What is Your Dream Job? It Depends on What Type of Entrepreneur You Are

I suspect that one of the reasons you went into business for yourself was because you wanted to love your job. When you run your own company, you get to define everything. You get to create your own strategy, build your own offers, and select your own clients. Everything is controlled by you.

But if you’re not careful, you aren’t going to build the business you dream of, and it’s because of the advice you hear online. How often do you hear gurus say “this is what you’re supposed to be doing” as if what they say applies to everyone equally? Beware: that’s a trap.

Those gurus are well-meaning people who want you to succeed. But the fact is that they do not know who you are. Their advice may be “generally true”, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to be true for you.

So today I want to talk about what type of entrepreneur you are and how you want to match your business model, services, and products to your personality. This way, you keep doing the things that excite and energize you, rather than turning your business into just another job that leads to one stressful day after another.

Your Type of Entrepreneur

A few weeks ago, I talked about how you want to match your marketing language to the personality of the clients you want to attract, which just so happen to be personalities like yourself. To understand the different personalities, we used the Enneagram. I chose it because we could adopt a simplified version to meet our goals.

But I also mentioned that there were other kinds of personality tests out there that you could use. Today, I want to introduce you to a different one: the Myers-Briggs personality typology. There are a couple of reasons for using this one as a mirror to see yourself and understand your entrepreneur type. First, I think it will be easier to adapt for our purposes. And, second, I want to expose you to another test you can use.

How Does the Myers-Briggs Categorize Personality

The Myers-Briggs evaluation breaks personality into 16 types. These 16 types are derived from combinations of four binary sets. Here are the four sets:

• Introvert vs extrovert: This is how you build energy. Would you prefer to be alone? If so, you are an introvert. Do you get energized being around people? Then you are an extrovert.
• Intuitive vs sensor: This is how you tune into information. Do you rely primarily upon your senses to gather information from your environment. If so, you are a sensor. Do you mostly catch overall patterns and systems at work? If so, you are an intuitive.
• Thinker vs feeler: This is about how you make decisions. Do you like to look over data and come to some reasonable conclusion? Then you are a thinker. Do you like to make decisions based on how you feel about the situation, the values you uphold, or the needs of others? Then you are a feeler.
• Judge vs perceiver: Are you more comfortable with an ordered environment? Then you are a judge. Do you prefer a more fluid structure? Then you are a perceiver.

The sets are all on a spectrum with most people being relatively balanced, but some are more extreme. In the end, you end up with a combination of letters as your label. For example, I am an INFP (Introvert, iNtuitive, Feeler, Perceiver).

What I want to do now is look at how you can leverage this system of self-understanding to help you design the business you run.

What Should You Do? What Should You Avoid?

Introvert/Extrovert

Remember, introverts build their energy when they are alone. They tend to have very few close friends and prefer one-on-one conversations. When they find themselves in crowds, it can be exhausting.

If your entrepreneur type is an introvert, you want to design offers that energize you. You may want to focus on selling products more than services. This will limit your exposure to people. You might also want to limit your services to 1-to-1 services. These are naturally your favorite types of conversation. They may still be a bit draining, but not nearly as much as a one-to-many event. Plus, you still want personal interactions with clients because those interactions generate information that helps you to improve your offers over time.

If you are an extrovert, strongly consider all the ways you can interact with groups. Sitting in front of a desk building products for consumption may drain your energy because it lacks what you need. Think instead of one-to-many classes and programs. Group coaching, online Q&A sessions, and online events for the masses can keep your gas tank full. This doesn’t mean you should neglect 1-to-1 sessions, though. You still need them. Again, they are an important source of information you need for your bigger programs. But, make sure you don’t get stuck there. You want to move on to one-to-many group sessions as soon as possible.

Intuitive/Sensor

Are you the type of entrepreneur who likes to zoom down into the particulars and see what you can find? Or are you the big-picture person who sees how everything is related? This is an important question when you are designing your offerings. Don’t just sell products. Sell your perspective through your products.

If you are the sensor who defaults to gathering information from the data before you, consider setting up your offerings in a way that is laser-focused on a topic. You might enjoy creating one-and-done products or courses. So, topical ebooks, webinars, and singular video courses may be a great way to go for you. Keep in mind that just because you are selling one-off products and services, they all need to be intimately related to your signature system.

