The Only Two Traits You Need for Success as an Entrepreneur

We’ve been doing some research about the history of the term “entrepreneur.” And we uncovered an interesting fact.

At least we think so; we hope you do too!

Origins of entrepreneur

According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, “entrepreneur” originates in the French language. It is the “agent noun” for “entreprendre”, which means undertake.

So entrepreneurs are undertakers? We weren’t sure we liked that.

So we did some more research. Thanks to The Word Detective, we learned that “undertaker” was used more generally until late in the 17^th century (e.g. contractors).

At that time, funeral directors began using the term to describe their occupation. It turned out that was the death (we couldn’t resist!) of the word for everyone else.

However, to this day, the primary definition of “undertaker” – according to Merriam-Webster – is “one that undertakes: one that takes the risk and management of business: entrepreneur”.

Kind of interesting, eh? But we didn’t really know what to say about it until we saw this…

The second trait

We recently listened to a conversation between Bob Burg and Josh Hinds – two of our favorite people. They chatted about Josh’s fantastic book, It’s Your Life – Live Big. (Yes, we’ve teased Josh about spelling “BIGG” wrong!)

In the title to his post, Bob called Josh an “overcomer.” It’s one great way to describe Josh. He has Tourette’s syndrome. But he didn’t let that slow him down. Not only is he an author, he is an entrepreneur and speaker!

One word – overcomer. Suddenly the scales fell off the eyes. The world was clear again.

BIGG success comes second

You can be an entrepreneur with just the first trait. You can be an undertaker.

But BIGG success as an entrepreneur comes from the second one – you have to be an overcomer.

However, you won’t have anything to overcome if you never undertake!

It’s the two together that pack the punch.

Undertake. Overcome. It’s all you need to do to be a BIGG success!

What have you overcome? How did you do it?

Image in this post from stock.xchng