Personal Entrepreneurial Exploration

The Personal Entrepreneurial Exploration project is designed to help you explore your personal characteristics and consider your potential to be an entrepreneur, whether in the typical fashion (a for-profit company) or as a corporate entrepreneur (creating new programs and ventures for an existing firm in an entrepreneurial fashion) or social entrepreneur (addressing pressing social problems in the non-profit sector using entrepreneurial approaches).

Answer all Questions
Personal Entrepreneurial Exploration Questions
1. What gives you energy, and why? These are things from either work or leisure, or both, that
give you the greatest amount of personal satisfaction, sense of enjoyment, and energy.
2. What takes away your energy, and why? These create for you the greatest amount of personal
dissatisfaction, anxiety, or discontent and take away your energy and motivation.
3. List activities (1) that have provided you financial support in the past (e.g., a part-time or full
time business, a paper route), (2) that have contributed to your well-being (e.g., financing your
education or a hobby), and (3) that you have done on your own (e.g., building something).
Discuss why you became involved in each of the activities above and what specifically
influenced each of your decisions. What did you learn from these activities?
4. Would you consider being an entrepreneur? Be as specific as possible in your response by
exploring your motivation for either wanting or not wanting to pursue this as your life path.
5. If you were to become an entrepreneur, what do you think your strengths would be? 6.
If you were to become an entrepreneur, what do you think your weaknesses would be?
7. In what areas of business (e.g. finance, operations, and marketing) do you have the most
experience? What areas do you have the least experience? Do you have extensive experience
or are there considerable gaps? Do the gaps concern you?
8. How do the requirements of entrepreneurship especially the sacrifices, total immersion,
heavy work load, and long-term commitment fit with your own aims, values, and
motivations?
9. How would you compare your entrepreneurial mind, your fit with entrepreneurial role
demands, your management competencies, and so forth, with those people you know who
have pursued or are pursuing an entrepreneurial career?
10. What can you conclude about you and entrepreneurship after answering the prior questions?