What Type of Entrepreneur are You? What are Your Distinguishing Traits?

It is good you’re an entrepreneur, and the government in fact encourages everyone to be self-sufficient through entrepreneurship; but what kind of entrepreneur are you? The kind of entrepreneur you are is not necessarily the kind of job you do, but the scale of job that you do and its operating model.

Let’s consider some types of entrepreneurs based on their scale of jobs, and the characteristics that make them stand out.

• Self-employed: Self-employment means you work for yourself and by yourself. Here you don’t hire another person because you can’t afford it or don’t really need anyone to run the business. It’s a full time job and you also keep all profits.

• Opportunistic entrepreneurs: Here you establish a business with the knowledge that you’d need to hire or team up with others to make it run efficiently – and these are usually people with specialized skills and experiences that you don’t have.

• Inventors: This class of entrepreneurs is large-scale and industrial. They come up with a product idea and then float a company to produce and market the product to customers.

• Pattern multipliers: This group of entrepreneurs builds their one business structure on the model already created and operated by existing players in the industry. They only replicate and expand upon an existing idea or build upon it, for instance, franchise business.

• Business acquirers: This is common in North America and Europe than it is in Africa. Here a businessman or entrepreneur does not start his own business from scratch, but buys up an existing business with financial problems and then remodels it to suit his needs and purposes.

• Speculators: This group of persons buys up a business structure, remodels and upgrades it, and then resells to a highest bidder. They speculate on the profitability of existing businesses before investing. They may also be buyers of art, real estate, and other related things.

• Intrapreneurs: These persons are already employed within a larger organization, but they conceive project ideas and executive it independently within their own units/departments to the overall good of the company.

• Necessity entrepreneur: This class of persons establishes micro-businesses with the capacity to feed and sustain themselves for as long as possible. These may be traders, tailors, drivers, and retailers who do not really need the help of others to run their business.

Knowing where you belong as an entrepreneur will help you to better position yourself for success while dealing with the evolving challenges that are associated with your line of chosen business.