Are Entrepreneurs Born or Made

It’s another age-old nature / nurture question – are entrepreneurs born or are they made? Can the essential skills be taught or do you have to learn from experience?

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There’s a great book by Richard Goossen called Entrepreneurial Excellence: Profit From the Best Ideas of the Experts. He’s lined up some of the greatest minds on entrepreneurship. He concludes that you can be taught some things but entrepreneuring is mostly learned by doing.

The science of entrepreneuring

For years now, colleges have been teaching their students the general principles of management. Colleges apply these principles primarily to managing large companies but the same basic tenets are relevant for entrepreneurs.

Lessons can also be taken away from people who have succeeded or failed in an entrepreneurial endeavor. You may not get the specifics, but you can come to understand the general principles that helped them reach BIGG success.

Finally, you can learn to differentiate between a good idea and a good opportunity. There are a lot of good ideas; there are relatively few good opportunities. You can be taught how to determine if your idea is not a good opportunity.

The art of entrepreneuring

However, nobody can teach you how to identify specific market niches and determine whether or not you can pursue them successfully. Experience is the only teacher of this valuable entrepreneurial trait.

You also have to learn how to transform your passion into a valuable tool than can be used to woo customers, employees, vendors, strategic partners, and financiers. This passion will also help you persevere when you face the inevitable obstacles along the way.

You also have to develop an innate belief in yourself. Self-confidence grows with education and experience, but you have to be able to draw deep within yourself as well as upon the support of others.

Entrepreneurship is part science and part art. Learn as much as you can about the science of entrepreneuring before you launch your business. The art is something you can only learn by dipping your toes in the water. That’s the start of BIGG success!

Thanks so much for sharing your time with us today.

Since we’re in the midst of the World Series, next time we’re going to look at some lessons we can learn from baseball about entrepreneuring. Please join us.

Until then, here’s to your BIGG success!

Direct link to The Bigg Success Show audio file:
http://media.libsyn.com/media/biggsuccess/00515-110409.mp3

(Image by Brittany G, CC 2.0)