HAVING been an entrepreneur most of
my life, yes, even now as a newspa
per columnist and writer I’m one, because what I write has to be sellable, succulent, and sensational to my readers, but coming back to the topic, what is the power this wonderful adrenalin seeking addiction has?
And addiction it is, because once the taste of this adventure of entrepreneurship enters one’s blood it remains forever, only getting more passionate with each success, which makes passion the first power that one needs to seek for and finally invest as part of every venture.
The power of passion! One can hardly understate its power. Quite often it’s the enthusiastic entrepreneur with a lesser product who gets his sale than one filled with knowledge but unable to inject passion in it. It doesn’t take long to spot a businessman from a planeload of people leaving an airport, as his gait, his body language, all spell his zest to get on with the deal and win.
And winning becomes his goal, and the ultimate aphrodisiac to this businessman or woman, successful novelist, sportsperson, anyone, who thinks of his life as an enterprise in which he or she comes out a winner! What a powerful thrill there is in winning a deal. Very often to an entrepreneur, it’s not the money that becomes a powerful force but the win, and the euphoric feeling it brings!
We might criticize Trump, but you can see a wolf in the lambskin of an entrepreneur at work as he crafts and bullies and brokers a deal. What a powerful feeling he must be having when he knows he’s winning a negotiation with Kim, smoothening ties with Putin and retaliating blow for blow with China!
But with winning, comes losing, and even as an entrepreneur plummets from fancy heights to the abyss of nothingness, a true blooded one will grin with anticipation, because it’s now the power to bounce back that’s going to come into play.
The power to get up from his fall, look casually at his empty bank balance, the ability to smile as merry weather friends walk away, and the knowledge that he or she has the capability, the capacity and the tenacity to be able to, like an acrobat on a trampoline, bounce back and reach even higher heights than before. Yes, these are the powers of entrepreneurship, and very often I look at those venturing into business and tell them, “Hold your dreams secure, but leave your fantasies aside!”.
If you have passion in what you are venturing to do, if you have in you the joy of being a winner, and in that, the capacity to lose and rise again, then that’s the power that will make you an entrepreneur as great as Bill Gates, Roger Federer, or Rowling! More power to such as us, as we now learn to bounce back, however much we’ve been hit by the wicked Corona..!