The Entrepreneurial Journey: 7 Science-Backed Steps to Success

Learn the science-backed steps of the entrepreneurial journey, from turning failure into fuel to building the social skills that predict business success.

What Is an Entrepreneurial Journey?

An entrepreneurial journey is the full arc of building a business, from the first spark of an idea through launch, growth, and maturity. It includes five core stages: discovery, concept development, resourcing, launch, and scaling.¹ But the most overlooked part of any entrepreneurial journey isn’t the business plan or the funding round. It’s the personal transformation that happens along the way.

Most advice about entrepreneurship focuses on strategy: find your target market, write a business plan, secure capital. That advice matters. But research reveals something surprising: the social and psychological skills you develop as a person may predict your financial success more than your business model does.²

Winning is NOT about preventing failures. Every failure leads closer to the biggest wins. In one of my most personal talks, I shared how transforming my own failures became the foundation for everything I’ve built. You can watch the full talk here:

This guide covers the science behind what actually separates entrepreneurs who thrive from those who burn out, and gives you practical steps to build those skills starting today.

By Vanessa Van Edwards

The Biggest Myth About Entrepreneurship

Here’s what most people get wrong: they think successful entrepreneurs are natural risk-takers who love the thrill of uncertainty.

The research tells a different story. A study from Harvard Business School found that successful entrepreneurs don’t see themselves as high-risk takers at all. Instead, they have high self-efficacy, the belief that they can influence outcomes through their own actions. They’re not gambling. They’re making calculated bets where they believe they have an edge.³

Successful entrepreneurs aren’t risk-lovers. They’re people who believe they can influence outcomes through their own actions.

This distinction matters because it changes what you need to develop. You don’t need to become more reckless. You need to build genuine confidence in specific, trainable skills.

Here are seven science-backed steps to do exactly that.

Step 1: Use the Failure Dinner Technique to Rewire Your Relationship with Setbacks

About 90% of startups fail in the long term, and nearly 70% of those failures happen in years two through five, when initial excitement fades and cash runs thin.⁴ The entrepreneurs who survive aren’t the ones who avoid failure. They’re the ones who process failure differently.

Sara Blakely, founder of Spanx, grew up with an unusual dinner table ritual. Every week, her father would ask her and her brother: “What did you fail at this week?” If they had nothing to report, he’d be disappointed. A failure-free week meant they hadn’t pushed themselves hard enough.⁵

This simple question rewired Blakely’s entire relationship with setbacks. When she spent two years getting rejected by every hosiery manufacturer she approached, she didn’t interpret those rejections as signs to stop. She interpreted them as evidence she was trying.

Blakely once mailed a single red high-heeled shoe to a Neiman Marcus buyer with a note: “I’m just trying to get my foot in the door.” That kind of creative persistence doesn’t come from fearlessness. It comes from years of practicing a different relationship with the word “no.”

How to apply the Failure Dinner Technique:

1. At the end of each week, write down one thing you attempted that didn’t work out
2. Next to it, write what specific information that failure gave you (“I learned my pricing was too high for that segment” or “I learned that cold emails without a mutual connection get ignored”)
3. Rate your week not by how many things went right, but by how many meaningful attempts you made
4. If you have a partner, cofounder, or mastermind group, share your failures with them weekly

Action Step: Tonight, ask yourself Blakely’s father’s question: “What did I fail at this week?” If the answer is “nothing,” that’s the real problem.

Step 2: Build Your Grit Score (But Not the Way You Think)

Angela Duckworth, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania, found that grit (the combination of passion and perseverance for long-term goals) predicts success above and beyond IQ or talent.⁶ Her research showed that grittier West Point cadets survived grueling summer training at higher rates than those with better SAT scores or physical fitness.

But here’s the nuance most people miss: grit has two components, and they don’t contribute equally to entrepreneurial success.

• Perseverance of effort (keeping at it despite setbacks) is the stronger predictor of entrepreneurial outcomes
• Consistency of interests (sticking with the same passion over time) shows more mixed results, because successful entrepreneurs often need to pivot their business model⁷

This means grit for entrepreneurs isn’t about stubbornly clinging to your original idea. It’s about staying committed to the problem you’re solving while remaining flexible about how you solve it.

As Duckworth puts it: “Enthusiasm is common. Endurance is rare.”

The Flexible Grit Framework:

1. Lock your mission, not your method. Write down the core problem you’re solving in one sentence. This is your anchor. Everything else can change.
2. Set 90-day pivot windows. Every quarter, evaluate whether your current approach is working. If not, change the approach, not the mission.
3. Track effort, not just outcomes. Keep a daily log of hours spent on high-leverage activities. Grit research shows that sustained effort over time is what separates those who succeed from those who quit.

