Which 8 Skills Make An Entrepreneur Successful?

Entrepreneurs ask me all the time “What are the basic skills I need to start a business? I want to read some books and learn and get ready.”

Spoiler Alert: Skills are learned through application and DOING. They are NOT learned by sitting back and thinking, reading books, and listening to podcasts.

We can learn new information and get ideas of concepts, but taking those and applying them into real real-world “doing,” and making them into skills so are instinctually doing the right thing; that can only be done by actually being in the arena and doing.

That’s why if you’re thinking about starting a business and you’ve done the money math to make sure it works out – the “doing” is where you’re actually going to learn stuff. You cannot learn enough until you’ve done it.

The 8 Primary Skills For Business Success

There are about 8 primary skills that I help entrepreneurs learn that are invaluable to business. I have different entrepreneurs improve to different degrees at a variety of these skills but they are ALL incredibly important to not get in your way as you progress forward.

1.) Managing Yourself

This includes managing your emotions, your time, and your self-discipline.

(See my post Managing Yourself – Business Skill #1 To Take Your Business To The Next Level here)

2.) Product Market Fit

Maximizing Product Market fit includes

• How do you have an Irresistible Product?
• Who is your market?
• Does your product solve the needs of that market?
• Is there a fit there and how do you communicate it?

Incredibly important!

(See my post Product Market Fit – Business Skill #2 To Take Your Business To The Next Level here)

3.) Lead Generation And Selling

This is one that a lot of entrepreneurs REALLY don’t want to focus on and get good at.

We will come back to that later.

(See my post about Lead Generation and Sales – Business Skill #3 To Take Your Business To The Next Level here)

4.) Finances

You have to manage cash flow and manage your profit margins.

Know your finances!

(See my post about Financial Mastery – Business Skill #4 To Take Your Business To The Next Level here)

5.) Strategic Planning

You have to have a roadmap to know where you are going.

(See my post about Strategic Planning – Business Skill #5 To Take Your Business To The Next Level here)

6.) Systems

I would say a lot of entrepreneurs don’t even know what a system is or what I mean when I am saying that.

A system is a way to reliably go through a series of steps in a process to get a reliable outcome.

We will talk about that more in other videos.

(See my post about how to Create Systems – Business Skill #6 To Take Your Business To The Next Level here)

7.) Managing People

As a manager, we typically tend to continue to act as a manager just like we did the first time we managed and never stop and evaluate if there is a better way.

If we acted as a buddy-buddy friend, we kept doing that.

If we were a jerk and yelled at people, we kept doing that and never stopped.

So managing people is a skill set that will add stability to your business as you get better and better at it.

(See my post about Managing Employees – Business Skill #7 To Take Your Business To The Next Level here)

8.) Managing Data

The higher up you move into an organization where it scales bigger and bigger the more important that data is to give you the information you need.

When it is just you, you have all the data right at your fingertips.

But when you are in a bigger organization how information flows is the key to success.

(See my post about Managing Data – Business Skill #8 To Take Your Business To The Next Level here)

Overcoming Weaknesses In Your Skillset

So, with these eight skills, it takes a lot of time to build them. (Again, I work 1 on 1 with entrepreneurs to help them figure that part out).

You don’t actually have to do all of them, but the more of these you get good at the better your chance of success!

I’ll use the example of people who don’t like to sell.

That’s sort of like Shaquille O’Neal not being good at free throws.

Now, can you make it work? But would it be better if you’re ALSO good at free throws? Definitely!

So, by having that weakness, you’re having to compensate and make your way around it which means it takes more energy/less efficiency.

You have a hole in your tactics and strategy which competitors can come in and take advantage of.

With that in mind, it is VERY important that you focus on skills. Because skills take time, it is important that you are laser-focused one at a time on putting in the daily work to get the skills put together.

So often in business, we just focus on doing the work we are paid for. Doing the billable hours. Being the technician.

But building these skills is what allows you to “fire yourself” up the Org Chart becoming a CEO-level manager that actually runs an organization more and more successfully.

Questions? Want To Push Back On Something?

Do you have any questions?

Ask me in the comments. I’d love to start a conversation!