The pattern · Persistence
What successful entrepreneurs have in common
Persistence with passion, what Angela Duckworth called grit, predicts achievement beyond talent. The research, who lived it and how to train it.
If you had to choose a single trait that shows up in almost every entrepreneur who built something big, it would be this one: the ability to keep pursuing the same goal for years, even after falling many times. Psychologist Angela Duckworth gave it a name, grit. It isn't just talent. It's talent sustained over time.
What the research shows
In 2007, Angela Duckworth, Christopher Peterson, Michael Matthews and Dennis Kelly published six studies in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. They defined grit as "perseverance and passion for long-term goals" and measured the trait in very different groups: adults, students at an elite university, cadets at the West Point military academy and participants in a national spelling bee.
In every group, grit helped predict who went further, and that prediction went beyond what IQ and conscientiousness already explained (Duckworth et al., 2007). The authors' conclusion: achieving difficult goals requires not only talent, but the sustained and focused application of that talent over time.
An honest note is in order. Later studies debated the size of this effect, and Duckworth herself says grit is one piece, not the whole explanation of success. Even so, it's a piece that is almost never missing from the stories of those who built something.
Who lived it
James Dyson got annoyed with a vacuum cleaner that lost suction when the bag filled up. He had the idea of using a cyclone, like the ones he saw at a sawmill, to separate the dust from the air. The first version, made of cardboard and tape, worked badly.
It took him five years and 5,127 prototypes to reach the model that worked. Each one failed at something, and each failure showed what needed to change. In interviews, Dyson often defends failure as part of the method, not a deviation from it (Gizmodo). The bagless vacuum born from that gave the company its name.
In Bairo's journey
Bairo Leandro Gonzalez Martinez can't say how many times he tried. Nor how many times he thought about stopping. He knows it was many.
There was the salon opened with his partner. The hair treatment course. The artificial intelligence and augmented reality idea that came too early. The own brand of natural cosmetics. The technology project from which his partners pushed him out. The events and the digital printing. The investment that didn't hold up, with many people depending on him. The project in which he was left stranded by those he had helped.
The number he chose to tell his own story is seven. The seventh attempt was the one that worked. Not by luck: it was the first that had all the others inside it. It's grit in the exact sense of the research: the same underlying goal, pursued for years, through different paths.
How to develop this trait
- Choose a goal worth years. Grit needs a direction. Write, in one sentence, what you want to build and why.
- Separate goal from method. Dyson never changed the goal, he changed the prototype. Change the path as many times as needed; keep the destination.
- Record every attempt. Write down what you tried, what failed and what you learned. The list shows progress where memory sees only defeat.
- Practice the hard part every day. Duckworth links grit to deliberate practice, the kind that works precisely on what you still do badly.
- Surround yourself with people who persist. Grit is also learned by proximity. Look for people who have already been through what you're going through.
- Rest without giving up. Stopping for a day isn't giving up. Giving up is changing destination because the road got hard.