Ballsy. Bubbly. Inventive. Energetic. Resourceful. Dynamic. Daring. Fierce. Focused. Gregarious. Free spirit. Rule breaker. Early adopter. Solo artist. Multi-faceted. Creative. Front-line warrior. Disrupter. And just plain different. After I asked readers to describe an entrepreneur, these are a sample of the nouns and adjectives tweeted or e-mailed to me in response.
I’ve faced a lot of entrepreneurs lately, not least those I met leading up to and at the award event for the 2009 Utah Student 25. Utah CEO was a media sponsor of this inaugural competition, which as the name implies highlighted student entrepreneurs (for a full description including eligibility, see page 34). Never mind the youth of the applicants, the presumed inexperience, the need to balance classes with business meetings — they all are worthy of the descriptors I outlined above. I left the November 3 awards event energized and inspired to infuse my life with the entrepreneurial spirit wherever I could.
I’m still working at it. An article in Inc. magazine moved me to start reading Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, the masterpiece the article’s writer claims is “the favorite … of countless entrepreneurs.” I’d been meaning to read it for years. And just now in the mail I received a review copy of American Entrepreneur: The Fascinating Stories of the People Who Defined Business in the United States by Larry Schweikart and Lynne Pierson Doti. It’s next on my reading list.
I’ll tell you what I’ve learned so far. You have to dig deep sometimes to find the energy, the drive, to get things done. And in order to get things done, you must stop complaining about how things aren’t as they ought to be.
“It is what it is” is a phrase I hear — and use — almost daily. Perhaps it’s borne of the recession, the resigned mantra of weary souls just trying to solider through this economy. But I’m willing to bet it’s a statement you’d never hear from an entrepreneur.
What can we learn from that?
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