What being an entrepreneur means

You need more than a great vision to know how to run a successful business.

Your skillset as an entrepreneur will play a crucial role in determining the future of your company. But first, you need to know what an ‘entrepreneur' is.

In general, entrepreneur skills include a variety of hard and soft skills. Hard skills are those that can be measured, such as specific technical knowledge. These are acquired through education and training. On the other hand, soft skills are more like personality traits that are inherent or self-taught, such as leadership, emotional intelligence, and initiative.

As a business owner, you’ll wear multiple hats that’ll require you to excel at various skills in order to grow your business. You’ll need the mindset of an entrepreneur to analyse, navigate and implement the challenges and solutions you will come across along the way. Below, we have listed the 8 most important skills you’ll need to learn, and eventually master, to become a successful entrepreneur and business operator.

1. Best Communication Tools For Business

By definition, communication skills are the ability to convey different kinds of information. As an entrepreneur, you need to learn to communicate in a way that influences and persuades a wide variety of people.

You need to be able to effectively communicate with your:

a) Investors and stakeholders to describe the vision of your company,

b) Customers to build relationships and sell your products/services, and

c) Employees, to keep them engaged and motivated.

Plus, you have to become comfortable in communicating via a range of different methods, such as in-person meetings (1 on 1 and groups), telephone conversations, messaging apps, group chats, emails, and more. We use Whatsapp group chats at We Assist Co, they’re a fun and efficient way to communicate more effectively with our team and get everyone on the same page. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel!

If you’ve built a team around you, work boards or apps such as monday.com or Asana are great places to internally communicate and delegate tasks, assignments, and help everyone keep track of how different projects are coming along in the pipeline. Once you’ve wrapped your head around the user design, they keep communicating with employees and team members simple.

The manner in which you communicate also matters. If you are authentic and sincere when communicating with people, you will naturally attract the right people to your business. You don't need to be assertive like Grant Cardone or shoot from the hip like Gary Vee - just show your true personality and we promise that it'll get noticed by the people you want to work with and for.

2. How To Get Better At Sales

Even if you're not in charge of your sales department, you will still be the first salesperson and the face for your company. From the very beginning, you’ll have to sell your ideas to investors, your product to your clients, and your vision to potential team members.

If you want to create a successful business, you’ll have to find new business opportunities and sales channels. Once the ball is rolling, you can invest in building more complex and refined sales funnels that convert to create revenue opportunities for growth.

What are the best sales skills?

A salesperson requires more in-depth skills like prospecting, storytelling, and negotiation skills, among others. These are difficult skills to master, but they can be learned.

Learn by jumping straight in there. Pickup the phone & talk to people; learn what works and what doesn’t. It might seem awkward, daunting, or scary at first, but cold-calling is an excellent way to practice pitching to strangers, and is a great way to learn there really isn’t much to be scared of. A bad or awkward call isn’t the end of the world. You literally have nothing to lose by practising.

Enrolling yourself in a sales course or workshop can also help. The best way to become a better salesperson is to sell. You'll get better with each and every sales call or meeting - we promise.

You may be uncomfortable and nervous at first, but as Mark Cuban says “No business has ever succeeded without sales”. Sales are at the core of your businesses success, so invest into getting good at it.

3. Money Management

Making a lot of sales, and money, will be of no use if you don’t know how to manage that money. A successful entrepreneur knows how to spend (or invest) their money in a way that decreases losses and unnecessary spending, and increases investments into growing the business.

To acquire this skill set, start by keeping close track of your finances-  establish clear goals, create a budget, separate personal expenses, and be prepared to re-invest most of your initial profits straight back into the business to keep it growing.

You’ll have the option of hiring a professional to delegate this task, but you still need to understand the basic principles of finance management. Otherwise, how will you ensure your business is handling its resources properly?

There is an abundance of great books to read, one of our favourites at We Assist Co is “Money” by Tony Robbins.

