7 Psychographic Traits of Successful Entrepreneurs
The personality, beliefs, values, attitudes, opinions and interests of the most successful entrepreneurs, backed by research
1. Big 5 Personality Traits
The Big 5 Personality Type of an Entrepreneur Is:
- Openness: Entrepreneurs tend to be high in Openness to Experience.
- Conscientiousness: Entrepreneurs tend to be high in Conscientiousness.
- Extraversion: Entrepreneurs tend to be high in Extraversion.
- Agreeableness: Entrepreneurs tend to be low in Agreeableness.
- Neuroticism: Entrepreneurs tend to be low in Neuroticism.
Read The Ultimate Guide: Big 5 Personality Traits of an Entrepreneur
I wrote this guide to help entrepreneurs understand the the pros, cons and implications of their personality on their career as an entrepreneur. Give that a read if you’re interested. I don’t have time to go into it here.
2. Need for Achievement
Who reads the job description of an entrepreneur — 80-hour weeks for no pay, dire financial risk, crippling stress, and a 95% failure rate — and doesn’t run the other way screaming?
Someone who has a deep-seated need for achievement, that’s who.
I imagine a non-entrepreneurs might guess that the motivation for starting a business was purely monetary. That doesn’t seem to be the case at all.
Anyone who knows anything about entrepreneurship knows that a payday is extremely unlikely. The hope of a payday might attract someone into entrepreneurship but it certainly isn’t predictive of success.
Need for achievement is a powerful predictor of success.
The effect sizes are as high as the effects of sleeping pills on the improvement of insomnia.
But where does the need for achievement come from? Is it healthy or unhealthy? Are we trying to achieve for altruistic reasons, like making the world a better place? Or is the need for achievement just masking a need for…
