By following the process created in this book, you’ll discover things you didn’t know before—about yourself, your interests, and your capabilities—and about businesses: the multitude of choices out there and how to start evaluating them on your own.
So if you’ve been saying “Someday, I’d like to have my own business,” this book is for you. I hope I can help you make “someday” come much sooner, as you discover the right business—the successful business—for you!
step 1
Discover your E-Type™
discover your E-Type
Most business books and experts assert that there’s just one kind of person who can be a successful entrepreneur. To be an entrepreneur, they’ll tell you, you have to be:
It’s a great list, but it’s just not true.
Look around: You may know someone who’s self-employed, making lots of money, yet hates risk so much he won’t climb a ladder, or is painfully shy, or sleeps ’til noon.
Clearly, that person violates at least one of the supposedly necessary requirements to be a successful entrepreneur, yet he’s doing well. Why? Because he’s found a type of business that suits him, that’s a good fit for his personality and work habits.
Can you, too, be a successful entrepreneur even if you don’t fit the “normal” criteria? Absolutely!
The key is finding the right business for you—particularly the right kind of business for your “entrepreneurial type,” or E-Type.™
What’s your E-Type?
People have different personalities and preferences, attitudes and abilities. These shape the way each one of us works best.
When it comes to finding a job, we understand this. We know that different careers suit different people. And if we haven’t succeeded in one career, we often know it’s because we haven’t found the right “fit” yet.
So, when we’re trying to figure out which job to apply for, or which career path to pursue, we do some self-examination. There are a variety of personality or career-aptitude tests we can take in school, career counseling centers, or on our jobs. Yet, when it comes to starting a business, we somehow think that only one kind of person can succeed.
But there are thousands of different kinds of businesses. These various businesses require different skill sets, different interests, different personality types, different working styles.
Defining your E-Type is the first step in helping you find the right business opportunity for you. By understanding what type of entrepreneur you are—not what traits should be possessed by some hypothetical entrepreneur—you have a much better grasp of the types of businesses in which you can succeed. As importantly, you have a better sense of which kinds of businesses to avoid.
The good news? With so many different businesses to choose from, and businesses suited to all different E-Types, you’re certain to find a business that’s right for you.
How does knowing your E-Type help?
When someone first considers going into business for themselves, they typically start by considering their interests. Of course, you want to have a business that interests you, but your interests are just a starting point.
The question is not only what you like to do, but how you like to—and how you’re suited to—do it. Your E-Type helps define the way you work best—regardless of the industry or area of interest.
So how does it work? Let’s go back to the issue of what interests you to see how knowing your E-Type can help you shape your choice of business.
Let’s say you’re interested in antiques. There are lots of different ways you can have a business involved with antiques. You could:
Each of these businesses centers around your interest area, but each requires very different types of skills and different ways of working.
Even if you know that you want to sell antiques, does that mean you’d be happy owning a retail store? Or would you be better suited to shopping at flea markets for bargains you can turn around and sell? Or perhaps you have the capability to profitably buy and sell antiques on eBay?
Your interest is clear—antiques—but you’ve got a number of different ways to build a business around that interest.
The question is how you like to work and what suits your situation. If you prefer working with your hands, you might want to be an antique restorer. If you like traveling and shopping, you might want to buy and sell at flea markets. If you want to interact with people every day, you might want to open an antiques store.
That’s where understanding your E-Type comes in.
The E-Type test
Based on my experience with thousands of entrepreneurs, I’ve identified nine specific E-Types that cover the range of personality traits and working styles. Later in this chapter I’ll describe the nine E-Types in depth. But first, I’m going to have you take the E-Type test.
The first thing to know about the test is that there are no right answers or wrong answers; no good answers or better answers. This is not a test that you can fail! I promise that no matter how you answer, I will not come back and tell you “you’re not fit to be an entrepreneur.” I’m simply going to help you find out what type of entrepreneur you are.
Next, be sure to answer these questions as honestly as possible—no one is going to see the results of this test except you. So don’t try to “second guess” the meaning of each question, choosing answers that you think will make the test come out more favorably for you. Remember, there are no wrong answers—there are