4. How To Hire and Train the Right People

No matter how good of an entrepreneur you are, you won’t be able to run a successful business by yourself. You need a team of talented people. And it isn’t easy to find and hire the right employees.

The recruitment process requires diligence. You have to find a process to reach out to your potential employees. It’s a long process of going through resumes, interviews, and assessments. It will be even harder if you are looking for particular skills, a certain personality, etc.

And the task doesn’t end once you hire an employee. You need to invest resources and time for their development through training. This will ensure your employees stay educated and informed about the latest advancements in your field. Nailing this down will help your business succeed and last into the future, as constantly re-hiring and retraining can seriously slow down your progress.

5. Leadership Effectiveness

Entrepreneurial leadership is the process of inspiring and motivating a group of people to achieve a common goal. It is an important skill as it provides clarity, initiates action, improves coordination, and builds the morale of employees.

A lot of people have leadership skills naturally, but they can also be developed with practice. You can achieve leadership via communicating with your employees clearly, delegating responsibilities, showing trust, asking for feedback, and finding the interests of the team as a whole. Most importantly, a great leader actively displays appreciation for their team, and actively looks for ways to make their employees feel valued and listened to. This is how you keep staff dedicated long-term to your business; by showing gratitude and appreciation for their efforts.

6. Time Management

Time management is one of the toughest skills to master - especially as an entrepreneur. Most business owners will end up working seven days a week for endless hours. Often, this will mean things like diet, exercise and personal time go out the door.

Trust us, we've been there and it doesn’t add any value to your company, or your life.

It’s crucial that you learn how to manage your time. You’ll have to divide your time, make a schedule, prioritize your tasks, and steer clear of distractions. Finding balance and time to separate work from life is integral in maintaining a clear head, so you make better decisions when you are working. Finding time to regularly exercise, eat clean and drink plenty of water is one of the most effective ways to keep a clear head.

Using a simple calendar can do wonders to declutter your schedule and see things with more clarity. Google has a free one that allows you to allocate work, leisure, free time and anything else to ensure you are managing your time, meetings and deadlines in a way that works for you. 

Once you start managing your time effectively, you’ll notice many positive impacts on your professional and personal life. It’ll significantly reduce your stress and anxiety levels and can make you more productive. Sometimes you have to slow down to speed up!

7. Learn What Critical Thinking Is

Let’s say you are in a meeting with your team and someone suggests a new method of getting leads/customers. A critical thinker will look closely at the new idea, research and collect data, and analyse the possible outcomes before approving or rejecting the idea.

In short, critical thinking is the process of analysing and evaluating an issue to form a judgement. This is a soft skill that you can acquire by being objective and observant.

Implementing critical thinking into your business will help you improve communication and collaboration among your employees and your customers, and find the best solutions to achieve best results

8. Strategic Planning In Business 

The importance of strategic planning in a business cannot be overstated. But what is it?

Strategic planning is the process of defining a framework or roadmap to achieve a certain goal. Depending on the size of your organisation, you can create monthly, quarterly, or yearly plans.

It is an absolute must for entrepreneurs to know how to strategically plan their business. This skill set will allow you to foresee the future of the company and prepare accordingly. It’ll help in defining the direction toward which your business travels.

The key to successful strategic planning is to assess the market for new opportunities, set clear goals and objectives for your employees, allocate budget and resources, and track & measure the success of your planning.

Now you're ready to become a successful business operator!

Becoming an entrepreneur is a big, risky and difficult job. With so many businesses failing, you need to equip yourself with the proper skills and knowledge before getting started.

Every skill set we have discussed above is crucial for an entrepreneur. We know it can feel overwhelming, especially to first-time entrepreneurs running a small business. Remember, these skills can be acquired by proper training and discipline.

The final step is to combine these skills with passion, a belief in your mission and a relentless work ethic. We promise that if you do that, it will only be a matter of time until you share all kinds of success with your team.

The Bottom Line.

Curious to find out how we can assist you in growing your business? Use the contact form below to get in touch for a complimentary business consultation!