Is Entrepreneurship in your blood?

Are you born an entrepreneur? Salesman, a doctor, painter, violinist, or an astronaut? Most would probably agree that you are born with the potential to do anything. Talent is not given but acquired and a good teacher/mentor/book or incident can awaken any talent, path, or desire inside you.  I often think about this.  How do we come across our passion, our call, what we love doing? As I was reading the book ‘Do No Harm’ by Henry Marsh, I read how he changed his path from “Literature” to taking a sabbatical, teaching English in Africa, going to writing poems while working as a hospital doorman, which finally led to his desire to become a doctor. Even then he did not know he wanted to become a brain surgeon. He simply felt the desire to help people through that profession and it was not until another 10 years or so after he started the medical career that he set forth to become one of the leading brain surgeons in the UK if not the world.

As I lay awake this morning in bed, I started thinking about what makes one person a real entrepreneur or not.   Last week, I had spoken to the founder of one of the competitors to Urbytus. We spoke about joining forces.  We both agreed that the sector has to change and that there is a lot happening now, the meeting went well and we decided to continue with another meeting which would have been yesterday.  However, an hour before the meeting he sent me a WhatsApp saying that he had thought about it and although he agreed that the sector has to change and sooner or later this would happen, he preferred to do something that would not be a fight or a battle to change something.  I wrote back “Thank you for giving it time to think and your honest answer. Right now I believe in it more than ever before, so I am going to continue the fight. The bigger the fight the bigger the win.”

I don’t think there is anything in particular that makes one an entrepreneur or not, but I would say that one of the traits I have to come to cherish and look for when I work with entrepreneurs and look for in cofounders is that instinct to fight for your dream.  I think this is a unique instinct that differentiates those who just want a job and a regular salary from those who dream big and would do what is necessary to achieve that dream.