The Four Necessary Components to Becoming a Successful Entrepreneur

It seems that America has hit the tipping point of curiosity about entrepreneurs. Television shows like ABC’s “Shark Tank” and CNBC’s “The Profit” are raking in huge viewer numbers and fueling the nation’s infatuation with entrepreneurs and startups. This naturally leads most Americans to wonder, “Do I have what it takes to be an entrepreneur?”

Finding the answer to that question is not as simple as it may seem. It involves soul-searching, critically evaluating your strengths and weaknesses, understanding what you want in life, and knowing the basic components most entrepreneurs possess. As in all things, there certainly isn’t a cookie cutter entrepreneur, but there are four things that Danielle Tate, entrepreneur and author of Elegant Entrepreneur: The Female Founder’s Guide to Starting & Growing Your Own Company, believes are essential to becoming a successful entrepreneur:

Passion for your idea and the business you build around it is vital to your success as an entrepreneur. Great ideas are conceived by many, many people and go nowhere until someone passionate has the idea and pours their energy, intelligence, and resources into making that idea become a reality. Case in point: how many times have you seen a product or service and have kicked yourself because you or someone you know already thought of some version of it, but did nothing? To be truly successful you must not only have a good idea, you need to believe down to the fibers of your being that it is a good idea and that it must be built by you.

Vision, not to be confused with stupidity, is another essential component of entrepreneurs. It is a commonly held belief that entrepreneurs are willing to take greater risks than the average person. While there are large risks associated with building an idea into a business, successful entrepreneurs have the vision to see their steps to success. They don’t blindly spend their savings on a wish or a hope. They use a different lens than most to look at risk. Entrepreneurs have vetted their idea, studied their market, and mapped all of the steps necessary to build their product or service. They have calculated the risks involved and weighed it against the opportunity. While no one has a crystal ball and pivots happen frequently, vision is what sets entrepreneurs apart and sets them up for success.

Tenacity. There are so many times you will be told “no” and experience failure as you prove your idea, research your market’s receptiveness to your idea, and build your product or service. You will be pushed to your limits of creativity, energy, finances, and relationships. If you do not possess the internal motivation to do whatever it takes to make your idea succeed, you will not.

Humility is not always widely associated with entrepreneurs, but the serial entrepreneurs who continuously create earth-shatteringly successful startups are humble. One can only get so far on ego and good luck before the bottom drops out of your business. Having the ability to pinpoint what you do not know and the humility to ask for advice and help is what separates the good from the great in the world of entrepreneurs. Also, most successful entrepreneurs understand that they are not solely responsible for every success of their business and give credit to the team that supports them.

About the author

Danielle Tate is the founder and CEO of MissNowMrs.com, a multimillion dollar online name-change company. As a female founder in her 20s she noticed that few business guides offered step-by-step advice to smart but inexperienced entrepreneurial woman. This void inspired Danielle to author Elegant Entrepreneur: The Female Founders Guide to Starting & Growing Your First Company to help other women find their place and flourish within the entrepreneurial world. Danielle is an entrepreneur, wife, mother, Pilates devotee, and name-change expert in her spare time. She is a frequent media contributor and has been interviewed on FOX National News, NBC DC News, KTLA-TV Morning News, Better TV, WBFF-TV Fox News, WBKO-TV ABC News, WJXT-TV News, and KTVK-TV “Good Morning Arizona", Forbes, CNN, Fast Company and more.

ABOUT Elegant Entrepreneur

Across a decade of her career as an entrepreneur, Danielle Tate learned how to transform good ideas into successful businesses. At age 25 she bootstrapped MissNowMrs and grew it into a multimillion-dollar enterprise. As a young female founder, she noticed that few business guides offered step-by-step advice to smart but inexperienced women. Elegant Entrepreneur draws on Tate’s experience and on conversations with prominent entrepreneurs and top executives. She not only shows, in straightforward and accessible terms, how one can transform a rough concept into a lucrative business; she also gives readers a privileged peek into the entrepreneur lifestyle that allows business owners to take charge of their lives. Relevant both to women with no business background and to those in the process of developing a business, Elegant Entrepreneur offers key information and concepts from idea to exit. It discusses the early stages of evaluating an idea, understanding market demands, pitching ideas, building a team of partners and employees, launching, fundraising, marketing and growing a company, handling competition, and knowing when to sell.  Tate navigates complex business terrain with clarity, insight, and, yes, elegance. Readers are given the chance to see if entrepreneurship is right for them, and stand to gain the freedom, flexibility, and job satisfaction that comes with founding and running one’s own business.

Elegant Entrepreneur has been voted by Good Reads as the #1 Book for Personal Development for Entrepreneurs, the #1 Best Books for Entrepreneurs, and the #1 Non-Fiction Book for Women in their 20’s. 

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