She was only 22 and an introvert but she spent years selling her product door-to-door trying to get her tiny company off the ground. Most days she would sell only two memberships. She was completely outside her comfort zone and totally miserable. But she refused to quit.
Angie Hicks Bowman, founder and Chief Marketing Officer of Angie’s List, persisted and her tiny company is now worth more than $9 billion. When asked what her greatest entrepreneurial trait was, she answered very clearly, perseverance.
On a recent interview on the podcast How I Built This, Angie explained this in more detail. She said, “What makes an entrepreneur an entrepreneur? I think – honestly, I think a lot of times, it comes down to perseverance. And I think a lot of times, people can have the big idea and they can have, you know, kind of that initial kind of fall in love in – with their idea for starting something, but they don’t ride it through the hard part, and they give it up. So while I might not have had the big idea and while I might not have been the big risk taker, I had perseverance. And, you know, I think that’s – that is my entrepreneurial trait.”
While it’s true that entrepreneurs need to have big ideas and be willing to take risks, probably the greatest entrepreneurial traits revolve around perseverance, persistence and grit. To take a business idea and make it a reality requires a special level of resilience that is not found in most people. Angie Hicks Bowman had it which is why she was able to finish what she started.
Two of my favorite books on the subject of grit and finishing what you start are Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance by Angela Duckworth and Finish: Give Yourself the Gift of Done by Jon Acuff. Both of these books are well-researched, easy-to-read and give you a fresh perspective on what it takes to do big things.
