Are you ready to be an entrepreneur?

When to use the scenario:

• evaluating personal qualities / abilities necessary to become an entrepreneur

Materials:

• printed papers with the Entrepreneurial Quotient test, and results
• pens
• printed explanations of the quiz
• one flip-chart paper
• markers

How:

Preparation:

• print the Entrepreneurial Quotient quiz  adapted from the quiz from Start Your Own Business, Sixth Edition: The Only Startup Book You’ll Ever Need (a test for each workshop participant);
• read Are you ready to be an entrepreneur? Entrepreneurship Quotient.

Presentation:

• Ask the participants what are the most important qualities of an entrepreneur, from their point of view. Write down the things they mention, on a flip-chart paper. You might use a well-known entrepreneur from your own community, so that the participants can relate to a real person when thinking to specific qualities / abilities.
• Once the brainstorming is done, introduce to the participants the idea that entrepreneurship abilities can be tested, and that during this exercise they can test their Entrepreneurial Quotient / Coefficient.
• Give each participant one printed Entrepreneurial Quotient quiz and give them around 15 to 20 minutes to answer to the quiz.
• After everyone is done filling in the quiz, give each participant one printed page with the results of the quiz.
• Help the participants to score their results accordingly, taking question one by one. At the same time, for each question explain to the participants why some answers are more “entrepreneurial” than others (use the explanations of the quiz presented in this toolkit).
• Recap the most important abilities that people should develop in order to be successful as an entrepreneur. Enter the new abilities, from the test, on the flip-chart paper initially used.
• Remind the participants that having this qualities/abilities does not mean automatically that one will succeed in his/her own business, but one may have the qualities / abilities it takes to become successful, while working hard for developing the business.

Follow-up questions:

• Now that you know your EQ (Entrepreneurial Quotient), and if you consider to become an entrepreneur, what will be your main strong abilities that will help you in developing a business?
• What will be the abilities you need to develop and how do you plan to develop them?

Possible variations:

For step 1., you could ask the participants what is an entrepreneur, from their point of view instead of asking about entrepreneurship abilities.

Other resources:

Start Your Own Business, Sixth Edition: The Only Startup Book You’ll Ever Need, written by Inc The Staff of Entrepreneur Media.