As you might imagine I have the occasion to speak to lots of successful business people and spend much of my time trying to understand what attributes make for a successful entrepreneur.
One difference I see is how non-entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs approach education. The vast majority of my friends that have successful jobs working for large corporations or for the government, we’ll call then non-entrepreneurs, credit their success to college educations which they say helped launch them on their successful career trajectories.
By contrast, a much larger percentage of my friends that are entrepreneurs never finished college or say they never really used what they learned in college. I don’t mean to imply that entrepreneurs have not benefited from a college education. My entrepreneur friends simply view education differently.
To be more specific, entrepreneurs value the acquisition of specific kernels of knowledge over a general education. When asked, they are never at a loss to come up with a list of areas of interest they want to gain a greater understanding of or to share the latest topic they just researched. Another less obvious but tangential difference is related to how each group views success.
When I share my business story with non-entrepreneurs the questions I get most often are more related to “what did you DO to become successful”, as if it was a single event they could emulate that led to my business success.
By contrast, similar discussions with entrepreneurs tend to focus on investments in ourselves, such as how did you identify and acquire the knowledge that led to your successes? Non-entrepreneurs tend to focus on what they have to “do” to become successful, while entrepreneurs tend to focus on what they need to “be” to become successful.
