need to humble. In other words, check your arrogance. This is particularly important because it appears to be in conflict with another major requirements for enterpreurship success, confidence - which I will discuss in a future post, and because it is not a topic that is taught in MBA classes. This is strictly 'grit from the streets'.

Enterpreneurs, generally, are high flyers. Not necessarily in terms of academics or skills or talents, but in terms of the ability to visualize - to see where others are only looking - and take advantage of that. This quality comes with a bit of self assurance and in many cases arrogance. This is what makes the topic of humility very important to enterpreneurs.

It is impossible to succeed as an enterpreneur, especially with a start-up, without inputs and aid from many stakeholders. These stakeholders could be actual/potential clients, partners, suppliers, employees, regulatory bodies, government agencies etc. A successful enterpreneur must have a high level of humility to appeal to the good nature of these persons/groups/entities in order to achieve set objectives.

You may be wondering, does he want me to become a 'kiss ass' all in the name of becoming a successful enterpreneur? Not necessarily in that light, but you would have to display a high level of humility in order to get people to respond to your projects so you can ultimately achieve set objectives.

If you find this difficult to do, it is only normal. Afterall, it is against human nature to belittle oneself before others. However, it is only the fews ones who can 'live a few years of their lives like most people won't, so that they can spend the rest of their life like most people can't!' that would succeed as enterpreneurs.

I will continue to elaborate on the traits that would help you determine if you would be a successful enterpreneur or not in subsequent post. Until then, try humility...it works!