Entrepreneurs are Dreamers that Become Doers

Original post in CG Magazine on August 1, 2014 at 1:28 am

It is sometimes glorified that dropping out of school to launch a startup is the right thing to do, a la Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates. These individuals are all innovators — the doers, the once daydreamers, the visioneers — who predict future social habits and trends to build things that fulfill human needs by revolutionizing how we interact and think on a daily basis. These individuals are entrepreneurs and what made them so successful was not their opposition to continuing education, but instead was their ability and their willpower to take advantage of the opportunities presented to them.

There have been plenty of articles written and studies conducted that try to pin down what really makes an entrepreneur so special. To tell you the truth, we may never truly understand what makes an entrepreneur so different, and I’m not going to try to convince you that I know the secret sauce. I will tell you, however, that there are very common ingredients that make up some very successful entrepreneurs.

They revolt against conformity

Successful entrepreneurs don’t usually care much for social convention. They have little patience for conformity. They don’t want to hear how things are done, have been done, or should be done. They do things their way. The basic steps to becoming a successful entrepreneur lie not in aiming at billions, it’s not even about trying to be different. It lies in getting satisfaction from the work – which ultimately makes them different from everyone else.

“Here’s one thing I know for sure. They’re each one of a kind. The real deal. They don’t try to be unique. They just are. And they don’t try to be like someone else, either. They know that wearing a black mock turtleneck, jeans, and sneakers doesn’t make you Steve Jobs.”

– Steve Tobak, Consultant and Entrepreneurship Evangelist

They use their smarts

Entrepreneurs are characterized by high intelligence, high self-esteem, and a higher level of risky, aggressive, and even illicit behavior as adolescents. When you link high intelligence with a tendency towards illicit behavior or breaking the rules, there’s an almost 60% greater chance of becoming an entrepreneur.

“I always did something I was a little not ready to do. I think that’s how you grow. When there’s that moment of ‘Wow, I’m not really sure I can do this,’ and you push through those moments, that’s when you have a breakthrough.”

― Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo!

They are unrelenting doers

To me, a key ingredient in the making of an entrepreneur is their motivation to go for it despite the odds and conventional wisdom. An entrepreneur and friend of mine is well-known in the community for coordinating a widespread jelly – a casual working habitat where interesting people come to talk, collaborate, and bounce ideas off each other. It was the first in his community from which came an entire jelly revolution in the growing Las Vegas tech scene.

“I had an idea and I just did it. And people remember that. If you have an idea, put yourself out there and just see what happens. Most of the time it will evolve into something much greater.”

― Dylan Bathurst, CEO and Co-founder of Rumgr

While it’s true that it is much harder to execute than dream; it’s the visions and dreams that inspire entrepreneurs to create and build. A world without dreamers and dreams would be dull and uninspiring. It’s been said that entrepreneurs are almost never intellectuals, that instead, they are imaginers and incorrigible optimists who believe that there is always a better way to do something. They are doers, not merely thinkers. Thinkers end up in a world of thought. Doers end up in a world of action.