Skills That Every Entrepreneur Should Learn

Just like a mother’s touch of care, love and warmth makes a baby ready for a beautiful life. Similarly, an entrepreneurial journey also requires a great deal of commitment and should persist for years to make a business grow to greater heights.

We live in a ‘Start Up’ era where everyday thousands of new ideas bloom with an expectation to grow and make it big. But, it’s a startling fact that only 1-2% make it to the club. The reason is the cutting- edge competition and high customer expectations.

Let us deep dive further into understanding as to what skill sets are required to run this showbiz called ‘Entrepreneurship’.

Financial Knowledge:

All businesses are about the numbers. Right from Sales to Production to Budgeting or Reviews, all that matters are the numbers. An entrepreneur should be well versed in understanding his company’s financials thoroughly. After all, it’s all about deciding how to invest, where to invest and why to invest. In order to answer these important questions, a wise entrepreneur should always strive hard to enhance his financial skill sets with every passing hour and day.

“Do not work for money, Make it work for you” – Robert Kiyosaki

Smart Decision Making:

In every entrepreneurial journey, a good or bad decision can make or mar the future of the business. An entrepreneur should be able to take quick and smarter decisions in order to have a positive impact on the short and long run. For an entrepreneur all decisions from the smallest to the most critical ones are important and hence an apt and careful decision making becomes the need of the hour.

“Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision” – Peter Drucker

Risk Taking Ability: The dynamism of any business at times calls for taking a risky decision. Every entrepreneur should develop a risk-taking ability. But is should be noted that the risks should be calculated ones, keeping in mind the short and long term impact on the business. All said and done, risks taken with the right wisdom and a long term vision have the potential of reaping great results for the business.

“Every risk is worth taking as long as it’s for a good cause, and contributes to a good life” – Richard Branson

Sales:

In any form of business, everything revolves around sales. A good entrepreneur has the ability to drive strong sales targets on a month on month and year on year basis. In a wider spectrum, sales can also be seen getting into contracts with the bigger players and convincing them for investing in the company. This requires a great deal of concept selling knowledge and convincing communication skills.

“Never lower your targets, increase your actions” – Grant Cardone

Time Management:

One thing that every entrepreneur falls short of is time. There are so many tasks to complete from holding meetings, taking reviews, making quick decisions, walk throughs and so much more on the to do list. With a number of important tasks to complete inside a limited span, time management plays a crucial part in an entrepreneur’s life. He should learn to manage his time well. This can be done through pre-defined planners and prioritizing urgent tasks. Good time management helps any entrepreneur to work more efficiently and take better decisions.

“Time is really the only capital any human being has, and the only thing he cannot afford to lose” -Thomas Edison

Futuristic Thinking:

A good entrepreneur is the one who has a strong futuristic thought process. Even today the biggest names in the business like Apple, Google, Amazon, Tesla are successful because of their futuristic approach. It takes a lot of wisdom and foresightedness to come up with plans that will change the world in the future. It must be noted that futuristic thinking is risky, but if done with a deep rooted understanding and knowledge of the subject. Such ideas can work wonders in skyrocketing the business growth.

“The best way to predict the future is to create it” – Peter Drucker

People Management Skills:

As the proverb says, that employees and workers are the biggest strength of any organization. People management skills has its own important place when it comes to managing large or small businesses. Every entrepreneur should work hard towards enhancing his people management skills for both the white and blue collar employees. A good businessman is someone who is really great at empathising with his employees and lending his ear to their needs and requirements.

“If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself”- Henry Ford

Creative Thinking:

Every entrepreneur should strive to enhance his creative side. Business environment nowadays has become very dynamic. Products and services change really fast and in order to compete in the market effectively, it has become important for every entrepreneur to have a creative bent of mind. This also helps in leading projects related to advertisement and selling campaigns along with coming up with new products and services.

“Creativity is seeing what others see and thinking what no one else ever thought” – Albert Einstein

Effective Communication Skills:

Written and Verbal communication plays a vital role in deciding the success and failure of a leader. As an entrepreneur, effective communication is very important because whatever is being said is followed by the whole company in letter and spirit. A good communicator showcases great empathy, which is liked by all the employees down under. As an entrepreneur, it is very important to work on written and verbal communication so that the employees clearly understand their responsibility and thus work towards a common goal.

“The art of communication is the language of leadership” – James Humes (Former Presidential Speech Writer)

These are some of the many skills that can create great entrepreneurs. The times have changed and it has become imperative for the next generation business leaders to train and enhance themselves with greater skill sets for the future which is bigger, brighter and shinier for the business world.

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About the Author Kumar Saurabh

The writer has a great passion to pen down his thoughts on life and general well being. At the same time he has a strong hand in bringing life to any subject that he writes on. His writings have received great appreciation and acknowledgement on different platforms.