What Exactly Is An Entrepreneur's Personality?
What Would I Have To Do To Get One?
As a young struggling entrepreneur, those were questions that certainly popped into my head many times early in my career.
But, because of the open generosity and sharing nature of my mentor, I was able to discover my own personal answers to those questions. Over a period of about six months, I came to understand that although I could relate to the personality of most entrepreneurs, I knew that I did not have one.
The answers that I discovered were quite helpful to me and I believe that they will be useful to you. Many of my associates have told me that there is very serious value in my thoughts regarding these questions. Therefore, I freely offer my thoughts on the subject to you.
First, I want to tell you upfront that the approach I used to resolve these issues for me may not be scientific or even statistically sound, yet throughout my career and the careers of many associates, the truths of what I am about to share with you proved useful to us.
My mentor was an individual who was “self-made”, incredibly smart, and had a strong desire to share what he knew with others. Luckily for me, he also had a strong desire to learn from others as well.
That was the key to my becoming able to put these “haunting” questions to rest once and for all. I discovered that your personality is what it is and is usually quite difficult to change. Therefore, to become a successful entrepreneur, the entrepreneurial path that you select should “mesh” well with your dominant personality type.
Early in my career, my mentor hosted frequent special “insider seminars” which were only attended by the most successful entrepreneurs and all of them were “hand-picked and invited” by my mentor. These seminars enabled me to meet very successful individuals who I would never have ever met if not for the generosity, credibility, and popularity of my mentor.
The seminars were well-designed and the attendees were very carefully chosen. The number of attendees was chosen such that everybody could mingle and renew or build relationships in a very relaxed, quiet, and private environment. It was like a dream to me.
There was never any question that every seminar exposed me to extremely successful entrepreneurs by any standard I could think of, yet what impressed me more than their collective success was the wide and diverse nature of their different personalities.
Some were very approachable, others not at all. Some were arrogant, prideful, argumentative, and for lack of a better word, “just plain nasty”. Yet, the ones who were kind, friendly, relaxed, and yet self-assured were my favorites and I still appreciate the wisdom they shared with me. In short, I learned firsthand that it is not smart nor practical to “lump” any group of people, even entrepreneurs into the same bucket. Entrepreneurs come in all flavors because people do.
Once I accepted that a person’s personality does have an impact on his success or failures, I also realized that most of these successful entrepreneurs succeeded in spite of their “personality flaws” and that is when everything began to make sense – to me!
I then began to ask my clients and associates to describe the personalities of successful entrepreneurs and business people who they personally knew and to do so by using just one word. I allowed them to use as many one-word adjectives as they wanted.
Once they gave me their words, I had them describe the business activity of the person they were describing. What I discovered over the next few years helped me to design my personal business strategies and my business philosophy.
I kept a running tally of the words I collected for quite a while but eventually decided to narrow their total by grouping all of the similar words into new groups that I created based on how each business activity had been described to me.
Here are the most often-used one-word descriptions that remained:
- Aggressive
- Argumentative
- Attentive
- Conservative
- Collaborative
- Creative
- Deceptive
- Disruptive
- Imaginative
- Innovative
- Manipulative
- Passive
- Responsive
- Submissive
I have met successful entrepreneurs who could legitimately be described as aggressive, manipulative, creative, and disruptive even though their business success depended upon a large number of employees having to interact with them on a daily basis. To me, logic would suggest that he would not likely ever be voted for as “Man Of The Year” by his employees.
On the other hand, I met an entrepreneur who I would describe as collaborative, innovative, responsive, and attentive who would seem to be a “natural” to head up and manage a large staff. Yet, the entrepreneur I have in mind chose rather learn how to acquire ownership rights to “distressed products that were in need of marketing assistance”. Once he identified and successfully acquired ownership or marketing rights to products, he chose to license all of the marketing activities to someone else leaving him with lots of free time.
So, which entrepreneur is doing what his personality would suggest?
In these two instances, I would say that neither of them is following their personality yet they were both successful.
I believe that personality is a huge factor in terms of helping you to anticipate potential “bumps in the road”, but you can still overcome the bumps if you really want to do so.
This article was written by SDK Hunter Consulting Group
About The Author:
Sherman Hunter and SDK Hunter Consulting Group staff consultants provide global moneymaking opportunities and proprietary strategies that quickly accelerate business activity. You may familiarize yourself with these unique concepts by visiting the SDK Hunter Consulting Group blog located at: https://sdkhunter.com
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The answers that I discovered were quite helpful to me and I believe that they will be useful to you. Many of my associates have told me that there is very serious value in my thoughts regarding these questions. Therefore, I freely offer my thoughts on the subject to you.