Take a few minutes to list your personal and business strengths and weaknesses. Include everything you can think of, even if it doesn’t appear to be related to your business. For instance, your strong points may include the mastery of a hobby, your positive personality traits, and your sexual charisma, as well as your specific business skills. Take your time and be generous. To provide you with a little help, I include a sample list for Antoinette Gorzak, a personal friend who has what she hopes is a good business idea: a slightly different approach to selling women’s clothing. You’ll get to know her better as we go along. Her strengths, weaknesses, fantasies, and fears are surely different from yours. So, too, almost certainly, is the business she wants to start. So be sure to make your own lists—don’t copy Antoinette’s.
Antoinette Gorzak:
My Strong and Weak Points
Strong Points (in no particular order)
1. Knowledge of all aspects of women’s
fashion business
2. Ability to translate abstract objectives
into concrete steps
3. Good cook
4. Faithful friend and kind to animals
5. When I set a goal, I can be relentless in
achieving it
6. Ability to make and keep good
business friends—I have had many
repeat customers at other jobs.
Weak Points
1. Impatience
2. Dislike of repetitive detail
3. Romantic (is this a weak point in
business?)
4. The tendency to postpone working on
problems
5. The tendency to lose patience with fools
(sometimes I carry this too far—
especially when I’m tired)
Your list of strong and weak points will help you see any obvious conflicts between your personality and the business you’re in or want to start. For example, if you don’t like being around people but plan to start a life insurance agency with you as the primary salesperson, you may have a personality clash with your business. The solution might be to find another part of the insurance business that doesn’t require as many people contact. Unfortunately, many people don’t realize that their personalities will have a direct bearing on their business success. An example close to the experience of folks at Nolo involves bookstores. In the years since Nolo began publishing, they have seen all sorts of people, from retired librarians to unemployed Ph.D.s, open bookstores. A large percentage of these stores have failed because the skills needed to run a successful bookstore involve more than a love of books.
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