I attended a Business Development Conference Tuesday that was primarily focused on people who want to start their own business. The negative side of me wants to say that I didn't hear anything that I hadn't heard before. Well, like the story of the professional athlete who goes to a trainer, he rarely hears of some new technique, he gets to review what he should already know. That's exactly what this conference did, and it was just what I needed.
The first presentation was titled "Starting Your Own Business" and it was presented by John Hilliard of the Lexington KY branch of SCORE. About 40 PowerPoint slides, but it was slide number 4 that nailed me. Ten questions of self assessment. Here are the questions:
- Are you a self-starter?
- Do you enjoy competition?
- Do you have will power and self-discipline?
- Do you enjoy making decisions?
- Are you a good planner?
- Do you manager your finances well?
- Are you willing to work 12-14 hour days?
- Are you physically and emotionally strong?
- Is your family supportive of your proposal?
- Do you easily interact with other people.
For the assessment, rate each item on a 1-10 scale, where 10 means "absolutely," and 7 means "probably." Then add all the point values (max of 100 possible). Then slide #5 asks the simple question: did you score 90 or higher? Wow... that requires a pretty high rating on EVERY item on the list. Hmmm...
I don't think I'll share my score just yet. How about you?
