The single most important quality of a successful entrepreneur

Some of us are good at playing music, other at sports, or math, or cooking, or ... the list goes on. There's something about us that makes us very good at one or two things in life. It's quite obvious to me that regardless of how much I practice every day, I won't be able to compete against Usain Bolt in the 100 meter dash. He's just naturally better at running fast than I am, and that's a fact. But somehow when it comes to entrepreneurship, we don't think of one person being inherently better at it than another. Perhaps because we have seen successful entrepreneurs from all walks of life. Some short, some tall, some fat, some skinny, some with crazy wavy hair, some bald, some extroverts, some shy and introverted. But what do they all have in common? 

Running a business is a constantly evolving game and as an entrepreneur you have to act, and react faster than your competitors in order to survive. For every successful business there are hundreds of failures. Ask any entrepreneur how they feel about running a business and they are likely to not have a pleasant portrait of what it takes. Elon Musk has said numerous times that (and I paraphrase) entrepreneurship is like staring into the abyss and eating glass. I know exactly how it feels. My analogy for years had been that it's like climbing a mountain with a maze on it's surface. In recent years I have realized that it's more like climbing a mountain with a maze on it's surface while pushing a stone block. You get good at it, but it never gets easy. So what is it that makes one entrepreneur better than another? In the case of Usain it's his incredible physique, and his mental control over his facilities. I believe I have found the one factor that sets one entrepreneur apart from the rest. What makes Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Donald Trump, Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, Richard Branson, Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Ma, Jeff Bezos, Ted Turner, Warren Buffett, and countless other successful multi-billionaires so different?


What single quality could be responsible for their incredible rise to the top? Ready? 

It's the ability to decide what to tackle next. 

Let me explain.

As a business owner, your mind is overflowing with thousands of great ideas of what to do for your business. There are countless decisions to be made and an enormous list of todos. What sets the super-star entrepreneur apart is knowing which of these thousands of things to tackle first. Execution of the task at hand is obviously important too but being able to prioritize the endless list of todos and picking the most strategic one is by far what sets the winners apart from the rest. Imagine the todo list on Elon's planner as he started SpaceX. What do you do first? Ask yourself that question. What would you do FIRST (not top ten, first) if you wanted to start your own commercial space craft company? See what I mean? It's probably akin to rocket science itself. How in the world do you decide which is the thing to do next when there are countless things to do? It's those early decisions we make as entrepreneurs that set the wheels in motion. It's the methodical way about climbing the maze to the top that sets them apart from the rest who are trying every avenue in hopes of finding the right path by accident.

So can this trait be learned? I can't be sure. How do you go about learning how to make the best next move consistently? I'm not saying all of these people make the best next decision every time, but they have a great track record for doing so. Failing quickly is a big key. If you are going down the wrong path, knowing when to stop and start over is definitely a big part of making good next decisions. I have found though that the majority of entrepreneurs I meet are very impulsive. They run with the first idea without enough pause to let the organic deduction process guide them. This is sometimes a good trait because that do-first, ask questions later attitude is also a big part of the risk-taking nature of good entrepreneurs. As with everything, practice might help. Perhaps taking 30 minutes to think things through before making final decisions is the best way to start. As simple as that proposition sounds, most entrepreneurs I've met would struggle with a 30 minute delay to taking action. I am convinced however that although practice may help, this innate ability to pick the next best move is rooted deep in the DNA of the super-star entrepreneur. Do you have it? Only one way to find out.