The personality profile is a relevant factor for a person to decide (and act) to start-up a new business. Several factors (including high motivation and drive) necessary to take the risks usually associated to such venture must have a direct relation with his/her personality.
I do not intend to associate specific characteristics as necessary for a start-up entrepreneur. However, I hope that, sharing some elements of my personality profile that I believe were critical for my motivation, decision and (what I consider) success, could provide good insight for people considering to pursue the similar track of starting and running a business in which he/she wants to maintain a relevant share of ownership.
For some time, I thought that it related to making money. However, going back to those early moments, I can see that the motivation behind my decision related more to my personality and other drivers than with the single objective of “becoming rich”.
Having my own company had been in my blood since I can remember. The fact that my father was an entrepreneur himself and that, while working with him, I had a chance of trying some of the sweet flavors (while protected from the taste of the sour side) of having my company had a relevant influence.
Such background was relevant. But other key drivers that made me quit a promising career at a leading consulting company - we did not even have a house and my wife was expecting our second child! -and undertake the risk of investing all our savings in a project to be started from scratch.
One of such drivers was an objective to be on my own, not to depend on how others would evaluate me but, rather, on what I could accomplish by myself. Not have to deal with corporate politics or even networking to step-up my professional career (although I do realize that there are drawbacks from such characteristic).
A second aspect was that I wanted to be in control, to be in charge of my life and to determine my priorities. “No boss”, autonomy to make my decisions and to follow my own rules. I wanted to do it myself, do it my way and do it now!
I had the energy, self-confidence, a lot of anxiety and I wanted to earn most of the value that I would generate. Finally, yes, I wanted to make money, too!
The risk did not matter much. All of those factors were stressful, but the potential dividends in terms of personal satisfaction, including the feeling of Realizing (in the sense of make real – “Entreprendre”) were very motivating.
Concept: DISC Personality Profile Assessment
(I am not an expert on DISC, but I want to share this interesting concept, helpful in several moments of my career. My experience has shown that the use of the DISC profile can be useful when recruiting for some specific functions. Moreover, I have also noticed that a number of start-up entrepreneurs have similar DISC profiles)
As described in Wikipedia, DISC is a four quadrant behavioral model based on the work of William Marston (Harvard) PhD to examine the behavior of normal individuals in their environment.
His research indicated that some relevant characteristics of behavior can be grouped into specific 'personality styles' with specific characteristics common to each style. All individuals can be classified acoording to such four quadrants.
DISC is an acronym for:
Dominance – relating to control, power and assertiveness
Influence – relating to social situations, ability to convince and to communication
Steadiness – relating to patience and thoughtfulness
Conscientiousness (or caution, compliance) – relating to rules, structure and organization
My Personality Profile
This profile refers mostly to the period when starting-up our companies in the 1980's/90's. Some of the elements remain the same, others have evolved or subsided in recent years.
Below I list some elements of my personality that I consider to have been relevant in my entrepreneurship experience.
- Highly Result oriented
- Want to be in control
- Ambitious, self-centered
- Like “to do it and do it now”
- Deal well with Uncertainty, Risk of loss, failure
- Low conformity with established order, rules – make changes
- High ability to persuade others, mostly through enthusiasm, emotion
- Persistent, self motivated, able to be hit and quickly find strength to start over, to be there the next day
In summary, I am confident that my decision to start-up and run my own company had more to do with certain personal characteristics and, consequently, personal needs and desires than with the objective of making money, by itself.
Such elements were so strong that I knew I would be frustrated and unhappy to follow a regular career at a company where I did not have a lot of autonomy and control. Starting my own company was just what I had to do.
