See: More Than Half of Adults Think They Have What It Takes to Start Their Own Business

Are you confident you have what it takes to be an entrepreneur?

You aren't the only one.

More than half of working-age adults believe they have the ability to start their own company, according to a new report from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, which surveyed people working in 60 countries around the world. What’s more, 21 percent of those polled said they intend to start a business within the next three years, 66 percent think entrepreneurship is a solid career move and 68 percent say that they view business owners as having a “high status” in society.

Of the respondents who are already business owners and live in highly-developed economies, 78 percent said they choose to launch their ventures because they saw opportunities, not because they were forced to by economic necessity. For entrepreneurs living in less-developed economies, 69 percent reported the same.

“It is often a misperception that most entrepreneurs in less-developed economies are necessity-motivated,” Donna Kelley, a professor of entrepreneurship at Babson College and the report's lead author, said in a statement. “The reality is that entrepreneurial opportunities of all types exist in every part of the world, and there are ambitious entrepreneurs everywhere with the aspirations to pursue them.”

The report found people at the beginning and middle of their careers, aged 25 to 35 and 35 to 44, have the highest participation rates when it comes to entrepreneurship. The average total entrepreneurial activity among women was highest in less-developed economies, which often heavily rely on agriculture and natural resources. In Indonesia, Malaysia, Peru, Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand, women had "equal or higher entrepreneurship rates than men."

The United States, meanwhile, fell in the middle of the pack in terms of gender parity in entrepreneurship rates, ranking 31 out of the 60 countries that were surveyed.

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See: 3 Qualities That Make High Performers Different From Workaholics

"I'm a recovering workaholic," admits Jullien Gordon, a nationally recognized speaker and founding partner of New Higher, on his website.

Workaholism, he says in a 2014 LinkedIn post, looks similar to high performance on the outside--but they're actually nothing alike.

Gordon spent years doing research and conducting experiments on himself to understand the difference between workaholism and high performance.

He found that while they both look like hard work, "the big difference is how the individual feels on the inside about who they are in [relation] to their work," he explains.

A high performer works hard in "healthy sustainable ways and feels happy and inspired," he adds. Meanwhile, a workaholic "works hard in unhealthy unsustainable ways and feels unhappy and burned out." 

Here are three more subtle differences between workaholics and high performers:

1. High performers know their value. Workaholics allow others to determine their value.

"A high performer knows their self-worth and can thus work with a sense a freedom," Gordon writes. They do periodic self-evaluations of their performance so that they can constantly improve. And, he says, "they create their own feedback loops rather than waiting on feedback from others."

A workaholic, on the other hand, relies on external validation from those around them: bosses, colleagues, and clients. They wait for external evaluations, such as mid-year or annual reviews, to understand how well they are doing, which causes them to work with a constant sense of fear.

2. High performers give 100% at the right time. Workaholics give 110% all of the time.

Gordon says a high performer knows when to "turn it up." They know when they're expected or required to give everything they have--and they save their energy for those occasions.

"They don't buy into the illusion of 110%," he writes in the LinkedIn post. "They know that 110% is unsustainable. Instead they focus on increasing their capacity so that their 100% is better than the competition's 110%."

A workaholic attempts to go all out, all the time. "They have difficulty prioritizing what's important, therefore, everything is important in their mind."

He tells Business Insider: "The hardest worker doesn't always win, but the winner does work harder."

3. High performers do business. Workaholics are busy.

A high performer's primary goal is to do business. "The only thing that matters to them are results," writes Gordon. "If they can't see a way to create value in the moment, they facilitate or strategize instead. They know that like the economy, business comes in waves, therefore they get ready during the dips so they can capitalize during the upswings."

The No. 1 goal of a workaholic is to be busy at all times--as they believe that the busier they are (or appear), the more important they must be.

"Workaholics fill any space in time with busy work because they feel insecure doing nothing," he explains on LinkedIn. "The insecurity comes from not knowing their value."

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Seen 4 Traits of Expert Communicators

Corporate communicators at the top of their game may be hard to identify at a glance.

They might drink coffee in excess or possess a dog-eared, Post-It-filled copy of the AP Stylebook, but they ultimately blend in naturally with society. Only by working with an expert communicator can you determine their true nature.

Here are four surefire ways to tell when you are in the presence of phenomenal corporate communicators:

1. They know what to look for, and then they dig deeper. 

A rave review on Yelp is not a story, but it could be the tip of a valuable iceberg. A truly seasoned communicator knows which key questions to ask: What circumstances made the customer write the review? Do we have a star employee or a completely unheard-of process hidden within our organization?

2. They consider multiple points of view. 

Whose perspective makes a story sing? It’s probably not the CEO’s. A seasoned communicator considers those closest to the story—the nurses, salespeople, receptionists or engineers—and then interviews them.

3. They write, rewrite and repeat.

“ Moby-Dick” wasn’t written in one go. Rewriting a story from scratch provides fresh breakthroughs and new angles, until the communicator arrives at the most effective story possible.

4. They know how to take criticism. 

Nearly every communicator is subject to review by executives, legal counsel or other stakeholders. Though a novice might be reluctant to let go of an eloquent passage or clever turn of phrase, doing so is simply the nature of the job, and the end product will be stronger for it.

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