The Entrepreneurial Triad 🔱

“If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for most of your trouble, you wouldn’t sit for a month.” — Theodore Roosevelt

What makes you ‘entrepreneurial’? What if the highest and most meaningful form of entrepreneurial success you can achieve was entirely forged in the mind? If you believe that entrepreneurship is ultimately an engine for personal growth, then the best measure of success is going to be how you build and strengthen your character throughout your own journey.

If I had to distill the very essence of founder mentality in terms of what distinguishes (and somehow predicts) the sharpest, most powerful aspects of entrepreneurial mindset, would come down to a “holy” triad - which we’re going to explore in this post:

1. Seek more ownership - and leverage it

2. No one is coming to save you- you are your own saviour.

3. Creation beats consumption - every time

Entrepreneurial Intentions and actions that align to those three things will by definition set you apart as entrepreneur. I’ve seen those principles in action in the last decade and these are the very essence of what makes an excellent founder vs. an average one.

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Always seek more ownership

Adopt a pro-ownership mindset—psychologically owning every outcome (good or bad) in your business. You are always responsible for what happens to you and how you respond, even if events are not your fault, even if you made a mistake and it’s your fault. It doesn’t matter whose fault it is, you are responsible. Responsible to own your outcomes and own the way you respond to a challenge. Own it.

Research on psychological ownership shows it’s a powerful motivator: when you feel truly responsible for the venture, you act more like an owner, fuelling creativity, persistence, and hope. This contrarian approach counters the common human tendency to deflect responsibility. Look for those traits in your employees, usually the best type early stage employees tend to be good at spotting and tackling opportunities without being prompted to. They just seek more ownership and autonomy, and they are able to do so with increasing ownership because they are able to think and act just like you would as an owner.

Just by being willing to be accountable, you become contrarian. That by definition sets you apart from the average person. So few people in public institutions are willing to publicly own their mistakes, to take the blame when something goes wrong. In addition to social incentives to not stick your neck out too much, most public employees have no skin in the game. Even If they did ask for more accountability they wouldn’t really be in a position to gain proportionally (incentives design is a topic for another day).

Ownership and accountability brings you leverage. By running towards the fire when others escape, you earn recognition and you unlock more options. You used ownership to be fully accountable for and associated with solid outcomes. People will in turn trust you with bigger opportunities.

“You can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do.” — Henry Ford

Psychological ownership fuels action: When people feel like owners, they go beyond their formal roles. Ugwu et al. (2025) found a strong link between psychological capital (a mix of self-efficacy, hope, optimism, resilience) and entrepreneurial behavior. Those who mentally “owned” their work would “identify opportunities, take a risk and explore it until the result is achieved, not giving up to constraints and challenges”.

For a founder, always seeking more ownership means treating every problem as your problem—and thus something you have the power to solve. Research shows that when people feel high ownership, they don’t easily give up—they “take risks and explore opportunities until the result is achieved, not giving up to constraints”.

As a founder, it becomes a superpower to instil an entrepreneurial mindset with your team, setting the right environment for the team to naturally feel like they own their work, their product, the entire destiny of your startup. When leaders empowered their people, those with proactive personalities showed higher resilience—implying that an ownership attitude under stress helps one “develop positive…resilience”.

Caveat—don’t over-identify to the point of harm: Taking ownership is productive; becoming the company is dangerous. Psychologists warn that over-identification with your venture can increase emotional risk and volatility. Lin et al. (2024) caution that when a founder’s personal identity is too tangled up with the startup, every setback feels like a personal attack, leading to severe stress or decision paralysis. The key is to care deeply and take responsibility without losing a separate sense of self. Think of it as “Own the ship, but remember you are not the ship itself.” This distinction lets you stay resilient—you can weather storms without sinking your self-worth.

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Save yourself

The logical conclusion of a pro-ownership mindset is that you shouldn’t expect others to be responsible for saving you in hard times. When adversity hits, many people consciously or subconsciously hope for a saviour, an external event that will magically fix everything—just at the right time.

