5 Key Traits that Undocumented Students and Successful Entrepreneurs Have in Common

The life of an entrepreneur is filled with challenges, creative problem solving, and a ton of hard work – but it also comes with adventure, the ability to pursue your passion, and the power to cultivate your career journey. Entrepreneurs face high levels of pressure to make it, but also enjoy the immense rewards that come with their success. Building a business from the ground up entails long days, unconventional hours, and being a jack-of-all-trades. This commitment to the daily grind requires a certain mindset of which undocumented students are uniquely prepared for.

Undocumented students are well aware of the challenges that come with living a life undocumented in the United States. Despite the barriers they face, undocumented students persist. Similar to successful entrepreneurs, undocumented students have a desire to thrive and contribute. While they have much in common, these are 5 key traits that undocumented students share with successful entrepreneurs.

  1. Motivation: stemmed from passion and often necessity, entrepreneurs and undocumented students possess a drive to succeed. Motivation shows up in demonstrating your enthusiasm and in your commitment to achieving a goal. It is the extra push you generate that encourages you to keep moving forward.
  2. Grit: comprised of perseverance, optimism, confidence, and tremendous effort, possessing grit allows an individual to stay on track in pursuit of their endeavors. An obstacle may slow you down, but it won’t stop you. You may need to follow a new pathway to get where you’re headed, but you will still get there.
  3. Resilience: the ability to adapt to changing circumstances is key to successfully maneuvering challenges. It unrealistic to expect that everything will go according to plan one hundred percent of the time, but what you do have is the ability to modify your plan. A resilient person knows the importance of flexibility and tends to see challenges as opportunities to learn, adapt, and do better.
  4. Creativity: pursuing a new endeavor often means that you will be placed in unfamiliar situations. In those circumstances, you will need to look inward at what you already know, as well as look outward for what you have yet to learn, so that you can implement the best solution. Utilizing creativity to solve problems is crucial to success.
  5. Industrious: whether at school, at work, or at home, the entrepreneur and the undocumented student do not shy away from hard work. Even when stresses and fears pertaining to career, finances, and family may weigh heavily, they are both able to not only get the job done, but make things better than they once were.

It is these traits and so many others that undocumented students possess which are aligned with success in business and in one’s overall career journey. If interested in pursuing entrepreneurship, undocumented students are already a step ahead in developing the mindset that breeds business success.

Undocumented students are able to legally start a business in the United States. Check out one of our previous posts that cover how to get started.

Photo by Nilina from Pexels

By Mary Malerba
Mary Malerba Assistant Director, Alumni Relations