The 7 Essential Skills every Entrepreneur needs to Master to be Successful

Let’s be honest – running a business isn’t easy.

And let’s be even more honest – being a super-successful entrepreneur is even harder.

But it is possible, with the right mindset, determination and the development of any missing skills.

So which skills are most important – and are there any you can do without?

Of course, there’s no one right answer. As an entrepreneur, your job is to get the ball rolling in the initial stages whilst the business model gets proven to be profitable. At that point, you can then seek investment and broaden your team, or build organically step-by-step.

And if you understand business as a system using The Business Jet Engine model, you’ll know that there are 17 parts that need to work together for a business to work at its best.

But we can simplify it down to the 7 key skills you need to master that cover all areas…

1. Strategic thinking - the ability to think things through, step by step
2. Product Development & Delivery – creating and delivering the core product that delights your customers
3. Finance – having a plan for profit and course-correcting until you achieve it
4. Marketing – ensuring potential new clients can’t resist you, at scale!
5. Leadership – engaging others in achieving the mission with you
6. Team Building – surrounding yourself with the very best people; your A-Team
7. Delegation – empowering others to take away the challenges you no longer have time or expertise to solve and solving them better than you could.
    

And one last character quality that separates every great entrepreneur, is their ability to execute tasks. Their ability to stay focused on their top priorities – those tasks that will make the greatest difference – ignoring other distractions. And not just start them but get them done. Not always perfectly, but good enough that they can move on.

Does this sound daunting? Well in some ways it should. We never want to underestimate what it takes to run your own successful business. But the good news is, whatever your strengths and weaknesses, all these skills can be developed to the point that you’re ready to delegate.

Step by step, every aspect of business can be learnt and put in place from the simplest of beginnings.

If you're not sure where you need to start, then a good first step is to download our simple Free Diagnostic Toolkit.

This will help you identify the areas of your business in most need of development - and therefore the skills you may ned to develop in parallel - to turn your plans into action!