Similarly, we tend to seek happiness in external events instead of remembering that we shouldn’t make our well-being conditional on things outside of our control. Movies often depict those epic saviour moments—usually at the final scene when our hero is about to get killed, an old friend or some other external, unexpected force comes into play to neutralize the vilain and save our hero at the last second. I guess we tend to see this pattern a lot in Hollywood because our human minds is drawn to that sort of stuff— on a subconscious level, I think we all secretly hope to be saved. Of course this is magical (and flawed) thinking.

This self-rescue mindset is high agency in action. By all means you should ask and seek help from other people. But you shouldn’t expect any single person, event, or anything to somehow save you, or even change your life at once. Stop fooling yourself. You need to make your mission happen all on your own.

That’s why entrepreneurship is hard. We don’t talk enough about the struggle that comes from wrestling with your issues, on your own, without expecting anyone else to care. While it might sound bleak, it is more constructive to start your day with the premise that no one cares - unless you give them a good reason to!

Just like a pro-ownership mindset, a self-rescue mindset has clear links to entrepreneurial resilience. Founders with an internal locus of control—i.e. save yourself—believe outcomes stem from their own actions, not external forces. This mindset has tangible benefits. Hamzah & Othman (2023) found that internal locus of control in entrepreneurs led to better business performance and life satisfaction through improved competencies. In their study, “beliefs based on internal attributions…define entrepreneurs’ destiny,” linking to positive venture growth and personal well-being.

Internal locus is about control beliefs; self-efficacy is belief in your skills and capacity. High self-efficacy means you’re confident you can do what needs to be done on your own. Unsurprisingly Research by Olabimtan & Jaiyeola (2025) highlights that entrepreneurs with strong self-efficacy tend to take initiative rather than waiting on others.

Research by Farradinna et al. (2019) on young entrepreneurs showed that those with a strong internal locus perceive obstacles and difficulties as challenges to be conquered. They “see themselves as an important factor determining their own success”. This trait closely ties to hope and persistence—believing you have control breeds a fighting spirit. That same study also linked internal locus with fostering hope and success expectations.

Entrepreneurs with a self-rescue mindset trust their own ability to solve problems, which naturally reduces over-dependence on advisors, mentors, or luck. (A founder with low efficacy might defer every decision to an “expert” or constantly seek validation, whereas a self-efficacious founder will gather input but ultimately make and act on decisions.) Self-efficacy correlates with proactive behavior, higher innovation, the courage to act independently and to take unpopular yet necessary actions.

Self-rescue is largely about self-regulation. Believing “it’s on me” also means managing yourself in tough times. Internal locus and self-efficacy work best when paired with self-regulation—the ability to control your emotions, focus, and actions. Farradinna & Fadhlia (2019) found that internal locus of control contributes to higher psychological resilience especially through self-regulation. Essentially, confidence + emotional discipline is a potent combination.

If you think you’re in control, you act like it, build relevant skills, and ultimately get better results. Hoping for a saviour is a subtle way to give up your sense of control. By contrast, those with an external locus saw “no such consequences.” The research provided “compelling evidence of the adverse consequences of relying too heavily on fate or external assistance”.

Caveat—guard against overconfidence and blindness. Here’s the contrarian twist—believing in yourself is good, but too much self-belief can backfire. High self-efficacy without humility can morph into overconfidence, causing founders to ignore feedback or risks. Zhao & Wibowo (2021) caution that when entrepreneurs’ self-efficacy goes unchecked, it can “blind [them] to essential market signals” and prevent them from acknowledging mistakes. Being your own saviour shouldn’t mean ignoring advice or red flags—like dismissing user complaints or mentor warnings.

Scholars call this the “optimism paradox”: the same optimism that drives you can also deafen you to criticism. The key is to balance internal confidence with external awareness. Use your self-efficacy to take bold action and use your self-awareness to course-correct.

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Creation over consumption

“Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you.” — Steve Jobs

The last trait that sets the entrepreneurial mind apart is the fundamental belief that a creativity-oriented life is the antidote to a passive, consumerist way of life. If life was a play, would you watch it, or be in it? Most people just watch life go by, totally unaware they can actually be a character in the play, that they can join and even shape the unfolding of events.

