Can Anybody Be an Entrepreneur?

By Kevin Ready, Guest Columnist

NEW YORK (CNBC) -- I was doing a radio interview recently when the host asked a most interesting question:

"Can anybody become an entrepreneur?"

Great question, and one that I had to think about for a second before answering. The short answer is that anybody can, but quite honestly, not everybody should. I responded that way because I have learned that becoming an entrepreneur has less to do with what you know and what your experiences are, and everything to do with what you are willing to do to succeed.

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We all think about it from time to time -- taking our skills and gifts and knowledge out into the world and starting our own companies. So, what are the qualifications for successfully doing that? It might not be what you think: You don't need an MBA. You don't need permission. You don't need to have experience in startups. You don't need to have a revelatory experience where the clouds part and you are blessed with the mother of all business ideas. You don't need a million dollars. You don't need rich friends or family to back you. You don't need to be a genius, and you don't need perfect timing.

Although each of these things can help with becoming an entrepreneur, none of them are necessary.

There is only one absolutely necessary ingredient for becoming an entrepreneur. It sounds almost too simple, but everything that you need to be successful as an entrepreneur can be bundled as a mere sub-heading to this one central idea. What is that all-critical requirement? A willingness to do the work. That's it, and there is no way around it.

The folks that just won't hack it as entrepreneurs are most often the ones that are not actually willing to do the work. This usually means that they don't have sufficient intrinsic motivation. They start a business for the wrong reasons. They start with unrealistic expectations, and find that it's too hard or too difficult, and then drop out.

It will not do to be really hot on an idea for a week or a month, then slack off and start thinking about something else. The successful entrepreneurs are the ones that have a feeling that drives them forward to the next task and the next task. They know that every successful business is built by the completion of many thousands of small actions, one after another -- over what will likely be years of time. They know that nobody will make them do the work; they are self-driven and will do more work with greater care and quality than they would ever do at a regular job.