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Are You Qualified To Be an Entrepreneur?

What defines an entrepreneur? Many studies have been conducted to determine whether company founders share certain personality traits and characteristics.

By JOSEPH R. MANCUSO StartupJournal.com from the Wall St. Journal

From these findings, a profile has emerged which can be used to forewarn individuals who want to start companies but may not be ideally suited to entrepreneurship. Yet such assessments aren’t foolproof. Entrepreneurs come in all shapes and sizes, and many who don’t conform to the standard have been wildly successful at being their own bosses.

Still, if you’re thinking of going into business for yourself, it may be comforting to find out if you have the traits and characteristics typical of entrepreneurs. Many have used the 26-question quiz developed from my research on entrepreneurs to answer this question. It was first published three decades ago and has been updated every few years. From the results, you can decide how well suited you are to founding a company.

A Good Match

Joshua Z. Tabin, founder of the Tabin Corp., a Chicago technology-solutions company, fits the profile established by the quiz almost perfectly and likely would score high.

Entrepreneurs often are the children or grandchildren of immigrants, and all of Mr. Tabin’s grandparents are from Russia. Although born in America, his mother couldn’t speak English until she started school. Mr. Tabin’s relationship with the key breadwinner in his family, his father, was strained and competitive, another factor true of many entrepreneurs.

Mr. Tabin hated high school and was expelled. He completed college, the degree that most entrepreneurs achieve. Although he always wanted to found and run his own company, he first worked in a range of computer- and sales-related jobs on the assumption that "working for others was the best way to learn," he says. "That’s why I didn’t start a business earlier."

Being fired from jobs tends to correlate with entrepreneurship. Mr. Tabin was fired four times. After the last pink slip, at age 27, he decided to launch his own firm. He sold most of his possessions, including his suits and cars, and racked up $30,000 in credit-card debt to fund the enterprise. Entrepreneurs also tend to be risk-takers.

Mr. Tabin’s main reason for starting a company, he says, was to realize his vision for how a business should be operated. Tabin Corp. attempts to create an entrepreneurial culture by giving employees a lot of freedom and making them accountable for their results. In its first six months, the company made $2,000. The next year, it grossed $600,000. Tabin Corp. now consists of three divisions and generates revenues of nearly $30 million annually.

Another key reason for starting a firm: "I don’t like working for anyone else," says Mr. Tabin, now 33. "I view myself as an entrepreneur because I have an urge to create, not to just fit in and have my career revolve around someone else’s vision."

Outside the Norm

But even people who haven’t started their own companies can be entrepreneurial. Some entrepreneurs buy companies instead of starting them. Some inherit companies or take over for a founder. And some work within large corporations, finding and starting new ventures that are later spun off.

Mike Sheaffer didn’t start Hi-Line Inc., the Dallas-based industrial products company he runs today. But he has many entrepreneurial traits and qualities nonetheless. He was nine when he started his first business. The lemonade stand in front of the family’s Dallas home wasn’t just a simple table and chairs. "It was like a construction project," he says. "It had a window and a screen so that people couldn’t reach in and steal stuff. I sold chewing gum, cookies and Cokes, not just lemonade."

That summer, Mr. Sheaffer’s father, Joe, was starting Hi-Line. He taught Mike one of his earliest entrepreneurial lessons. Mike had been buying packs of gum for the lemonade stand for four cents apiece from the supermarket, then reselling them at the same price. "When my father saw that, he sat me down and gave me my first lesson in profit and loss," says the younger Mr. Sheaffer.

Mike began working for his father occasionally as a preteen. He joined the company full-time in 1976 at age 26. His first project was to clean the warehouse from top to bottom, he says. He became president of Hi-Line in 1988.

While he didn’t start the business, he’s become an entrepreneur in his own right. He’s tripled revenues and employees during his tenure by innovating and promoting entrepreneurial strategies within the company. He corresponds quite closely to the typical entrepreneurial profile: He is the oldest son of an entrepreneur; he started several businesses before he was 20; and he would make a poor employee because he hates other people telling him what to do.

Now the question that will test definitions of the "typical entrepreneur" is whether Mike’s oldest child, now six years old, also will be an entrepreneur when she takes over the business. When your parents are self-employed, the opportunity to learn entrepreneurship at the dinner table is immense.

Failure and Success

If you think you’re entrepreneurial and decide to start a company, don’t be discouraged if you fail. An extraordinary high percentage of entrepreneurs fail in their first, second and even third ventures. At some point, they find the magic formula for success and their businesses take off.

In fact, it’s difficult to study entrepreneurs because many, if not most, are absorbed into the business world or fail. When I began researching this group, I included those who had failed in my initial sample. In fact, some entrepreneurs in the study were both winners and losers, depending upon which of their companies were used as criteria.

To determine how you might fare as an entrepreneur, answer each question honestly on the accompanying 26-question quiz. http://www.startupjournal.com/howto/soundadvice/20020327-mancuso-quiz.html The resulting scores identify five potential ranges for success as an entrepreneur, from successful to latent to borderline, plus whether you’re better suited to working for others.

— Mr. Mancuso is founder and president of the Chief Executive Officers’ Club Inc., a New York-based not-for-profit educational association of CEOs and entrepreneurs.

Copyright © 2003 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

http://www.startupjournal.com/howto/soundadvice/20020327-mancuso.html

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