Steve Jobs made that excellent point that stuck with me over the years: “When you grow up you tend to get told that the world is the way it is, and your life is just to live your life inside the world,” Jobs said, describing the invisible script most people follow. “Try not to bash into the walls too much... but that’s a very limited life.”

Jobs believed that once people understood that they too could shape the world, influence it, and leave their own imprint, a fundamental shift would happen—and there’d be no going back.

Jobs urged people to abandon the passive belief that life is a fixed structure in which one simply plays a role. Instead, he saw life as a pliable force, waiting to be pushed, shaped, and questioned. That’s a creativist take on life—one that is the opposite of consumerism. Given how little friction there is today to accessing more online content, buying things online, consumption has become easier (and even encouraged). Consumption goes beyond the material; it puts us in a state of always desiring, reaching for more, while creativity lets you truly enjoy what you already have inside of yourself: your ideas, your creative energy. These are compounding forces.

“You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.” — Maya Angelou

What does that look like in practice? Anything that shifts the default from observation to action. Writing instead of reading. Playing music instead of watching TV. Nothing wrong with passive consumption here and there, but be careful if this becomes your default mindset. Rest is not the same as passive consumption by the way—rest is also best done when taking a proactive stance to it.

“It is better to create than to learn! Creating is the essence of life.” — Julius Caesar

More precisely, creating is the single best way to learn as a founder. I did an MBA from a fancy school and took all the entrepreneurship classes. It mostly motivated me—I ended up learning the real lessons only when I created my own startup. If you’re an engineer building a bridge, you certainly need to study how other bridges are built, and think carefully before you start acting.

Entrepreneurship is different. The only way to think well as a founder is while in action. The only way to learn fast and increase your odds of success is action. Action, thinking and learning are one and the same in entrepreneurship. Assume your actions are what shape your thinking, and your actions prove to you that the world is malleable.

Evidence from small business research suggests that resilience comes more from agility and experimentation than from elaborate planning. Branicki & Sullivan-Taylor (2018) studied how small and medium enterprises (SMEs) survive disruptions. They found that, unlike big firms which rely more on formal plans and buffers, resilient SMEs focus on “capacities to cope with uncertainty,… generating personal relationships, and activating the ability to experiment and think creatively in response to crises.” In short, no better way to learn than on the fly.

Further, formal planning has limits—“Rather than encouraging formal planning and redundancy… practice should pay greater attention to building capacities to cope via experimentation and creative thinking in crises”. In other words, be a maker, not a meticulous planner, if you want to bounce back fast. Don’t spend your time on a business plan; spend your time building the thing instead.

Many founders fall into the trap of information overload, sometimes as a ‘smart’ way to procrastinate. I do that with podcasts that are super interesting but somehow change nothing about what I do or how I act. I wouldn’t let myself watch trash TV, but I somehow find listening to podcasts more justified. Even if I learn something it’s still a hidden form of procrastination given that knowledge is of no real application in my life.

Will AI make founders of the future more creative or more passive?

In my opinion, AI will only increase that mental gap between creativist and consumerist way of life. AI can greatly enhance your ability to consume more and better information, just like it can also greatly enhance your creativity, your creative output and the effort needed in the process.

The more AI technology we have at our disposal, the more important the perception of “shaping versus consuming” becomes. Ultimately AI is just an accessible tool, and creativity and impact will be increasingly defined by how intentionally humans engage with AI technology, which will define how AI is used for what purpose.

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Conclusion: the triad reinforces itself

If you want to become always more entrepreneurial, these are the mental attributes to nurture. The entrepreneurial triad—pro-ownership, self-rescue and creativist traits—all reinforce each other towards ever greater individual impact and agency, and that’s why they really fit well together as a triad. Based on my experience, these are the most powerful, distinctive beliefs I’ve observed among the founders I respect and admire most—these are the few, rare things that truly sets them apart from average.

Have a nice Sunday! 🌕 ✌🏼

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