Should You Be An Entrepreneur? Test Yourself

Some of your friends are doing it. Peo­ple who do it are in the front pages and web almost every day. Even Pres­i­dent Obama is talk­ing about it. So should you do it? Should you join the mil­lions of peo­ple every year who take the plunge and start their first ven­tures? I’ve learned in my own years as an entre­pre­neur — and now an entre­pre­neur­ship pro­fes­sor — that there is a gut level “fit” for peo­ple who are poten­tial entre­pre­neurs. There are strong inter­nal dri­vers that com­pel peo­ple to cre­ate their own busi­ness. I’ve devel­oped a 2–minute Finance kid Entre­pre­neur Test, below, to help you find out. Just answer yes or no. Be hon­est with your­self — remem­ber : the worst lies are the ones we tell ourselves.

1. I don’t like being told what to do by peo­ple who are less capa­ble than I am.
2. I like chal­leng­ing myself.
3. I like to win.
4. I like being my own boss.
5. I always look for new and bet­ter ways to do things.
6. I like to ques­tion con­ven­tional wisdom.
7. I like to get peo­ple together in order to get things done.
8. Peo­ple get excited by my ideas.
9. I am rarely sat­is­fied or complacent.
10. I can’t sit still.
11. I can usu­ally work my way out of a dif­fi­cult situation.
12. I would rather fail at my own thing than suc­ceed at some­one else’s.
13. When­ever there is a prob­lem, I am ready to jump right in.
14. I think old dogs can learn — even invent — new tricks.
15. Mem­bers of my fam­ily run their own businesses.
16. I have friends who run their own businesses.
17. I worked after school and dur­ing vaca­tions when I was grow­ing up.
18. I get an adren­a­line rush from sell­ing things.
19. I am exhil­a­rated by achiev­ing results.
20. I could have writ­ten a bet­ter test than Finance Kid (and here is what I would change .…)

If you answered “yes” on 17 or more of these ques­tions, look at your pay­check (if you are lucky enough to still get one). If the com­pany that issued the check isn’t owned by you, it is time for some soul search­ing: Do you have debts to pay? Kids in col­lege? Alimony? Want to take it easy? Maybe bet­ter to wait. Do you have a lit­tle extra cash in the bank and sev­eral credit cards? Do you have a spouse, part­ner, friends, or kids who will cheer you on? If so, start think­ing about what kind of busi­ness you want to set up.

Talk to peo­ple who have made the plunge, learn how to plan and deliver a prod­uct or ser­vice, think about that small busi­ness you might buy, talk to peo­ple with whom you would like to work, and talk to customers.

“I like to take risks” is not on the list. Peo­ple don’t choose to be entre­pre­neurs by opt­ing for a riskier lifestyle. What they do, instead, is reframe the salary vs. entre­pre­neur choice as between two dif­fer­ent sets of risk: the things they don’t like about hav­ing a steady job — such as the risk of bore­dom, work­ing for a bad boss, lack of auton­omy, lack of con­trol over your fate, and get­ting laid off — and the things they fear about being an entre­pre­neur — pos­si­ble fail­ure, finan­cial uncer­tainty, shame or embar­rass­ment, and lost invest­ment. In the end, peo­ple who are meant to be entre­pre­neurs believe that their own abil­i­ties (e.g. lead­er­ship, resource­ful­ness, pluck, hard work) or assets (e.g. money, intel­lec­tual prop­erty, infor­ma­tion, access to cus­tomers) sig­nif­i­cantly mit­i­gate the risks of entre­pre­neur­ship. Risk is ulti­mately a per­sonal assess­ment: what is risky for me is not risky for you.

“I want to get rich” is not on the list either. All else being equal (and all else is rarely equal in the real world), on the aver­age, peo­ple who set up their own busi­nesses don’t make more money, although a few do suc­ceed in grab­bing the brass ring. But the “psy­chic ben­e­fits” — the chal­lenge, auton­omy, recog­ni­tion, excite­ment, and cre­ativ­ity — make it all worthwhile.