Brian Tracy once said,”You work eight hours per day for survival; everything over eight hours per day is for success.” And Andile Khumalo made a candid remark not too long ago when he said, ”Over my years in business, I have grown to appreciate, immensely, the art of DOING. Most entrepreneurs want to see themselves as the Thinkers, the Strategists, and the Innovators. Nobody ever wants to be the Doer.”

Entrepreneurs might have an appetite for risk taking and wealth generating but what drives them and distinguishes them from an over achieving employee is the desire to create. Ownership equates to wealth creation.

Most employees have financially crippling debts because of the belief that a higher salary guarantees their net worth. When you drive that latest sports car funded by the bank, in reality what it means is that the bank is letting you drive their car or have their asset on a temporary basis, if you miss one or two repayments you are doomed, the bank can repossess their car or asset depending on your relationship with your banker.

Don’t get me wrong; let’s get honest, a salary does not represent your net worth, you are in actual fact owing a company, services in exchange for monetary reward. You owe them services until the end of the month for them to pay you. Without ownership of the means or factors of production the best you can achieve is a relationship of providing your service in order to receive payment for the productivity that you have achieved.

There is nothing wrong with being an employee. However, for instance, when we say Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Carlos Slim Helu, Patrice Motsepe, Aliko Dangote, Strive Masiyiwa etc’s net worth is so much, we basically mean that their assets minus their liabilities is worth so much.

Therefore, realistically, what makes the risk takers and wealth creators thick?

Entrepreneurs have mastered the fact that feelings and motivation don’t produce results, only action is something that will produce it. For example, knowledge and creativity can’t help you to become successful if you don’t take the first step to start your business or own factors of production.

Everyone has knowledge and is very creative, persistent and patient, however the differentiator is that most of us are not entrepreneurs; we are working for another company or public services. We represent potential of being entrepreneurs because of our lack of willingness to take action.

Mindsets should move from “I can’t do that“, to one of “I can do that.” Entrepreneurs move past the dream stage and create new horizons for humanity. A vision, inspiration is the defining image of an entrepreneur. The vision should be backed by a thirst to acquire the ability to learn what is needed to make that vision become a reality.

Money is a by-product of entrepreneurship. The desire of entrepreneurs is to create change and growth. The main reason why most start-ups fail is because not everyone who starts a business is an entrepreneur. Most do it out of desperation, because of the desire to make a quick buck. A desire to make a quick buck not backed by a want to create change and growth is speculation.

Do you think Edison would have made 10,000 attempts to create a light bulb that burned for several days if his objective was a quick buck? However, some speculators become successful entrepreneurs accidently. The power of effecting change is more intoxicating, especially at a time when entrepreneurship is a viable option for job creation in most of the economies whose growth is being hindered by shrinking economic activity.

The greatest entrepreneurs take action that revolutionize business, whilst opening opportunities for others and changing the way we think and live.

Ideas alone are absolutely worthless unless something is really done about them, rather than sitting around talking about them. Your action should be linked with the ability to display exceptional ability to create new ideas and finding new solutions to problems.

Despite the fact that you believe you have the billion dollar idea; it is highly likely that many others have thought about doing the same thing; however, success only comes from flawless execution. A great strategy alone not backed by hard work won’t win a battle. You will learn a lot more things from taking action rather than hypothesizing.

Not giving up and trying again, when failures do happen is perhaps more important.

Alex Kirshbaum, President of NUE Agency, once said,”In our business, success is defined by action and innovation.”

Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks basketball team and Chairman of cable network HDNet Inc, in his book wrote, “It doesn’t matter how many times you fail. You only have to be right once and then everyone can tell you that you are an overnight success.”

Always remember that execution, execution, execution is all that matters, and people won’t care about the number of your failures, when you change lives and become an agent for economic growth.

The world we live in today is a consumer-driven economy, and we have an innate desire and need to tell the world, ”look at me, notice me, i am unique and i count.” Therefore, take time to create quality and the rest will follow. Success is not a matter of destiny. Success is the result of endless determination and action.

Anthony K. Tjan in an article titled “Can Entrepreneurs Be Made” remarked that, ”Turning that passion into a business reality obviously requires executing on it. It requires guts. Unimaginable amounts of potential lie dormant because people don’t have that minimum threshold of guts to just initiate and not overthink it.”