I don’t know about you, but I always envisioned entrepreneurs to be these kind of lone warriors – total outlaws who have carved their own path with their innate genius and sheer force of will.
Richard Branson’s first successful business was his magazine business at age 18.
Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook at age 20.
Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard to start Microsoft.
It seems that every so often we come across yet another story of a teenager becoming a billionaire overnight. But are these guys the norm? Or are they outliers? Could it be that their stories are so infamous purely due to how unusual their journeys have actually been? In the world of medicine anecdotes and hearsay just don’t cut it. So what does the actual evidence say?
I recently came across a report by Ernst & Young from 2011 which looked at 685 successful entrepreneurs. The report shatters many widely misheld beliefs with regards to what actually goes into making an entrepreneur successful!
In reality most entrepreneurs go to higher education. Most spend time working for an organisation before “transitioning” to becoming their own boss. One third actually start their first venture in their 30’s!
What entrepreneurs really attribute their success to
It seems that in reality most of the things that people think would hold them back is exactly what’s going to give them the know-how and connections to be really successful. It’s likely that the only thing holding most people back is their own mind-set and drive, which the report also touches upon.
The mind-set of a successful entrepreneur
I highly recommend reading the full report. It sheds a lot of light on what actually goes into becoming a successful entrepreneur.
Keeb's Blog 
[…] wrote a blog post a while ago about how most successful entrepreneurs, contrary to popular belief, are actually people who have gone to … The reason is because they have put in those 10,000 hours, gotten a real understanding at a deep […]
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