Successful Entrepreneur Traits

One of the most-asked questions is "what are the traits of a successful entrepreneur?" This question has been asked many times. Below is my list, compiled from both other lists and my own personal experience. Of course, it's a Top-Ten List...

1. Leadership, especially the ability to inspire

2. Fast, good decision-making with limited information (but also willing to change wrong decisions)

3. Positive attitude (but still realistic)

4. Sales skills

5. Good communicator

6. Ability to handle defeat, and the word "no"

7. Creative thinking and out-of-the-box thinking (my #1)

8. Drive, fortitude and the will to succeed

9. Being intuitive and trusting your gut (my #2)

10. Jack-of-all-trades (or the ability to understand all aspects of business somewhat -- from sales, marketing, finance, operations, engineering, negotiating, legal, etc. etc.). Yes, you can hire these skills, but you still need to understand each discipline somewhat (this is the hardest skill set to acquire)

Just sayin'

Hi all. Thanks for reading my blog and using it as a Forum, as well as listening to my Entrepreneurship course podcasts. I'm up to lots of new ventures these days. Running 5 different companies these days - real estate, medical, a non-profit giving nutritional products to those in need, invested in some dance clubs in Miami, etc.

I'm also writing 2 novels, a poetry book with a great artist (Ron Oden), and a children's book.

At last count, the podcasts associated with this blog/course are over 600,000 downloads. Keep commenting -- but please avoid the SPAM.

Thanks,

Mark :)

My new Ventures

I'm involved in several new ventures. The most exciting for me is a Non-profit Foundation that I've started called The Nutra Foundation (www.nutrafoundation.org). We provide Free nutritional supplements to those in need who cannot afford these products.

Even those who don't qualify financially will be able to get up to 75% off retail price of supplements, and 100% of the profits stay WITHIN the Foundation to help those in need.

I'm applying all my FOR-profit entrepreneurial skills to a Non-profit foundation.

Why am I doing this? To help people -- that's it ;-)

Please pass the word around the Internet --

Intro Blog Post

This is the introductory blog post for Mark Juliano's audio course Entrepreneurship and Business Planning taught in conjunction with the live course at Carnegie Mellon University in the Masters in Information Systems Management (MISM) program. It is a business-school type class about the formation of companies. Topics and lectures will include generating the idea, building the team, starting the company, writing a business plan, funding, sales & marketing, legal issues, and giving effective investor presentations, among other things. The audio course is not simply recorded lectures. It is optimized for audio listening online or via iTunes or other audio players. Blog posts will follow lectures as they are created.