Obsessed with Success

The Driving Force of the Entrepreneurial Spirit

When most people look at success driven entrepreneurs, they often shake their heads in wonder. They often cannot understand where these people get their energy. How can they work 18 to 20 hour days, when we are lucky to make it through 8?

The answer is really quite simple. Entrepreneurs have a need to be successful that is as strong as their need to eat and breathe. They literally live their business, spending every waking hour of the day with that business in mind. Entrepreneurs look at every situation in their lives in view of how it can be used to further their goals.

Surprisingly, intelligence often has little to do with entrepreneurial success or failure. It's a known and documented fact that those of average intelligence are often more successful as entrepreneurs. One theory is that those who have always had to work harder for what they got, be it grades or jobs, have developed a hunger and a stronger work ethic. They know how to set and achieve goals, which is an essential element of entrepreneurial success.

Successful entrepreneurs are business centric, meaning they are willing to put aside their own personal needs for the needs of the business. They recognize a need before anyone else even knows it exists. They are future thinkers, not getting bogged down in the day to day, but always looking forward. They are the ones who invented the wheel when there wasn't yet a use for it.

Entrepreneurs are willing to sacrifice almost anything to get initial working capital. Steve Jobs sold his Volkswagen van to get half of the initial $1300 needed to start Apple Computer. Once an entrepreneur has an idea in mind, no legal endeavor is beneath them to raise capital. Vance Smith, of the up and coming Blacksheep Productions in Chicago, raised money for his first two stage productions by asking for donations of items to sell in yard sales.

Unfortunately, one downside to this blind ambition is the damage done to interpersonal relationships. Many a personal or business relationship has died due to this single-mindedness, and seeming willingness to ignore the needs of even those closest to them to achieve their goals. The entrepreneur may regard relationships as expendable, or only a means to an end. A spouse may learn that the other has racked up a huge credit card bill, or placed a large second mortgage on their home, endangering the very roof over their heads. A business partner may find themselves out in the street with nothing, due to underhanded dealings within the business. Nothing and no one is sacred, and no sacrifice too great, for some of those obsessed with success.

Whatever the cause and effect of the obsessive hunger that drives entrepreneurs, there is one fact that remains. Without them, we would not have many of the greatest inventions of our time. We would not be sitting in our homes reading this article on a personal computer. There would be no internet. There would be no cell phones. There would be no video games. It is not the creative genius that makes a product successful. There are thousands of patents registered every year all over the world, but without the entrepreneurial drive that puts them into the public eye and makes the consumer want them, they would likely sit in someone's closet or garage forever, and we would never know what we missed.