Many believe that having a ‘gambler attitude’ can help entrepreneurs taking advantage of the situations under stress.
This coupled with a good dose of optimism and also timing can be the receipt of being successful in business.
Startup business expert Richard Alvin said: ‘If you are an entrepreneur, then you have to accept that you will be taking higher risks than the average population. It shouldn’t be however a proper gamble, and all the risks should be calculated.’
Gemma Pond launched her flavoured spring water brand Nuva while giving birth to a baby boy. She invested a £50,000 into designing the bottle, and she felt she didn’t have any choice either than returning to run the company just two weeks later.
‘If you always delay things because you have the feeling that it is just not the right time, you will end up never do it’ she said to The Guardian. ‘Every new business is a risk as you will not have a salary and the day will not be the same every day’.
‘After all, opening a new business is similar to when you walk into a casino’ said Casino Online expert John Pentin. ‘You need to put up with the idea that whatever you put into your business you could also lose and then go for it. Some entrepreneurs are like those gamblers that have a clear view of what they want to achieve and go all in. Others will try to make more calculated risks, like for example going for those games where statistically they have the higher chances of getting a return’.
Entrepreneurs generally have a reputation for being risk takers. A recent study made by the National Bureau of Economic Research in the US showed that people who engaged in more risky activities at a young are, had more chances of being successful entrepreneurs later in life.
The University of Cambridge back in 2008 also showed that entrepreneurs have a higher tendency to have risk-taking behaviours: this gave them an advantage, and they were capable of seizing opportunities when under stress.
Rahul Parekh, which is one of the co-founders of online restaurant EatFirst, has taken risks on all his career. Before he decided to start his own business, he was trading for Goldman Sachs, and he suggests to all entrepreneurs to confront any risks with an analytical mind.
‘When I was at Goldman Sachs I was always taking calculated risks. The main difference between gambling and taking risks is that in gambling you are left, in most games, with very little information. When I was trading, I could use all the information out there, do my own research and make educated decisions’.
When you are running a business, there are a few things that can reduce the amount of risks you are taking: if you go for example for an innovative company and do something that no-one else is doing then you are taking a calculated risk. It is only worth doing it if you really believe in it.
So even though entrepreneurs are taking on average more significant risks than the rest of the population, they are generally not gambles but are calculated risks.
One of the reasons is that the entrepreneurs are investing their own money into a concept, an idea. For this reason, they know how much they got at stake and by looking at what they can create they also understand what the risks that have to be taken to reach that result are.
As business psychologist Dr Mark Parkinson has confirmed, the idea of the entrepreneurs as people that are eccentrics gamblers willing to risk everything is just a myth.
If we look at the scale of risk-taking the gambler will be a lot more on the right while most people will be more on the left: the entrepreneurs will probably sit in the middle. Some entrepreneurs are seated at the extreme end of gambling, but those are just a small minority.
So risk-taking behaviour is surely a trait of a successful entrepreneur, but it is just one of the many. Others important aspects are self-confidence and also resilience. Lots of people that try but fail with their own business they tend to go back to their regular jobs: entrepreneurs, they keep going even when they are losing a vast amount of money if they have the idea that eventually that concept will work.
Optimism is also a crucial factor: if you don’t believe that you can make a difference with your business, then you might not be the person that will succeed. The majority of people won’t do it as rationally the majority of startups fail in two years. So either you have a strong internal motivation that keeps pushing you ahead, or you will fail.
So, in conclusion, there isn’t a magic bullet unfortunately when it comes to successful entrepreneurs. Even if you have a brilliant idea and you are really good at it, it will not work unless you have got the time right and the opportunity is there to be taken.
