If At First You Don’t Succeed… The Eight Patterns of Highly Effective Entrepreneurs impresses upon would be entrepreneurs the likelihood that they will fail on their first try - and perhaps failing on subsequent tries is almost inevitable. But don’t despair just yet. Brent Bowers goes on to cite examples of many successes who at some point tasted the ignominy of defeat in order to illustrate that nothing worth having is ever easy.
Characteristics of effective entrepreneurs include the need to be in charge, the cajones to tolerate risk, being an inspirational force for your employees, seeing wealth as merely a yardstick of what you have accomplished and not as the only thing that matters, an obsessive devotion to the superiority of their company’s product, and the tenacity to slog on through the inevitable muck of disappointment, nay, even possibly disaster.
If At First You Don’t Succeed reiterates the stone-cold fact that if you want something bad enough, you keep going until you get it. It is a great lesson for those pursuing an entrepreneurial career and those pondering if and when they should make the leap to being their own boss.