Entrepreneurs Have Common Traits
Studies show that entrepreneurs share common traits that motivate them to start new businesses. As VOA’s Barry Wood reports, successful entrepreneurs are often motivated by more than financial gain, and many have overcome considerable adversity.
For 35 years, British entrepreneur Richard Branson has been building his Virgin brand into a global power house. It has made him one of the world’s richest men. Yet, as a child, Branson had dyslexia, a learning disability. He never attended university, but he was motivated to succeed.
“In school, I would look at some of these exams and completely blank out on them. And I actually left school at 15 to go out into the world and try to make an honest living,” he said.
As a teenager, Branson had two failed business ventures. But he has since started dozens of successful businesses.In India, Sunil Mittal overcame adversity of a different sort. “I grew up in a very socialistic-rooted India,” he said. “We saw the evolution of the Soviet [economic] model coming into India in a very dramatic manner.”
Mittal says the end of central planning after 1992 allowed his Bharti Group to evolve into India’s second largest corporation. “With $35 million that I could access, we went on to build India’s largest telecom company,” he said. Today, Bharti Airtel has 30,000 employees.
Brent Goldfarb, a business professor at the University of Maryland, says all kinds of people strive to be entrepreneurs with different motivations, some to be on their own, others to be rich.
“The fact of the matter is that most entrepreneurs do not get rich. In fact, most entrepreneurs earn less than if they were working for someone else,” said Goldfarb.
Photo by jana_koll.
No comments yet.
Leave a Reply