Social media glamorizes the entrepreneurial lifestyle.

In reality, without the right qualities, it can be an emotionally painful road.

Entrepreneurship is driven by passion. The passion for solving problems and creating value for people lies at its core, and it’s very hard to teach.

Anyone can learn the skillsets required to ideate, build or buy, grow, and run a business. They teach them at most business schools. But its multidisciplinary and exhausting nature requires passion as a main driver.

If we’re not passionate about our mission, it becomes easy to step aside. Only our vision for a better world gets us through seemingly insurmountable challenges.

That’s not to say that passion by itself guarantees entrepreneurial success. Using our passion to cultivate the right skills is what will increase our chances of success.

Curiosity

As entrepreneurs, we’re never as good as we can be.

Learning consistently, driven by curiosity — intellectual curiosity — can be our biggest competitive advantage. By improving our lateral thinking, it also unlocks solutions hidden to others.

To be intellectually curious means actively seeking to learn in a targeted approach. It’s the secret to being ‘smart’ in a changing world, where generalists often overachieve specialized geniuses.

“If you think you have room to grow, you do and you will. If you think you’re as good as you can be, you’re right; you aren’t going to get any better.” — Ryan Holiday

Investors are often more impressed by visionary, generalist founders. Researching every detail that may impact their venture trumps technical expertise. Domain depth tends to be a second thought. Ideally, they want both.

After all, who could take on the multidisciplinary nature of this role without intellectual curiosity? We need depth and breadth of knowledge to be at the intellectual forefront of any field.

We can get there by committing to learn as much as we can about first principles, new technologies, methods to solve problems, tactics to reach new audiences, ways to enable new business models, and anything beyond that.

Speaking to customers is part of this learning journey. Arguably the most important one.

Genuine curiosity about the problems people face will help us listen for insights. We can then combine that user-specific feedback with knowledge acquired. Finding and improving upon solutions to the problems people face lies in this intersection.

Creativity

Creativity is rarely talked about in business.

A Google search defines creativity in entrepreneurship as the ability to find new solutions to problems. Those new solutions depend on being well-informed.

The insights obtained through curiosity are material for ideating creative solutions. Entrepreneurial creativity is the result of combining curiosity with the drive to solve real problems.

Creative entrepreneurs think laterally, beyond traditional solutions. Getting more customers to increase revenue is low-hanging fruit. So is increasing staff to provide more services.

Lateral thinking means approaching problems from seemingly unrelated perspectives. According to David Epstein, in his 2019 book Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, it’s a problem-solving strategy well-suited for our ever-changing modern world.

Lateral thinking unlocks competitive advantages by uncovering insights unattainable to our competitors.

Informed about factors unique to our domain — economic, political, psychological — we can find unique ways to iterate and grow.

Let’s consider traditional industries. Playing the same game as well-established competitors is almost impossible for new companies. In contrast, the level of bureaucracy that comes with scale slows down deep-pocketed companies.

Creative founders leverage that scale and speed. They create business models that seem uninteresting or unscalable to bigger players. The competitive advantages unlocked increase the likelihood of breaking in.

The same applies in emerging industries. Creative founders unlock entirely new business models leveraging their acquired knowledge.

Katia Beauchamp and Hayley Barna showed great creativity when founding BirchBox:

Cosmetics manufacturers used to give out small samples for free, post-purchase. An old-school way to create exposure for new products.

Birchbox sold those samples, curated in custom boxes, and delivered to consumers. Manufacturers started profiting from samples for the first time. The subscription box business model was born, and expanded to most consumer industries.

Persistence

Entrepreneurship is no 9-to-5.

That’s not to say we should be on an express lane to burnout by working all the time.

It means that when we’re passionate about building something, it finds a way into our lives. Passion drives the persistence to learn and create.

We must embrace that creating value for society, more than a job, is a lifestyle.

We will watch, read, and listen to content related to it on our free time. We will spontaneously bounce ideas off with likeminded people. We will jump out of bed or stop our morning run because we have to capture new ideas.

Applying mindful balance to set and enforce work boundaries is equally important. In that sense, persistence also involves a commitment to recovering and decompressing.

The level of effort required to get a business off the ground is nearly impossible to reach without persistence and consistency. Both in effort and recovery.

We all know of someone gifted who never persisted and settled for less.

Persistence is the most important, and hardest, of the three skills. It beats natural talent. It beats good intentions, privilege, and head-starts. Persistence not only beats luck — it creates luck.

If we’re curious but don’t keep showing up to learn more, in a changing world, our knowledge will become outdated.

If we’re creative but lack consistency in execution, no matter how brilliant our ideas may be, they will never reach the finish line.

Without persistence, despite how curious or creative we may perceive ourselves, we won’t grow or execute. And the solutions we want to bring to the world will always be out of reach.

Wrapping them up

Venn diagram courtesy of yours truly. I know.

Persistence and curiosity keep us growing.

Curiosity and creativity keep us ideating.

Creativity and persistence keep us executing.

Combined, these skills are the key to entrepreneurial success in a rapidly changing world.

How can you embrace more curiosity, persistence, and creativity in your life?