An entrepreneur is a person who takes on fairly significant financial risk to start a business or bring a new product to market.

People with entrepreneurial spirit share some common qualities. In order to evaluate whether you embody this type of personality, consider the following questions.

• Do you consider yourself a natural leader? When people need direction, do they turn to you and trust your guidance? Are you a steady presence under pressure?
• Are you able to make the most of any given situation? If you don't have what is needed to complete a task, are you able to think of new ways to produce the needed results using the materials or resources you do have?
• When things don't go as expected, are you able to remain flexible and find new ways to accomplish your goals?
• Are you willing to take risks? When you have no idea whether you will be successful in a given task, are you willing to try it anyway, just to follow your convictions?
• Do challenges motivate you? When looking at difficult tasks, do you feel invigorated to work harder? Are you willing to be uncomfortable in order to accomplish difficult things?
• When facing defeat, are you able to recover from your losses quickly?
• Do you enjoy learning new things? Do you look for ways to grow your own talents?
• Does the idea of running your own business seem appealing? Do you have a vision for how a company should be run and what type of team you would like to put together?

People with an entrepreneurial spirit are passionate and optimistic. They see the incredible potential in what could be and have a vision for how to bring that vision to fruition. Even more so, they are not just visionaries, but are willing to do what is necessary to begin challenging work.

In answering this prompt, be sure to include some specific examples from your own experience that either demonstrate your own entrepreneurial spirit or explain why this is simply not your personality.