What Motivates an Entrepreneur?

A Booming Business? A Challenging Business? Revelling in Both Seems to be the Answer

Enjoy the business challenges and use your strengths every day.

Owning and operating a small business is not a ‘job’, it truly is a lifestyle. Ask anyone who operates their own company what drives them and you’ll receive a vast array of answers. A common thread in all of them, or at least I would hope, is that every entrepreneur that I know, revels in the challenges of today.

I recently heard an interview with a gentleman, who at 84 years of age, is still working everyday in his car dealership.

When asked why he didn’t just retire and sail into the sunset, he said, “When the car business is good, it’s the greatest thing in the world, and I couldn’t imagine doing anything else. When business is bad, I absolutely love the challenge of making it good again.”

I thought to myself – I couldn’t have said it better myself. I find that most entrepreneurs that I know share this same belief. When times are good in business, it’s the absolute best place to be. When times are bad, we seem to be driven by the challenge to make them good again. No matter how bad my days get, or how challenging business becomes, I truly couldn’t imagine doing anything else in the world.

Sound familiar? If so, then congratulations! You really are an entrepreneur and revel in the challenges of today. No matter what they are.  This is often called ‘intrinsic motivation’ and The Global Entrepreneurship Institute defines it as “the motivation to work on something because it is interesting, involving, exciting, satisfying, or personally challenging.”

Of course there are other reasons that we do what we do, but there’s no doubt it takes a special kind to revel in the challenges of the up and down owning a business can bring.

Do you revel in the challenges of today? I’d love to hear your feedback.

Places/Ideas on the Internet to checkout:

1. Ideablob - Attendees air their business ideas in front of a live audience of fellow participants in exchange for advice, feedback and connections

2. Sellsumers - A recession-induced need for cash, and an ever-growing infrastructure enabling individuals to act as (part-time) entrepreneurs, are fueling concepts that help ordinary consumers make money instead of just spending it.

3. The Brain of an Entrepreneur - As science unlocks more and more of your brain’s secrets, learn how harnessing the power of your greatest asset can create a more productive, more persuasive, more competitive business.

4. Minipreneurs - Increasingly, consumers are participants instead of passive audience members, and this mega-trend manifests itself in a variety of ways.

Andy