We often look at people we consider successful and wonder how they make it happen. However, while talent and luck can be great helps when you want to succeed as an entrepreneur, they aren’t everything. If you want to increase success in your business, effort is vital.
Grit Matters More Than Talent
It’s true that talent can be a big help as you work toward business success. Indeed, intelligence, natural talent, and luck can take you a long way. Your life situation can also make a big difference. You might have more access to opportunities and talent and luck can help accomplish more in some areas.
However, you can’t build your business success on talent and luck alone. You also need to have grit.
Psychologist Angela Duckworth has been researching what makes people successful, and she found that grit is more important than talent or luck. Duckworth’s research indicates that grit allows you to move past failures and work through stress. When others give up, your grit can keep you going — and ultimately lead to your business success.
Putting in that effort every day is more important than any natural talent you might have. On top of that, the grit you exhibit as you work toward business success can lead to learning new skills and building on that natural talent. Grit also allows you to identify opportunities and take advantage of them.
Effort Can Help You Overcome Failure
The other part of this equation, beyond putting in the hard work, is also the fact that effort can help you overcome failure. That grit can help you push through failure, even though it’s scary.
Indeed, many of us are so afraid of failure that we don’t try as hard as we could. What if we fail hard? It’s hard to contemplate that, and we want to stay inside the comfort zone. However, you won’t grow inside your comfort zone, so getting out and persevering through difficult times is important. All the talent in the world won’t help you if you give up. All the luck in the world won’t matter if you don’t seize those opportunities and use your effort to parlay them into business success.
And, of course, getting back up after you fail means that you are more likely to achieve success in the end. Success almost never comes overnight. Even if you have a great idea, the talent to get most of the way to your goal, and the luck needed to get a few breaks, none of that matters unless you work hard.
And, according to research, that hard work can make up for deficiencies you might have in the areas of talent and luck. If you can keep moving forward, your business success will be far more likely.
