Taking Your Entrepreneurial Leap with Gino Wickman.

Taking Your Entrepreneurial Leap with Gino Wickman – the 6 Essential Traits of an Entrepreneur. If you are dreaming of becoming an entrepreneur, you must first understand that there’s a lot on the line when you take the leap and launch your first business, and you have to ask yourself difficult questions. With the most important and difficult being: Do I have what it takes?

Gino Wickman, the bestselling author of Traction and the creator of the Entrepreneur Operating System (EOS), is with me today to share his real-world experience to help you decide if entrepreneurship is right for you—because success as an entrepreneur depends on far more than just a great idea and a generous helping of luck.

An entrepreneur since the age of 21, Gino Wickman has had an obsession for learning what makes businesses and entrepreneurs thrive.

At 25 he took over the family business, which was deeply in debt and in need of help. After turning the company around and running it for seven years, he and his partners successfully sold the company.

Gino then set out to help entrepreneurs and leaders get what they want from their businesses.

Based on his years of real-world experience, he created the Entrepreneur Operating System (EOS) – a practical method for helping companies achieve greatness.

He has personally delivered more than 1,900 full-day sessions for more than 135 companies, helping them implement EOS. He is also the author of the award-winning, best-selling book Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business, as well as Get a Grip, Rocket Fuel, How to Be a Great Boss and What the Heck is EOS?.

Gino is the founder of EOS Worldwide, an organization that helps thousands of businesses implement EOS with the aid of an international team of over 350 professional and certified EOS Implementers and online support. There are almost 100,000 companies using the EOS tools worldwide.

Gino is now devoting time and energy toward helping entrepreneurs-in-the-making get a huge jump-start on taking their entrepreneurial leap, which is why he created Entrepreneurial Leap.

Henry Lopez and Gino Wickman discuss the following topics and questions:

• You did not go to college – how do you think that helped and/or hurt you?
• Why did you think you could turn around your dad’s small business?
• Looking back, what advice would you give yourself before you took on the challenge of this small business?
• How did you become so “consciously competent” in business operations at such a young age?
• Why did you sell EOS Worldwide?
• Can I be both a Visionary and an Integrator?
• Are some Visionaries just using this title as an excuse to not do the hard work of implementing?
• Please explain the difference between “Self-Employed” and “Entrepreneur”.
  “An entrepreneur is someone who sees a need or an opportunity and then takes a risk to start a business to fulfill it.”
  “Being an entrepreneur is not something you do, it is something you are.”
• Are you born an Entrepreneur, or can you learn to be one?
  “…these traits can’t be taught, they can be discovered.”

• 6 Essential Traits of an Entrepreneur: “Skills can be learned; traits can’t.”

1. Visionary
   “…being imaginative, creative, inventive, ingenious, enterprising, and innovative.”
   If you don’t have it, “…you’ll never really be able to connect the dots and see the big picture. You’ll also struggle to create something from scratch.”
2. Passionate
   “…it gets an entrepreneur through the tough times.” “…but also motivates, persuades, inspires, and sells other people around you to act, move and follow your lead.”
   (Can’t I just be passionate about business?)
3. Problem Solver
   “…leans into problems, obsesses about them, and genuinely get a high from solving them.”
   (You have to embrace and love decision making.)
   If you don’t it, buy a Franchise?
4. Driven
   “…tenacious, competitive, self-motivated, goal-oriented, growth-oriented, and never give up. They hustle. They want to succeed.”
5. Risk Taker
   “Entrepreneurs take risks: calculated risks. They’re willing to fail, try again, and adapt.”
   “Taking big risks isn’t for most people. It petrifies them. That’s why so few take the entrepreneurial leap.”
   (Not the same as gambling.)
6. Responsible – Blame No One
   “Entrepreneurs tale total responsibility for the outcome.”