Top Entrepreneurial Skills Every First-Time Entrepreneur Needs

Photo by Diana Polekhina on Unsplash

People often think high-achieving entrepreneurs are “born different.” Either that or they have some natural gift or secret formula that makes it easier for them to run a business. But there’s actually no secret formula. The answer is skills.

There’s no overnight hack to becoming a successful entrepreneur BUT there are specific skills that give you a much stronger chance at building and growing a business that flourishes.

Success in any business venture you start will come down to developing these entrepreneurial skills and practicing them over time.

What are entrepreneurial skills?

A skill is simply the ability to do something well. Entrepreneurial skills are the set of abilities that help one start and grow a business successfully. They help you handle the challenges of running a business and keep your venture moving forward with as little friction as possible.

And they usually fall into two buckets:

• Soft skills: These are skills that help you work with people and solve problems. They are more abstract but are very important for entrepreneurs. Skills like communication, leadership, creativity.

• Hard skills: These are the more practical, technical abilities you need to run the business like managing money, marketing, sales, operations, understanding your numbers.

To be a successful entrepreneur, you need a balanced mix of both the hard and soft skills.

Developing entrepreneurial skills makes it easier to run a business. And even if you don’t end up running your own company, these skills will serve you well in any career.

What are the best skills to develop as an entrepreneur?

Problem-Solving

Problem-solving is a core skill every entrepreneur needs. This is because, at its core, every business exists because it solves a problem for a target audience. But it doesn’t stop at the big problem, entrepreneurs solve problems daily. With problem-solving skills, you know how to solve problems and more importantly, which problems to solve to save you time and energy.

Growth mindset

A growth mindset is the belief that the abilities and intelligence you will need to be successful at anything are not fixed but can be developed through learning and hard work.

If you want to develop the skills needed for entrepreneurship, you first need a growth mindset. Founders with a growth mindset focus on continuously improving themselves because they believe that they can always get better. They stay open to new ideas and remain resilient even when things don’t go as planned. This way they adapt faster and eventually build stronger businesses.

Money management

Many new entrepreneurs fail because they don’t know how to manage money. Money management is your ability to plan and allocate your business finances in a way that ensures the survival and long-term growth of the business. Poor money management is one of the top reasons businesses fail. Up to 82% of businesses fail due to poor cash flow management. So, learning this skill will give your business the financial stability it needs to last.

Time management

As an entrepreneur, you work for yourself, and your productivity (and often your team’s) depends on how well you manage your time. Time is a limited resource, so you need to use it wisely. You have to learn to intentionally plan and direct your hours toward the activities that truly move your business forward. And that itself is a skill that needs honing.

Creativity

Creativity means your ability to generate new and unique ideas by combining your imagination, knowledge and problem solving skill. Creativity helps you make connections others might not see and create solutions that are both unique and useful.

Unlike the popular belief, creativity isn’t reserved for a few, everyone has it and everyone can develop it. It just shows up differently from person to person. In business, creativity can take many forms: a unique business model, a memorable customer experience, anything. The opportunities to apply creativity in business are endless. And like a muscle, the more you use it, the stronger it gets.

Decision making

Decision-making is one of the most critical entrepreneurial skills because running a business is really a series of constant choices under uncertainty. From the moment you get a business idea, you’re already making decisions: what market to enter, what product to build, when to pivot, which opportunities to pursue, who to hire, when to spend money.

Making decisions is a science on its own, you have to consider a ton of factors, make connections, draw conclusions, anticipate outcomes and more. To handle this, you need to build your decision-making skill. The more efficient you get at making decisions, the faster your business moves forward and the stronger your competitive advantage becomes.

Communication

Communication is the ability to share your thoughts, ideas, information, and even emotions with others whether in spoken or written forms. It’s one of the most important entrepreneurial skills you can develop, because the success of your business often depends on how well you can make your ideas understood.

And it’s not just talking. A huge part of being a good communicator is being a good listener too, what’s often called active listening. When you listen well, you build stronger relationships, spot opportunities, and solve problems faster.

Leadership

Whether you have a team or not, you have to learn leadership. When you’re building alone, leadership shows up as self-leadership: the discipline to stay consistent and follow through even when no one’s watching. As your business grows and you start working with others, leadership expands into people leadership. That is, inspiring and motivating your team, delegating effectively, and creating an environment where people can thrive while staying aligned with the business vision.

Calculated risk taking

To run a successful business, you’ll often find yourself in situations where you have to take risks. Risks are uncertain and you can’t always know if it’s a safe bet or not but they’re absolutely necessary for growth. That’s why, as an entrepreneur, you must learn the art of calculated risk-taking. Calculated risk taking involves making informed, strategic decisions after weighing potential rewards against potential losses, rather than acting recklessly. And this is a skill you can practice and develop over time.

Resilience

Resilience is the ability to adapt and recover from disruptions in business. Things won’t always go as planned. As an entrepreneur, you have to be unbending, able to take the punch, learn from it, and keep moving forward where others would prefer to give up. Building resilience is what actually carries your business through tough seasons. It’s what keeps entrepreneurs standing when the journey gets hard.

Networking

Networking is the skill of intentionally building and nurturing relationships that can provide support, opportunities, knowledge or resources for your business. It’s important to learn to network because no entrepreneur succeeds alone. Networking expands your reach, your resources, and builds your circle, making it one of the most powerful entrepreneurial skills in the long-term.

Strategic thinking

As an entrepreneur, you have to often look beyond your day-to-day tasks at the bigger picture and then make choices that set your business up for long-term success. When you develop this skill, every action you take and every decision you make ties back to the growth and sustainability of your business, not just short-term wins. But to think strategically, you also need a clear vision for your business. That is, a clear picture of the future you want to build. It’s what gives your business direction and meaning.

How to develop entrepreneurial skills

Entrepreneurial skills are not fixed, they can be learned by anyone. Here you’ll see a few ways to develop these skills:

1. Learn by doing

This is the best way to learn entrepreneurial skills. Entrepreneurship is really a practice sport. Sometimes, you’d have to actually connect with people to learn networking or practice speaking to learn communication. Even launching a side hustle and conducting tiny experiments can teach you some skills like problem-solving and decision-making faster than any textbook. That’s the beauty of it, you don’t need a whole big business to learn these skills. They can be picked up even in the littlest things.

2. Build your circle

Another way to develop your entrepreneurial skills is to surround yourself with people who are also building, experimenting, failing and trying again.

The right circle accelerates your learning curve. So, find people who push you to think bigger, who question your decisions, who force you to defend your ideas, who ultimately help you grow on your entrepreneurship journey. And don’t confuse “circle” with just networking events or casual contacts. Create a deliberate environment of like minded people

3. Read books, take courses and attend events

Entrepreneurs are lifelong learners. Books and courses give you direct access to decades of experience in just a few hours. These will help you sharpen your mindset and learn from others’ successes (and failures), making it easy to build the skills you need without hassle. These are awesome ways to learn entrepreneurial skills quickly. You’ll also learn directly from experts while also networking with your peers, potential partners, and even investors. Industry events also give you a chance to put most of your skills into action.

4. Get a mentor

A good mentor or coach already has the entrepreneurial skills you’re working to build, and they can shorten your learning curve by years. They’ve made the mistakes, tested the strategies, and learned the lessons so you don’t have to figure it all out the hard way.

Building skills that last

You’ve learned about the core skills that make entrepreneurs successful. And now you understand that entrepreneurs aren’t born, they’re built with the help of dozens of small skills practiced over time.

Now it’s time to take this knowledge and build those skills yourself. Because the sooner you begin, the sooner you’ll have the tools to build a successful business.