7 Skills Every Entrepreneur Should Master

 

When it comes to getting results from the hard work that goes into building a start-up, entrepreneurs need to possess certain skills to make things happen. The business owner cannot afford to be timid in using his skills as this is what determines his company’s success in the long run. The skills explained below are in no way all that an entrepreneur needs in order to be successful. There is much more to the seven skills highlighted here, but these will help you get on your way to setting up an environment for success. 1. Basic Human Understanding: Entrepreneurs don’t work with robots; they work with people like them with blood flowing in their veins, expressing diverse feelings sometimes that they themselves cannot easily identify. Having a basic understanding of human wants, needs and how best to meet them with your business ideas can spell out in a few years the profit you’ll be making because of this basic skill. The more you understand the people who constitute your customer base and bring up ideas to meet their needs, the more you can guarantee how long you will stay in business. 2. Creativity: Entrepreneurs have one thing in common – they are people who are always thinking of how to do things better by thinking through new ideas. Learn whether any self-professed entrepreneur is true by asking, “Do you have any new ideas we can work with?” If he/she is true, they will give you new ideas to work with there and then. There is no dearth of creativity in a true entrepreneur. Even if it is in its barest minimum, it is a skill you can cultivate by reading and rubbing minds with other entrepreneurs like you. 3. Communication: An Entrepreneur must have this skill in abundance. It is with this skill entrepreneurs can effectively pass across to their employees, prospective customers and investors about that great idea that is bound to make profit. The success of your venture is greatly reliant on your ability to communicate clearly, passive (writing) or audible (spoken). 4. Talking money: Here is a skill everyone should like to cultivate. Every entrepreneur must learn how to be comfortable talking about money, not just in their few hundreds of thousands but in their millions and billions. Think of how much you would want your business to be worth in five years then get yourself comfortable talking about that figure. Being comfortable talking about money will also help in asking your prospects about budget so as to place a measure on what and where the company’s money is been spent on. 5. Leadership: Every entrepreneur must possess leadership skills. With this skill, entrepreneurs can take their ideas, share them with a team that is passionate of the same and motivate them towards action. Although most entrepreneurs might believe that they can make their dreams happen on their own but taking that business or company a step further might require such entrepreneur to step out of a worker’s shoes and step into leadership roles where he/she can motivate a team to take his dream to the next level. 6. Persistence: An entrepreneur needs to learn persistence – that will that won’t allow him/her give up easily over depressing statistics about start-ups, frequent discouragements or being denied when in need of essential resources. With focus on the goal he/she wants to achieve, an entrepreneur persists in making his/her dreams come through by being optimistic, hard working and flexible. Entrepreneurs are the ones fond of saying there is no impossibility. They believe if you can think it, dream it, work hard for it, sometimes adjust it a bit, then everything is possible. 7. Learning: Entrepreneurs need to constantly be learning new things about their industry and about how to provide better products and services to customers. The truth is to be a master in the industry you have chosen, you need to know as much as you can about it as possible. If you want to be in the software industry, read the best tech blogs, attend software conferences, keep up to date with the latest technology and read hacker news. You should also not limit yourself to only reading about your industry. Read widely and with an open mind. With this, you will be able to explore different ideas and come up with new ones.  

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This article was first published on 12th March 2014

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