Are You An Egg Sucking Entrepreneur?

I was talking to my brother Simon yesterday and we were discussing entrepreneurs and how it can be difficult to go to the next level in a business.

We both agreed that the common trap entrepreneurs seem to fall into is making excuses for their business. After all it’s their baby. And it can be very hard for any parent to see that their baby isn’t well and needs some medicine.

We’d just returned from our nephew Ben’s 21st birthday party and we were unwinding with a glass of wine and a cup of tea for me ( I still had a bit of a drive back to Manchester).

And it suddenly struck me that there are several different types of entrepreneur. In fact after coming home I identified 4 entrepreneur types.

So I’ve compiled a fun little quiz to see what sort of entrepreneur you are. Simply record for each question the answer letter and then we’ll score it.

What Entrepreneur Questions

Question 1: You’ve realised that your profits are down this month. Do you

a) start telling the sales people to sell more
b) look at all the reasons why profits are down
c) ignore it as a temporary blip
d) Ring the bank and ask to extend your overdraft

Question 2: You bring in a web consultant and they advise you to change your web site. Do you

a) agree, but it’s low on your priority list and is unlikely to happen
b) examine each recommendation and decide whether it makes sense before using them
c) You’ve paid for the advice so you implement every recommendation
d) implement each one using split testing

Question 3: Your whole team is professionally trained in presentation skills for free Do you

a) think “that it’s a great motivator for the team and it means they’ll work harder”
b) think “it was fun, but it was free so it probably wasn’t that good” 
c) think “we didn’t learn much as the team were already fully trained”
d) think “I can’t see how we could possibly use these new skills to make a difference in the business”

Question 4: Your best customer tells you that they wont be renewing their contract in 2 months, do you

a) urge them to stay and offer large discounts to really make it difficult for them to leave
b) say, “we don’t need your business"
c) Work out whether redundancies are needed
d) Tell the sales people to sell more

Question 5: Another business is being offered for sale very cheaply, do you

a) buy it because its cheap
b) investigate the reason for the business being sold cheaply
c) say, “it’s cheap so there’s probably a flaw in it so I shouldn’t buy it” and ignore it
d) say, “we don’t need to grow any bigger”

Now to the scoring:

Question 1: a=1, b=4, c=3, d=2
Question 2: a=1, b=2, c=3, d=4
Question 3: a=4, b=1, c=3, d=2
Question 4: a=1, b=, c=3, d=4
Question 5: a=1, b=4, c=3, d=2

Now record your total score and tomorrow I’ll give you the type of entrepreneur you are along with a description of what you’re like. And remember this is just a bit of summer holiday fun!