From: http://www.bizjournals.com/

One of the axioms of the entrepreneurial community is that the working world consists of two basic types of people: born entrepreneurs and born employees.

I don’t think it’s necessarily that simple, but it’s true that the vast majority of people go to work for a fairly set number number of hours each week and they receive benefits and a paycheck.

Thank goodness for the natural employees, because the rest of us business owners, no matter how big or small, need staff.

So what distinguishes the “born entrepreneur” from the rest of the crowd?

Entrepreneurial habits

I’ve been an entrepreneur since I was 10 years old and offered dog-sitting, house-sitting, and baby-sitting services. If I look at myself, I think it’s a sense of independence, the ability to self-motivate, reluctance to waste time on low-value activities, not liking to be told what to do, a tendency to take repeated calculated risks, impatience with bureaucracy, and a hard-driving determination to get ahead. In fact, Entrepreneur magazine lists 50 habits of the “born entrepreneur.”

Many of these characteristics also get people labeled as troublemakers — and it’s curious how similar they are to the “attitude” that often gets millennial workers labeled as aggressive, disloyal, and self-centered.

Could this latest generation, raised on digital media in an era of rampant corporate cupidity, be chockablock with born entrepreneurs? The growing number of successful millennial startups suggests this may be so.

Overcoming the label

The above notwithstanding, just because you’re a business owner doesn’t necessarily mean you’re a born entrepreneur. It’s the way you look at work. Is work more than work to you? Do you enjoy what you do so much you don’t mind working strange, long, or different hours?

Or is your job a way to earn a living, where you hang up your work attire promptly at five and “turn off” work? If the latter, you’re a born employee.

But what if you’re “stuck” in a job now, but you’d really rather be an entrepreneur? There’s no reason you can’t succeed as one. I firmly believe hard work and determination can overcome any lack of natural aptitude in this area, especially if that “lack” is really just what you’ve been socialized to expect.