A blog post at Hear Hear lead me to reading Inc Magazine’s interviews with America’s 25 most Fascinating Entrepreneurs, I read a few things that certainly ring true in my mind and are worth repeating.

I’ll start with the #1 ranked enterpreneur, Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com.  Along with many other great things he had to say, I read and agree with two things in particular.

Entrepreneurs are Natural Problem Solvers
“Entrepreneurship is really more about a state of mind than it is about working for yourself. It’s about being resourceful, it’s about problem solving. If you meet people who seem like really good problem solvers, step back, and you’ll see that they are self-reliant. I spent summers on my grandfather’s ranch, in a small town in Texas; from age four to 16 I probably missed only two summers. One of the things that you learn in a rural area like that is self-reliance. People do everything themselves. My grandfather bought a used D6 Caterpillar bulldozer, and it had a stripped transmission. He had to get a big gear out of this thing and that one gear probably weighed 500 pounds–so he had to build a small crane! That kind of self-reliance is something you can learn, and my grandfather was a huge role model for me: If something is broken, let’s fix it.”

Follow your Passions, not a Paycheck
“One of the huge mistakes people make is that they try to force an interest on themselves. If you’re really interested in software and computer science, you should focus on that. But if you’re really interested in medicine, and you decide you’re going to become an Internet entrepreneur because it looks like everybody else is doing well, then that’s probably not going to work. You don’t choose your passions, your passions choose you. One of the reasons you saw so many companies that were formed in 1998 or 1999 fail is that they were chasing the wave. And that usually doesn’t work. Find that area that you are interested in and passionate about–and wait for the wave to find you.”

There are more great articles from talented, passionate problem solvers (aka entrepreneurs) in this article.  As I have time I’ll add add more of my favorites.