Successful Entrepreneurs Can't Resist Doing Their Own Thing, How About You?

As we here at Elite Daily get a chance to profile and highlight some of the more fascinating stories of this generation's most impressive entrepreneurs, it's interesting to note the difference and similarities between them all. On one hand, despite the temptation to paint all young businessmen and women with a single brush (the "tech entrepreneur" label), all of them go about it in different ways.

Whether it's the former Yahoo! employees behind WhatsApp, who've created an ad-free platform for users to message each other without the constraints of a data plan, or the YouTube co-founders behind MixBit, who are finding new ways to help users make better video content, CEOs are finding different solutions to different problems on which they base their businesses.

One similarity, though, that many of the most praise-worthy of entrepreneurs share is an unwillingness to work for others, and their desire to explore the depths of independence is demonstrated through the way they work to maintain it, beating themselves into the ground for years to make their ideas work.

And while making the choice to practically kill oneself over having a, shall we say, "regular and stable" job might seem ludicrous, it might make more sense once you consider that, for some, chasing the entrepreneurial dream, even if it can run you to the brink of total exhaustion, is necessary to escape the unfulfilling feeling of doing otherwise.

Consider the words of Forbes contributor Jonathan Brill, for example, who describes the type of personality he notices in some of the best founders he's come across during his life.

"Working for someone else felt very unnatural and made them unhappy to the point where doing their own thing was inevitable," Brill said in this article. "The best founders I've worked for never thought about the risk of entrepreneurship vs the alternative because the alternative was never viable."

You might think that the hint of unhappiness, the idea that someone could feel such discontent, is a pretty strong one to make, but it makes even more sense when you link that feeling to some of the decisions people take during their careers. Mark Cuban got to where he is by disobeying his bosses (who he had better ideas than, by the way) before he made himself a billionaire, while CEO Jon Oringer was relentless in getting Shutterstock to giant status before becoming New York City tech scene's first billionaire (before that, he'd started 10 businesses that "didn't get off the ground").

All that risk, seemingly to do things their own way. But it's not just about satisfying personal arrogance, says one entrepreneur, it's about the conviction that one can do things not just in their own way, but in the right way as well.

"I was on fumes,"Leo Rocco, a former IBM employee who founded GoPago, told Entrepreneur. "It takes an amazing amount of resolve and mental strength to continue doing what you're doing and fight the self-doubt that inevitably creeps in, but when you truly believe in the business you're creating, there's just no other way to do it."

These type of desires, the sensation inside of someone that pushes them to go at anything alone, can be exhibited in many ways. Even if you simply, for example, can't help but make a little tweak to the procedures your boss wants you to go through, yet still arrive at the common goal, or if you require a bit of freedom at your job to execute it effectively, that can be a way of fulfilling the need to do your own thing.

Ultimately, everyone does not have to pack up their bags, head to Silicon Valley and hope to build and empire on their dreams. Just know that if you relate to the aforementioned names and you share, even in some small part, the desire to manifest your sense of independence through the way you work, you might just have that good ol' spirit of an entrepreneur.