The concept of grit may seem unrelated to the high-tech, fast-paced world of entrepreneurism, but in reality, grit is absolutely essential to entrepreneurial success. Here’s a look at what grit is and why it’s so important in building a business.
What is grit?
Before you can understand why grit is indispensable for entrepreneurs, its definition must be clear. It’s a difficult concept to thoroughly and accurately describe because it represents a combination of many different traits, all of which are tied to fortitude and motivation.
More informative than the Merriam-Webster definition of grit is a definition suggested by psychology professor and celebrated TED speaker Dr. Angela Duckworth, who in a 2013 TED talk called it “passion and perseverance for very long-term goals.” This kind of passion is not the erratic, fiery version that fuels short-term bursts of creative genius. It’s the long-term, sustainable kind of passion that facilitates commitment and self-assuredness, in spite of the fact that the payoff for hard work may not manifest for a long time.
Interestingly, those who have researched the topic emphasize that grit is a unique indicator of success and achievement because it’s not related to a person’s natural talent or intelligence. Rather, it’s only because of grit that naturally talented, intelligent people are able to succeed. Without it, a talented, intelligent person only has potential—and any successful venture needs more than just potential.
Why is it important for entrepreneurs?
Grit is the ability to believe in your ideas, work, and vision—even in the face of failure and years of hard work. It’s the quality that keeps you from giving up on a project when it becomes tedious, stressful, or draining. One well-conceived Forbes article suggests that grit itself has five characteristics: courage, achievement-orientation, endurance, resilience, and the pursuit of excellence rather than perfection. With these things in mind, it’s not difficult to understand the value of grit for any entrepreneur.
Anyone with experience in entrepreneurship knows that this particular career path isn’t for people who lack strength of spirit. Many people focus only on what they assume are the benefits of being an entrepreneur: freedom from the traditional nine-to-five workday, the ability to be your own boss, and the fact that you have more control over your income. However, the reality is often far from what these people expect. The early stages of a successful business usually destroy any semblance of the founder’s work-life balance. Seeing significant financial returns on a successful business often takes years, if not a decade or more. It requires a high degree of self-discipline and an ability to look beyond the long hours, slow growth, and sometimes tedious work. In situations like this, entrepreneurs absolutely need grit.
The overwhelming responsibilities of building a business and the failures you’re sure to experience along the way are impossible to bear without grit. As rewarding as entrepreneurship is, it’s also an aggressively challenging and often times lonely experience. Grit is the quality that keeps entrepreneurs going when others give up. It is the reason that successful founders are able to work tirelessly to build a business when they have yet to see any results. Grit is the primary driver of success in entrepreneurship, and no great success story would be possible without it.
Can you develop grit?
While certain people may have more natural grit than others, grit depends more on experience and intention than it does on natural ability. In fact, some of the leading researchers on the quality of grit (including Dr. Duckworth) believe that grit is an attainable quality for any person who truly wants to develop it. So how can an entrepreneur “grow” grit? The answer lies in learning to coach yourself through failures in pursuit of a goal.
The first thing to learn about developing grit is how to think about failure in a useful way. Instead of allowing failure to discourage and defeat you, you have to learn to accept your mistakes and use them as a valuable learning tool. People with grit take lessons from failures and use them to perform better in the future.
The second thing to do is to recognize the difference between defeat and redirection. A failed idea doesn’t always mean that the whole concept is unworthy of attention. Grit means taking unsuccessful ideas and identifying the strong points. This can often be necessary for entrepreneurs in the course of learning about their industry or the market for a product. Sometimes a significant change in goals can feel like failure, but entrepreneurs with grit recognize the value of purposeful change and aren’t discouraged by it.
Lastly, an entrepreneur who wants to develop grit needs to recognize that being “gritty” does not mean doing everything alone. It’s both normal and necessary to ask for help or lean on others for support in staying motivated while building a business. People with grit know where to find fuel for their resolve. They aren’t afraid to ask others for assistance or to take advantage of all the resources available to them.