“Motivation is a fire from within. If someone else tries to light that fire under you, chances are it will burn very briefly.

—Stephen R. Covey, educator, author, and businessman

Before you begin the journey, ask yourself these questions:

• What is motivating me to start this business?
• Am I prepared to live up to the demands of the business?

To achieve self-motivation, your entrepreneurial journey has to suit your personality, temperament and way of being.

It is essential that you have a solid grounding and a basic sense of why you are investing your time and energy in this venture. Take a minute to clarify your goals for your business? Wealth? Legacy? Social impact? Work-life balance?

Everybody is not cut out to be an entrepreneur. Therefore before launching into business, it is necessary to carry out a self-analysis to see if you have what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur. These are what we call the personality characteristics of entrepreneurs.

Dr. McClelland describes an entrepreneur as having a “ dominant psychological drive to achieve”. The entrepreneur must be result oriented. He/She must place emphasis on output rather than input. The output or result is the goods or services, which get exchanged for money. Input must lead to output/service offered to customers because there is nothing like something (money) for nothing in business . The following are the characteristics of entrepreneurs:

• A burning desire to be in charge of whatever they find themselves doing. They desire to be in charge and in control of resources available to them and to achieve self determined goals. They create and make maximum use of resources and opportunities available to them.
• They have appetite for moderate risks. They take calculated risks, indeed they do not take all available risks that present opportunity for money making. Entrepreneurs hardly gamble. They work for their money or make their money work for them. He/She has the ability to think through projects and only embark on it if they are convinced that the goal is achievable.
• Belief in personal success. Entrepreneurs believe in themselves and their ability to take informed decisions. They have staying power and keep on with their decision even in the face of criticism and discouragement until they succeed.
• Entrepreneurs are not discouraged by failure. They pick up the pieces when they fail. They get up and move on They know that as an entrepreneur, you can go up unbelievably fast but you can also go down equally fast. This is because they have high level of energy relative to the average person.
• Entrepreneurs are adventurous in nature. They are always on the look out for business opportunities that will materialize with minimum delay or in the nearest future. They are more concerned with what might happen tomorrow than what happened yesterday.
• Entrepreneurs have organizational skills. They have the capacity to identify the right people for the right job. They know that the effective deployment of people to the job they are best suited will lead to the accomplishment of set objectives. In this connection, entrepreneurs know their own individual strengths and weaknesses and thus hire people that possess qualities they themselves lack, be it skills or knowledge.
• Entrepreneurs are driven by the desire to make and multiply money. Accumulating money is important because it is a symbol of power and achievement . However, the way to make money is to render services. When you render service or meet the needs of customers, money will be earned.