Pro Tip: Duckworth found that grit grows through four stages: interest, practice, purpose, and hope. If you’re struggling with perseverance, check which stage is weakest. Most entrepreneurs stall at purpose, losing sight of why the work matters beyond making money.

Step 3: Activate the Growth Mindset Error Response

Carol Dweck’s research at Stanford introduced the concept of growth mindset, the belief that abilities can be developed through effort rather than being fixed at birth. But the most compelling evidence comes from brain scans.

A 2011 study by Jason Moser at Michigan State University put EEG caps on participants and measured their brain activity in real time as they made mistakes. The results were striking:⁸

• People with a growth mindset showed a significantly larger “pay attention” brain signal (called the Pe) after making errors. Their brains were treating mistakes as valuable information worth processing.
• People with a fixed mindset showed a much smaller signal. Their brains essentially glossed over the error.
• The growth-minded participants were then more likely to get the next answer right, specifically because their brains had engaged more deeply with the mistake.

A related study co-authored by Dweck herself found that when fixed-mindset participants were told they got an answer wrong, their brains showed a strong emotional response, but then tuned out when the correct answer was shown. Growth-mindset participants did the opposite: they leaned into the correction.⁹

Growth-minded brains treat mistakes as valuable data. Fixed-minded brains treat mistakes as personal threats.

How to train the Growth Mindset Error Response:

1. After every setback, ask two questions: “What specifically went wrong?” and “What will I do differently next time?” Write the answers down. This forces your brain to process the error rather than flinch away from it.
2. Replace “I failed” with “That approach failed.” Separating your identity from the outcome is what shifts the brain from an emotional threat response to a learning response.
3. Study someone who pivoted well. When Satya Nadella took over Microsoft in 2014, the company was widely seen as a tech dinosaur. His first company-wide email used collective pronouns (“we,” “us,” “our”) over fifty times, signaling a shift from what he called a “know-it-all” culture to a “learn-it-all” culture.¹⁰ Within a decade, Microsoft’s value grew from roughly $300 billion to over $3 trillion. The catalyst wasn’t a new product. It was a mindset shift.

Step 4: Develop Your Social Competence Score

This is the step most entrepreneurship advice completely ignores, and the research suggests it might be the most important one.

A landmark study by Robert Baron and Gail Markman, published in the Journal of Business Venturing, tested 200 entrepreneurs across two industries (cosmetics and high-tech) and found that an entrepreneur’s social competence directly predicted their financial income from their ventures.²

Their finding was clear: your network (social capital) gets you in the door. Your people skills (social competence) determine what happens once you’re in the room.

Baron and Markman identified five specific social skills that predicted entrepreneurial earnings:

1. Social Perception — accurately reading others’ motives and true feelings. This was the single most powerful predictor across both industries.
2. Social Adaptability — feeling comfortable whether you’re pitching investors, chatting with engineers, or talking to customers
3. Expressiveness — communicating your emotions and enthusiasm clearly enough that others can feel them
4. Impression Management — projecting a credible, favorable image
5. Persuasiveness — changing others’ attitudes or behavior in the direction you need

The most important finding: these are learnable skills, not fixed personality traits.

The 30-Day Social Skill Sprint:

Pick one of the five skills above and practice it deliberately for 30 days.

• If you choose Social Perception: In every meeting this month, before you speak, silently guess what the other person is feeling and what they actually want from the conversation. After the meeting, check your read. Were you right? What cues did you miss?
• If you choose Expressiveness: Record yourself pitching your idea for 60 seconds. Watch it back. Can you see your enthusiasm, or does it only exist inside your head? Most people dramatically underestimate how flat they appear on camera.
• If you choose Persuasiveness: Before your next important ask, write down the other person’s top three concerns. Address all three before they raise them.

Action Step: Take the Baron and Markman self-assessment right now. Rate yourself 1-10 on each of the five skills. Your lowest score is your highest-leverage growth opportunity.

Step 5: Write the Plan (Even If It Changes)

There’s a persistent myth in startup culture that business plans are outdated relics. The data disagrees.

Research shows that entrepreneurs with a formal business plan are about 16% more likely to achieve viability and roughly 2.5 times more likely to secure investment capital.¹¹ Businesses with plans grow about 30% faster than those without. And about 69% of venture capitalists refuse to invest in any enterprise without one.

But here’s the nuance: the plan itself will almost certainly change. The value isn’t in the document. It’s in the process of creating it, which forces you to research your target market, identify your target audience, stress-test your assumptions, and confront the gaps in your thinking.

