INC. 500 ENTREPRENEURS 
NATIONAL SAMPLE ENTREPRENEURSAs you move forward with your idea, you might ask yourself: Do I have what it takes to be an entrepreneur? And what, exactly, sets the best entrepreneurs apart from the pack?
Those are good questions . . . so good that a few years ago, Inc. staff writer Leigh Buchanan decided to examine them as we prepared the Inc. 500, our annual ranking of America’s fastest-growing private companies. She noticed companies on the list were achieving impressive acceleration without tailwinds from the overall economy.
“We talk about the Inc. 500 as a collection of elite companies, but what this ranking really honors is a collection of elite entrepreneurs,” Buchanan writes. More than 90 percent of Inc. 500 CEOs are also their companies’ founders. The majority are serial entrepreneurs; about one-fifth started their first business before age twenty.
“These people are, by their own proud declarations, ‘unemployable,’” she writes. “But not in the sense that other companies don’t want them. Only in the sense that other companies can’t contain them.”
Yet when Inc. asked these entrepreneurs what made them successful, nearly three-quarters attributed their accomplishments to luck. “We’re not buying it,” Buchanan continues. “We’ve always assumed the leaders of America’s fastest-growing companies were not merely in the right place at the right time with the right resume. Rather, we’ve believed them to be disproportionately gifted with the talents needed to build businesses.”
We invited our Inc. 500 leaders to complete the Entrepreneurial StrengthsFinder assessment, a tool developed by Gallup, the global research firm. Some 150 did so. Gallup then compared the results with those from a national sample of close to 2,700 entrepreneurs. In every dimension, the Inc. 500 leaders scored higher. “In some cases, Everest-versus-Rushmore higher,” Buchanan writes.
Gallup found that Inc. 500 founders were more than twice as likely as the national sample to score high on all ten entrepreneurial strengths. Inc. 500 founders also proved themselves multi-trick ponies, on average scoring high on six of the ten strengths. The national sample scored high on just two. Sixteen percent of Inc. 500 CEOs earned scores high enough to be classified as exceptional by Gallup, compared with 2 percent in the national sample.
The Inc. 500 entrepreneurs excel in every area identified by Gallup. But they absolutely dominate in three strengths—risk-taking, business focus, and determination—compared with the national sample. Those strengths are, not coincidentally, the ones most universally associated with business starts, survival, and scaling.
The group’s top-ranked talent is risk-taking—“which will surprise nobody,” Buchanan says. “After all, without risk there is no business.” To launch their companies, the entrepreneurs were willing to sacrifice everything, from parents’ retirement funds to cushy executive perches. The Inc. 500 is packed with risk-takers walking away from six-figure salaries and taking on debt—often with young families in tow to sharpen the edge.
Gallup says those with a talent for risk-taking possess a highly optimistic perception of risk but are also rational decision makers who have an extraordinary ability to mitigate that risk. The assessment shows that Inc. 500 founders are more likely than other entrepreneurs to take more and bigger risks. But they are also more likely to optimize their chances for good outcomes and, consequently, for rapid growth.
PORTRAIT OF THE NOT-SO-AVERAGE INC. 500 CEO
Gallup compared the scores of 2,700 entrepreneurs on 10 crucial personality traits with those of Inc. 500 CEOs. Below is the percentage of each group that scored “high” on those traits, showcasing the overwhelming talent it takes to make the list.
INC. 500 ENTREPRENEURS NATIONAL SAMPLE ENTREPRENEURS
THE ENTREPRENEURIAL GPA
Fully 16 percent of the Inc. 500 CEOs ranked as “exceptional” in overall entrepreneurial talent, compared with 2 percent of the national entrepreneur population.
SOURCE: Inc. media and Gallup Strengthsfinder Assessment Tool
“As a company grows, so do the risks,” Buchanan writes. “More is at stake—a business with a beating heart.” And without business focus and determination, the Inc. 500 CEOs’ second- and third-ranked strengths, a company can’t survive and scale.
Gallup defines business focus as an emphasis on profit, goals, and metrics; basically, viewing decisions through a will-this-make-us-money lens. According to Gallup, the most talented Inc. 500 leaders were about 54 percent more likely to exceed their profit goals than the most talented leaders in the national sample.
So, while a typical company leader might hold weekly or monthly executive team meetings to discuss metrics, many business-focused Inc. 500 leaders report meeting daily to dissect every data point and adjust accordingly. At one company, Touchsuite, a seller of point-of-sale technology in Boca Raton, Florida, every lunch hour is devoted to the numbers. New goals are set monthly, and quarterly goals are chosen on the basis of a thorough analysis of maximum tangible impact. The team reevaluates three-to-five-year goals annually.
“Those practices speak to focus and discipline,” Buchanan says. Gallup describes determination, the third-ranked talent, in terms of work ethic and the drive to achieve. The 500 are an unusually driven bunch. Ninety-seven percent of high-scoring Inc. 500 entrepreneurs said they intend to grow significantly.
Gallup also associates determination with a high “adversity quotient.” Highly determined entrepreneurs have the ability to overcome obstacles and persevere despite failure. “That rings true,” Buchanan says. “We have rarely interviewed an Inc. 500 founder who hasn’t experienced a ‘dark night of the soul.’”
Bernadette Coleman endured a very dark night in 2011, starting with the news that her son, Michael, was in a coma following a car crash. At the time, Advice Interactive Group, Coleman’s Internet marketing company, based in McKinney, Texas, was just getting past its wobbly-fawn stage. For months, Coleman and her husband, Tom, the company’s CFO, ran Advice Interactive from Michael’s bedside and the stairwells of a Florida hospital. When performance lapses in the leaderless office threatened accounts, the couple redoubled their efforts. When half the staff quit—several to launch a competing business—the couple took turns flying back to Texas to hire replacements and run the company. “We were fighting for our son’s life and for the company,” says Coleman. “We had no choice but to prevail at both.” Advice Interactive has appeared repeatedly on the Inc. 500, with revenue up more than 1,400 percent since the family’s annus horribilis.
All of the Inc. 500 leaders’ powers are great, but it seems their superpowers are largely concentrated in one area—45 percent have an “activation” or forceful style, where they make things happen (compared with 29 percent in the national sample). The finding makes sense, as the list tracks growth rates. “The more force you apply to something, the faster it accelerates,” Buchanan says.
By comparison, the Inc. 500 CEOs are much softer on the soft skills. Only 16 percent have a relational style, compared with 40 percent for the national sample. And relationship-building turned up more often in the national sample’s top three strengths than in the Inc. 500’s top three strengths. In fact, relationship-building is the one strength in which Inc. 500 founders scored below—though not far below—the seventy-fifth percentile.
Gallup describes relationship builders as having high social awareness, building mutually beneficial relationships, and getting to know customers and employees outside of work. “Of all the strengths, relationship-building takes the most time and patience, and the payoff is rarely immediate,” Buchanan writes. That may explain why the action- and achievement-oriented Inc. 500 leaders lag behind in this area.
Relationship-building is considered a feminine trait, leadership studies show. Just 10 percent of Inc. 500 companies are led by women—a number that is growing, but still low.
Entrepreneurs with action-oriented talents may want to hire and develop women and men with “softer strengths” who are makers of friends and influencers of people, Buchanan concludes. That way, they can continue to rack up extraordinary gains and successes.