Start The Right Business – What You Need To Know To Start A Business That Fits Your Personality
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Episode 63 – Start The Right Business – What You Need To Know To Start A Business That Fits Your Personality
My business mission is: to enable independence through entrepreneurship.
Meaning, to give people more freedom through helping them live, work and make money their way.
The best way to make money ‘your way’ is usually to build a business, otherwise, inevitably, someone else is going to have opinions on how things should be done.
And out goes your way!
Starting the right business doesn’t mean start any business you might like
Just because you are the boss it doesn’t mean you can make any business a fit.
In fact, because you get to make all the decisions you create more margin for error to get it wrong.
The options are limitless – so how do you get it right?
Your business needs to fit you in three different ways:
- Purpose – it needs to be work that fits your values.
- Lifestyle – it needs to be work that, at least in the long term, enables the lifestyle you want.
- Workstyle – it needs to be work that fits your personality – meaning how you like to work.
What do you mean fit my ‘workstyle’?
I’ve been helping people with their business ideas for seven years (the time has flown by because spoiler: I am running the right business!).
Since the beginning each time I had a new client I would look at their skills, their life experience, their preferences and what they really wanted out of life and ask myself – what does this person need in a business idea to be satisfied and happy?
What will be interesting enough, aligned enough and most suited to them out of all the available options?
This led to me developing the Entrepreneurial Design System. You can read more about how it came about here when I first released it.
The idea behind this system is that we are all different. We each have our own workstyle.
Even if you have the same title e.g. Health Coach, Tax Consultant, Social Media Expert, VA etc you have a way of operating, a way you prefer to show up in the world, and in order to be happy in your business you need to be aware of this and work with it.
It’s like having your own operating manual. That is your workstyle.
If you don’t have your Entrepreneurial Design Profile yet you can download it here.
The Entrepreneurial Design Types
The five Entrepreneurial Design Types are:
- B Type – Brain Type
- C Type – Communication Type
- D Type – Direction Type
- E Type – Execution Type
- F Type – Focus Type
You’ll get a different result for each of these type. The combination of the types makes up your workstyle.
B Type – Brain Type
Your Brain Type is an indication of if you are more analytical or intuitive, or if you are more left-brained or right-brained, or you could think of it as whether you are more ‘thinking’ or ‘feeling’ when it comes to making decisions.
Your B Type affects the business idea that will fit you, your unique process that you’ll develop and how you’ll prefer to market your business.
C Type – Communication Type
Your Communication Type refers to how you like to interact with other people.
Do you thrive in large groups or do you prefer deeper more intimate connections?
Your C Type affects what kind of offers you should create and also the best ways of letting people know about your business.
D Type – Direction Type
Your Direction Type captures whether you prefer to use existing systems and processes or whether you prefer to innovate.
Your D Type affects how you will deliver your offers and whether or not you develop a unique process or whether you’ll leverage an existing one.
E Type – Execution Type
Your Execution Type reflects whether you prefer to lead or prefer to implement.
Your E Type affects your role, as well as your business idea and your offers.
F Type – Focus Type
Your Focus Type is an indicator of how much activity, movement or complexity you want to have in your business.
Do you like having lots of projects going at once or are you someone who can really only focus their energy on one thing.
Contrary to popular belief it is possible to be multi-passionate, ie. have lots of interests and passions and run a successful business.
Your F Type affects EVERYTHING.
And it can be one of the most freeing things to realise it’s okay to have multiple interests and you can likely combine at least some of them to create a business that really fits you.
So what does ‘workstyle’, Entrepreneurial Design and starting the right business look like for real people?
Let’s look at three different hypothetical examples to see what that looks like in real life.
I’m going to take people who all have a similar interests to show how your workstyle affects your business idea, offers, marketing and in truth, all aspects of your business.
Let’s say that each person has a strong interest in fitness and healthy eating.
- Anna has the Entrepreneurial Design B – Emotive, C – Reflector, D – Trusted, E – Developer, F – Singular.
- Beatrice has the Entrepreneurial Design B Type – Analytical, C Type – Relater, D Type – Pragmatic, E Type – Architect, F Type – Related.
- Alex has the Entrepreneurial Design – B Type – Strategic, C Type – Presenter, D Type – Innovative, E Type – Torch-bearer, F Type – Varied.
Anna – Looking at her Entrepreneurial Design Anna leans towards a ‘feeling’ or a ‘right-brained’ approach. She prefers to work with people 1:1 where she can create a deep connection. She likes trusted processes and wants to be involved in the day to day work of making progress rather than purely consulting. She doesn’t like to have many projects going at once.
Maybe the right business for Anna would be working as a holistic PT or Emotional Eating Coach with people 1:1. Most likely due to her F Type she wouldn’t want to be running a lot of different programs. She may use an existing proprietary process e.g become certified in someone else’s eating/exercise program.
Beatrice – Looking at Beatrice’s Entrepreneurial Design she likes to use data, she likes working with small groups or in a smaller setting, she takes a pragmatic approach meaning she likes to work on and expand processes that have already been proven, she wants to have a practical approach to leading her clients and she likes having a few related projects.
Maybe the right business idea for Beatrice would be along the lines of a Dietician. She could get into the data on how her clients should eat correctly for their situation, perhaps she would initially work one on one and then graduate into small groups.
While Beatrice would enjoy formal study she would also probably want to add her own ideas to create her own signature process on how to get the best results. She would enjoy advising her clients but also staying involved in the practicalities of their journey. She may like to have several programs, maybe for people with different health problems or perhaps she would take on different advisory roles in different organisations.
Alex – Alex has the Entrepreneurial Design with the most extremes. She likes to be strategic, so she is more left-brain leaning. She loves interacting with lots of people, is always starting new projects, wants to lead and innovate and doesn’t care too much for the old way of doing things.
Alex may eventually feel best in a speaking, or ‘figurehead’ role where she has conferences, masterminds, potentially multiple programs that perhaps a team under her runs, she will almost certainly create her own unique way of getting results.
Did that get a bit confusing?
If so, don’t worry!
Here are the important points for you
- Each persons business looks completely different despite starting with the same set of interests (Purpose)
- Any one of those businesses could scale into an extremely successful business while keeping to the founder’s Entrepreneurial Design.
- If you gave Alex Anna’s business she would hate it, and vice versa
- There is no one ‘successful’ personality type – you can build a business according to who you are.
So that’s how you can go a long way to starting the right business – by building according to your Entrepreneurial Design.
If you need help coming up with a business idea go to Episode 58 – How To Come Up With A Business Idea and if you can’t decide on your idea go to Episode 21 – 6 Simple Steps To Decide On Your Business Idea.
If you don’t have your Entrepreneurial Design yet get it at myentrepreneurialdesign.com
Does this mean you can start with that perfect business right away?
Before I sign off I want to make one important point.
You can’t always start off with the business in exactly the form that suits you. Sometimes you can, but sometimes you can’t.
But regardless now is always the right time to start.
A business has to grow from a starting point and sometimes your ideal business that suits your design and workstyle is a business that it will take many years to create.
This is the case for the example Alex. She can’t become an established conference speaker with a huge audience tomorrow, that will take time to build.
If you want to better understand how to get started as close to your design as possible and then how to grow your business into the absolutely right for you business watch the Zero To Paying Clients Masterclass.