The One-Page Business Plan Protocol:

You don’t need a 40-page document. Answer these seven questions on a single page:

1. What problem am I solving? (One sentence)
2. Who has this problem? (Be specific: “Marketing managers at B2B SaaS companies with 50-200 employees,” not “businesses”)
3. How do they currently solve it? (These are your competitors)
4. What’s my solution? (Two sentences max)
5. Why will they choose me over the current solution? (Your unfair advantage)
6. How will I reach them? (Your platform and launch strategy)
7. How will I make money? (Revenue model and pricing)

Revisit this page every 90 days. Cross out what’s changed. Write the new version. Over time, this living document becomes a record of every pivot and the thinking behind it.

Pro Tip: Move beyond demographics when defining your target market. The most useful customer profiles capture psychographics: your customer’s fears, goals, and the exact language they use to describe their problems. Speak their words back to them, and they’ll feel understood before you’ve even pitched.

Step 6: Build Your Platform Before You Need It

Every successful entrepreneur eventually needs an audience, a customer base, a community, or a network of advocates. The mistake most people make is waiting until launch day to start building one.

The entrepreneurs who struggle most at launch are the ones who built in silence and expected the world to notice.

Consider how Melanie Perkins, founder of Canva, approached this problem. She had no Silicon Valley connections. After learning that investor Bill Tai was passionate about kitesurfing, she took up the sport to join his networking retreats. That unconventional relationship-building eventually helped her secure the funding that turned Canva into a multi-billion-dollar company.¹²

You don’t need to take up kitesurfing. But you do need to start building relationships and visibility in your space before you have something to sell.

The Platform-Building Sequence:

1. Months 1-3: Pick one channel (YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, a newsletter, or a podcast) and publish consistently. Don’t try to be everywhere.
2. Months 4-6: Engage with 10 people in your space every week. Comment thoughtfully on their work. Share their content with your own perspective added. Build genuine relationships, not transactional ones.
3. Months 7-9: Collaborate. Guest on someone’s podcast. Co-create content. Joint ventures expose you to established audiences.
4. Month 10+: Launch to an audience that already knows and trusts you.

Action Step: Choose your one channel this week. Set a publishing cadence you can maintain for six months (weekly is ideal). The channel matters less than the consistency. A weekly LinkedIn post for a year beats a “viral” TikTok strategy that lasts six weeks.

Step 7: Master Strategic Uncertainty (Without Becoming Reckless)

Research on entrepreneurial personality traits reveals that the Big Five traits most linked to business success are conscientiousness (the strongest predictor of long-term survival), openness to experience (linked to innovation), and emotional stability (critical for managing startup stress).³

Notice what’s not on that list: recklessness, thrill-seeking, or extreme risk tolerance.

Successful entrepreneurs are comfortable with strategic uncertainty, the kind where your actions can influence the outcome. They’re not comfortable with pure gambling. Research also shows they exhibit lower loss aversion than the general population, meaning they’re less paralyzed by the thought of losing. But this isn’t because they ignore risk. It’s because they’ve done the work to understand which risks they can manage.

The Uncertainty Audit:

Before making any major business decision, sort your uncertainties into two columns:

Uncertainties I Can Influence	Uncertainties I Cannot Influence
Product quality	Economic conditions
Customer relationships	Competitor moves
Marketing message	Regulatory changes
Team hiring	Market timing

Spend 80% of your energy on the left column. Accept the right column. This is what separates strategic risk-taking from gambling, and it’s the approach that research links to entrepreneurial resilience and long-term success.

Action Step: Run the Uncertainty Audit on the biggest decision you’re currently facing. If most of your stress is coming from the right column (things you can’t control), redirect your attention to the left.

The Entrepreneurial Journey Takeaway

The entrepreneurial journey isn’t a straight line from idea to success. It’s a cycle of building skills, testing ideas, processing failures, and growing as a person. Here are your next steps:

1. Tonight: Ask yourself Sara Blakely’s question: “What did I fail at this week?” Start normalizing setbacks as evidence of effort.
2. This week: Rate yourself 1-10 on Baron and Markman’s five social skills. Pick your weakest one and practice it deliberately for 30 days.
3. This month: Write your One-Page Business Plan. Answer the seven questions, then revisit them in 90 days.
4. This quarter: Choose one platform and publish consistently. Build your audience before you need it.
5. Ongoing: Run the Uncertainty Audit before every major decision. Focus your energy on what you can influence.

The research is clear: the skills that predict entrepreneurial success (grit, growth mindset, social competence, and strategic thinking) are all learnable. The entrepreneurial journey starts not with a business idea, but with a decision to develop yourself into the kind of person who can execute one.

You have the power for transformation. The journey is hard work, but it’s worth it.

P.S. If Step 4 resonated with you, there’s a reason: social confidence turned out to be one of the key drivers of my own entrepreneurial success. I built an entire course around the science of developing these people skills. Check out my People School course to systematically build the social competence that Baron and Markman’s research links to higher entrepreneurial income.