The best advice that any person can use at the beginning of his life is to seize opportunities and walk the path to success from the beginning. Whoever has the qualities and skills of a successful entrepreneur and constantly develops them will be able to achieve the utmost of his dreams and benefit the society around him.
If you have an idea, talent, or goal you aspire to reach, start today by learning about your skills and how to become a successful entrepreneur.
Who is an entrepreneur?
The lexical terminology of an entrepreneur is the one who leads his people and illuminates the way for them. The entrepreneur is the one who creates a new idea or product that helps others, enlightens their lives, and guides them in order to succeed.
The qualities and skills of a successful entrepreneur vary between personal qualities and technical skills that he uses to build and develop his own project and make profits through it. These qualities also help him create new business opportunities for those around him and improve the economy in general as the business grows.
The personality of the entrepreneur is not only related to business studies, but rather it is a mixture of psychological, mental, philosophical, social and economic factors, some of which can be mentioned as follows:
Personality traits of successful entrepreneurs
- Taking risk and going out of comfort zone
Creative entrepreneurs do not rely on traditional tools to accomplish tasks, but they try to find the shortest path that leads to the best results, even if these tools are new and have not been used before.
Egyptian entrepreneur Akram Marawan is considered as one of the most risk-taking people. Indeed, before he started the launch of his startup, he was working at P&G as a successful and influential department manager, but he decided to take the risk of resigning in order to devote himself to his iCareer project, where he is working on equipping Young people with the necessary skills to be ready for the labor market. It was a necessary and successful risk as his company paid off and developed in the way Akram had hoped.
- Creativity, change, and problem solving
“Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something”
~ Steve Jobs
The world has millions of projects and ideas in many fields, but the real entrepreneur is the one who creates new ideas or applies traditional ideas in innovative ways and methods.
You can learn about how to find innovative solutions from successful entrepreneurs from Libya in particular and the Middle East in general in the third webinar of the Derayah Entrepreneurship Initiative.
- Constant search and curiosity
While taking risks and going out of the ordinary, remember the quote of the Egyptian entrepreneur, Dr.Ihab Fekry, "Study Reality Well Before Rebelling Against It"; An entrepreneur does not deviate from the ordinary just to appear different, but he studies reality and makes a lot of researches before taking the risks of using new methods.
Don't stop asking questions, and don't get tired of looking for answers, curiosity is what keeps us alive and will put you on the right path to be a successful entrepreneur.
- The Ability to lead and plan
Among the 6 thinking hats invented by Edward de Bono, the entrepreneur needs to wear the blue hat that represents the holistic thinking style, which is the style that manages, sets the agenda, plans, arranges and organizes necessary and unnecessary operations. The work of the blue hat - and the entrepreneur - is similar to the theatre director who decides the roles of the actors and the date of their entry and exit. He is also concerned with the lighting, its colours and intensity, as well as the clothes and decoration, as he is the leader and the planner.
Becoming a leader is not easy, you are the one who makes the decisions and you bear the consequences or reap the fruits. But in the end, no one can become a better leader than the owner of the idea itself. The entrepreneur is the owner of the idea that he is trying to draw on the ground, as he is the only one who can make decisions about his startup and how to manage and develop it.
No one can succeed alone, the entrepreneur needs a circle of relationships around him so that he can complete what he lacks in terms of skills and keep every part of his project under control.
For example, if you are interested in Marketing and found a start-up advertising agency, you should be a team of designers, writers, photographers, video editors, and account managers so that you can handle the Marketing for different companies and can benefit from the capacities of everyone in the team.
- Passion and sense of initiative
An entrepreneur feels that he has a mission to perform and a change that he must make in the world, so he tries to use his potential to make the world better and more comfortable for humanity. The entrepreneur who is passionate about programming tries to build an application that makes people’s lives easier, or the entrepreneur who cares about the environment will work to create a company that helps people find environmentally friendly solutions for their daily lives.
- Recognition of the available opportunities
The entrepreneur knows the resources available to him to take advantage of them, as well as the needs of the market so that he can adequately fulfil them. Thus, usually, before starting his business, the entrepreneur looks for various programs that help him, participates in workshops, seminars and competitions, and gets acquainted with the various services such as those provided by the Derayah Entrepreneurship Initiative.
You can find out about the opportunities available in Libya privately when you attend the second webinar on Wednesday, July 21, 2023.
One of the most important skills of a successful entrepreneur is the ability to make difficult decisions. Although the entrepreneur is fully aware that his decisions may be right or wrong, he, in any case, studies the reality around him and through the data provided, takes the final decision accordingly.
- Determination and ambition
Finally, what most distinguishes an entrepreneur is his determination. Determination is what keeps a person able to overcome challenges.
In fact, despite the difficulties that Muhammad faced as a Palestinian refugee in Brazil, he did not lose his determination and ambition to establish Majaz Restaurant, which has become a reference in the Palestinian kitchen, and even with the emergence of the Corona pandemic, Muhammad did not lose his ambition, but rather worked to deliver food to homes and continued to develop his project with his team of ambitious Palestinian, Syrian and Senegalese refugees.
Are there conditions to become an entrepreneur?
Even if a successful entrepreneur should have personal skills that distinguish him, anyone can become an entrepreneur without conditions. An entrepreneur can be:
- A man or a woman
- A young or an old person
- Residents or immigrants or refugees
- Persons with disabilities
- Persons who finance their own projects or who are looking for investors
Are you a future entrepreneur?
To measure your potential to become a future entrepreneur, test yourself on the different skills of a successful entrepreneur and find out your inner passion.
Test Yourself Now
In conclusion, it must be mentioned that the qualities of a successful entrepreneur are acquired and developable. No one is born an entrepreneur but rather learns, thinks, and improves his skills until he reaches the point of putting his entrepreneurial ideas into practice. And you can acquire entrepreneurial skills through the events and activities of Deraya For Entrepreneurship Initiative, as the initiative offers webinars, workshops, and competitions through Startup Weekends and Hackathons, with the aim of providing young people in Libya with what they need to start launching their startups.
