Having the skills needed to be successful can make running your own business easier and less stressful. It can also make it easier to navigate challenges that arise, such as those we've been dealing with over the past year with the COVID-19 pandemic. If entrepreneurs lack key skills, they can feel overwhelmed, stressed, and stuck where they are.
If you are the full owner or major shareholder of a company, you can make nice profits as an entrepreneur when things go well; but as an entrepreneur you also take more risk – much more than a salaried employee. This entrepreneurial risk can take several forms, including financial risk, career risk, emotional risk, or general business risk.
Because there is so much at stake when it comes to starting and growing a successful business, there are very specific skills that an entrepreneur usually needs to be successful.
Insight into entrepreneurial skills
Entrepreneurs play a key role in any economy, using the skills and initiative needed to anticipate needs, and often bring great new ideas to market.
Entrepreneurship that proves successful in taking on the risks of setting up a start up, is rewarded with profit, success and continued growth opportunities. Entrepreneurship that fails leads to losses and often fewer opportunities for those involved.
While the prospect of becoming your own boss and making a fortune is appealing to entrepreneurial dreamers, the potential downside of starting your own business is also present.
Income is not guaranteed, employer-sponsored benefits pass you by and if your company loses money, your personal assets could potentially take a hit as well; not just the business results. But adhering to a few tried and true principles can go a long way in spreading risk.
Following are 6 key attributes needed to be a successful entrepreneur.
Communication
Every entrepreneur must be able to communicate effectively. Whether you are a solo entrepreneur or need to run an internationally operating company, it is important to be able to communicate effectively with all the stakeholders and potential stakeholders you deal with as an entrepreneur.
It is imperative for an entrepreneur to be able to communicate with employees, investors, customers, creditors, colleagues and mentors. If an entrepreneur cannot convey the value of his business to others through effective communication, it is difficult to grow the business successfully.
Mastering all forms of communication is important, including one-on-one and face-to-face conversations, group conversations, written communications, and email or online messaging.
sales
The soft skill of sales goes hand in hand with the communication needed to be successful. As an entrepreneur you have to be able to sell anything and everything. An entrepreneur must sell the business idea to potential investors, the product or service to customers, and themselves to potential employees.
As an entrepreneur, if you are able to communicate effectively, you are better equipped to sell ideas and physical products.
In the beginning, it is quite normal for entrepreneurs to be the first salespeople within the company. Those sales skills are then needed to demonstrate value to all stakeholders inside and outside the company.
Patience
Not everything is going to happen overnight. Even the most successful companies take time to grow. Apparently sudden successes usually have a foundation that has been worked behind the scenes for years before they "suddenly" get off the ground. Learn to be patient by staying mindful and celebrating the little milestones that come your way. It is important to realize that things take time and to focus more on the progress being made along the way.
“To build a successful business, you must start small and dream big.” – Aliko Dangote
Focus
The road to successful entrepreneurship is full of ups and downs. There are the highlights of successes and the despair of misfortunes. A successful entrepreneur must be able to stay focused so that he or she can stay on track – even when the going gets tough.
This skill can also be thought of as thinking with purpose in mind. Whatever struggles an entrepreneur goes through, a successful entrepreneur has the focus necessary to keep a sharp eye on the end goal and can push himself to keep taking steps to achieve it.
inquisitiveness
The ability to learn is one of the most important skills in life, let alone in entrepreneurship. However, if one is building a business, the ability to learn is a prerequisite for success.
The ups and downs an entrepreneur goes through are inevitable. An entrepreneur needs a high learning capacity – and a desire to keep learning. If you can learn as a person in any situation, including making mistakes and failing, then you have the skills needed to become a successful entrepreneur. Failure can actually help increase one's knowledge and understanding of things.
Strategic thinking
While a successful entrepreneur has built a successful business, the skill of business strategy is actually the fifth most important skill an entrepreneur needs. Entrepreneurs often achieve success in their business through their own willpower.
By applying effective communication skills, sales skills, deep focus and high learning ability, an entrepreneur can learn how to apply a business strategy along the way.
When structuring and growing a business, it is important that the structure and growth strategy are based on common sense and skills. A successful entrepreneur must have a solid strategy to take his business from good to better, to very successful.
Finally about skills for you as an entrepreneur
You too have the ability to build a successful business. Thousands of people have already done it who are not much different or can do more than you. To succeed, they simply learned the necessary behaviors including the important characteristics mentioned above to fulfill their dreams and took consistent action to achieve their goals. You can do the same!
Sources ao BusinessCollective (link), BXNO (link), Forbes (link), Investopedia (link), patch (link)