You may also absolutely love getting into the metric side of your business. Measure everything. Want to know what’s working? Look at the data. What offers sell? What language sells? What design sells? This is all about crunching the numbers.

If you are the intuitive type of entrepreneur, then leverage your awareness of the interrelatedness of everything. Don’t just create a course. Create a program that includes several stages of growth through a series of courses. Or, you can create a series of ebooks that tackle a problem in a systemic manner. Don’t think of what you offer as a quick fix, but a process of becoming for those who go through it. Design what you offer accordingly.

Thinker vs Feeler

One of the key decisions you need to make when you are building your business is what clients do you want to work with. You simply do not want to work with everyone. You want to work only with your ideal client. These are the people who you can work with best and who you can help best.

Thinkers take the reasonable approach very seriously. They want to know why they should do something. If this is you, build that into your client-acquisition process. When people sign up for a clarity call, give them a questionnaire that helps you to understand not only their problem but who they are. It’s a way for you to gather data. Remember, you want to work with people who have a compatible personality as well as a problem you are able to solve. Ask questions that draw out the information you need, such as “what do you imagine the process of working with me being like?” If you prefer a more co-creative process and they say “I tell you what to do and you do it,” then the survey says this isn’t the client for you. I’m not saying you should eliminate the discovery call entirely. Rather, I recommend you use a questionnaire to weed out those who you know aren’t going to be a good match.

Feelers are more interpersonal. They make decisions based on how they feel about things and the needs of others. The best way you can qualify potential clients will be through an actual conversation. This will give you the opportunity to listen to their voice and maybe even see their expressions while you discuss hopes, dreams, and aspirations. If it feels like a great match, wonderful! If not, then you might want to pay attention to that.

Judges vs Perceivers

Deadlines. Yeah, those things. What do you think of them? Well, it depends on this aspect of your personality.

Judges thrive in highly-structured environments. They like to know what exactly they need to do and when it needs to be done. They love to mark off items off lists. Organization is their friend.

Deadlines aren’t experienced as threatening, but rather as an encouraging guide for the journey. Deadlines are like the target that you aim your arrow at. In fact, it’s not unknown for judges to be ahead of the game and finish projects early (Bullseye!). Once you’ve finished your work, you can mark it off your list, let it go, and move on to the next project, even if you still have days before the actual deadline arrives.

If you are a judge, then you can really leverage your ability to be organized and maximize your time and energy with a planner. The more ducks you have lined up in a row, the less stress you will experience in your everyday work. The more opportunities you have to check things off, the more energizing the accomplishments will be.

On the other hand, perceivers hate deadlines. They thrive in a more free-flowing experience. Build-in too much structure and they feel caged. Because of the way they prefer to work, it’s not uncommon for them to struggle with last-minute time crunches, hoping to get everything done on time. This, of course, increases stress dramatically.

For better or worse, deadlines are an unavoidable part of running a business. Nonetheless, you have the option to minimize them in your life by structuring your offers accordingly. Rather than working with people directly, consider creating products that can be sold, such as ebooks or online courses. You don’t need hard deadlines for these. When they’re done, they can go live. But, if they aren’t done yet, no harm/no foul.

And when you do have to deal with deadlines, I recommend you add in a “soft” deadline—a deadline that appears well before the final deadline—just for you. So, if you have a presentation due on Friday (hard deadline), for you its completion deadline is Wednesday (soft deadline), which gives you a couple of days buffer in case you need it. You may also want to consider adjusting your daily schedule to accommodate. Again, if you typically have a hard deadline on Friday, maybe you could add 2 hours to your workday on Wednesday to accommodate the soft deadline, and then clock out 2 hours early on Friday to balance it out.

It’s Not About the Test, It’s About You

I used the Myers-Briggs personality assessment as an example of how you can match your type of business to your entrepreneur type. But, you could use any personality test out there. It doesn’t matter which one. The point is that those tools give you a way to reflect and discover what will empower and energize you, and what will drain you and stress you out.

Your ideal offerings should not just reflect the wants and needs of your ideal client, they should reflect your wants and needs as well. You don’t want to find yourself in a position where you’re running a business you don’t love. You don’t want to burn yourself out. And I don’t want that to happen to you either.

Instead, be intentional about what you do. Your business should reflect the type of entrepreneur you are. This is all part of your overall strategy that is meant to lead you to business success and being free to live the life you want to lead.

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