Test Yourself: What Is Your Entrepreneur Quotient?
You’ve heard it before: Successful entrepreneurs are driven, outgoing, confident, assertive, resilient. That doesn’t mean a shy person can’t run a successful startup. But most entrepreneurs share common traits. We’ve compiled a totally unscientific quiz to help you determine your entrepreneur quotient—or at least to prompt a chuckle.
1. Who is your mentor?
- a. Charlie at the He’s Not Here bar and grill
- b. Jack Betterway, serial entrepreneur, who quit his widget-making job after designing the Betterway Widget Maker and selling it to Facebook for $1 bazillion
- c. Ron Upright, head of engineering, who took you out to lunch last week
2. The glass is…
- a. Half-empty
- b. Half-full
- c. Drained
- d. I don’t know, but I see suds on it
3. I am most afraid of:
- a. Bankruptcy
- b. Airplane flights
- c. Highway overpasses
- d. Snakes on a plane
- e. Support groups
4. A friend just gave you a gift certificate for a hot-air balloon ride. What do you do with it?
- a. Buy a jacket because it might be chilly up there
- b. Secretly re-gift it to Ron Upright
- c. Allow your mother to talk you out of it
- d. Borrow a parachute so you can experience skydiving as well
5. Your biggest client just rejected your latest presentation. What do you do?
- a. Pull an all-nighter, totally reworking your pitch based on the client’s comments
- b. Visit Charlie at the He’s Not Here bar and grill
- c. Call engineering chief Ron Upright for some new ideas
- d. Work on your script for Modern Family
- e. a and c
- f. b and d
6. Your friends describe you as a:
- a. Workaholic
- b. Perpetual student
- c. Night owl
- d. Carlos Danger
Give yourself 10 points each for these answers: 1. c, 2. b, 3. any answer but a., 4.d., 5.e., 6.a. Give yourself 40 points for being a good sport and taking this quiz. If your total is 100 points, you need to get started right away; anything less and maybe you should keep that day job.
We’re testing for the characteristics of a successful entrepreneur as outlined by Mike Allan, associate director of Livingstones Australia, an employment advisory firm: resilience, openness to new ideas, assertiveness or extraversion, conscientiousness, self-discipline and deliberation combined with the ability to take action.
Check out a more serious quiz to assess your entrepreneurial mettle.