So you want to become an entrepreneur? That’s not an easy task, and I hope you understand it. In your journey, you’ll need to know and consider many skills to become really successful. Most of these skills will help you to communicate, understand, and work better.
I tried to include some unique ones. So you won’t see something like “You need to work hard” or “You need to have a passion". I’m tired of these myself and don’t want you to waste so much time reading useless information!
1. Create an Opportunity
The ability to see and create opportunity is the first thing we need in our lives. That’s really important to mention; before creating one, you need to find them yourself. I’ll explain it in a minute!
You’re currently working a 9–5 job and dreaming about entrepreneurship. That’s great if you really want to open your business and aren't doing it because someone told you to.
To really become one, you need to take every opportunity that comes your way. In other words, if you see a new job offer, a chance of increasing your salary, or an improvement in some of your specific skills, then you definitely should take it.
I can give you several examples. I’ve been working with an open-source Indian startup called Aviyel’s World and have done web design for two of their projects. I didn’t get anything from it. However, I’ve got a lot of experience, and they even gave me a little promotion.
Because of this, I’m now able to say that I have real work experience, and even if I got no money from it, I still gained knowledge. In other words, you need to take every opportunity so you’ll thank yourself in the future.
After taking every opportunity, you also need to know how to create them. It’s not as simple as it sounds; by creating opportunities, I mean creating something valuable that people will use. For instance, it can be an app or a platform that helps others create better products.
By giving other people a chance to grow and solve some of their problems, you’re giving them the opportunity to become really useful for society in general. You have created a large number of highly skilled specialists who will innovate all industries around the world as a result of your actions!
2. Emotional Intelligence
Before starting any business, you need to be sure you can control your emotions. Nobody will work for someone who is always acting because of emotions and doesn’t have any sense in his actions.
I’ll give you an example. Imagine that some guy named Ryan is building a startup and beginning his entrepreneurial journey. First of all, he has found professionals who will help make his ideas come true.
However, Ryan has only one problem: he always feels burned out, and when someone says something not so pleasant to him, he starts to act aggressively and can even fire someone.
If you always feel depressed and burned out and find a problem in someone else, then you definitely don’t have emotional intelligence, and you should consider this first. Remember my words — "Never build a business before building yourself first." In other words, you must be confident in your ability to control each stage of the process, and so on.
It’s an absolute example of a very bad entrepreneur that will probably lose everything. He doesn’t think before doing something; he just does what his emotions want him to do. Leave emotions to the losers; you need to act!
It also contains another very important skill — handling criticism. You can’t even imagine how important this is. By hearing some negative feedback, you’ll be able to build a quality product quicker. You can’t be sure about what people really want, and after several mistakes, they will tell you!
3. Delegation
After starting a business, you need to delegate the responsibilities. In other words, you need to find someone who can do a specific type of work much better than you.
It’s essential for every entrepreneur. You don’t have to be great at everything at the same time. You just need to connect the people to each other and focus on building a product.
It’s also important to mention that you don’t have to be a leader who doesn’t do anything and just tells people what to do. It’s definitely the worst scenario that can exist; your co-workers just won’t see anything meaningful in you and will leave soon.
To summarize, delegate wisely. Don’t try to do everything yourself, and don’t delegate literally everything!
4. Adaptability
It’s actually a pretty essential skill that most of you already understand. Adaptability or mobility is essential for anyone building something related to finance, business, or anything else.
The business market is highly unstable. Every big news story, or someone like Elon Musk, has the ability to directly manipulate the entire market. These are not usually things, but each of these can directly change the direction of a market and change someone’s life.
You can read The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, where he explains how to identify these sudden things and how to prepare for them.
However, the most important thing that you can get from there is that you don’t know anything about the future, and the best way to prepare is to be adaptive to new-coming accidents.
When you have the skill of adaptability, you can easily work and grow in every worst-case scenario that could happen. Even if some virus happens, you can still adapt and get out of this situation with the increasing revenues of your business and so on.
None of these situations will actually make you bankrupt; only your attitude toward them will. It can also be implemented in every part of our lives!
5. Produce More, Then Consume
It’s actually a rule that you should follow for your whole life. Stop being someone who only consumes all types of content, starting with TikTok videos and ending with some news.
You need to start producing. It doesn’t matter in which sphere or exactly what you want to produce, you need to create something valuable for a specific group of people. The larger this group, the more attention you’ll be able to get!
This article is a great example. I’m writing it as a form of self-production. I’ve chosen the business and entrepreneurship spheres, which are very popular, especially on Medium. The more I write, the more I get better at it!
To produce content, you need to have something in your mind. In other words, before producing you need to consume. However, it shouldn’t be some garbage or absolutely useless information. For instance, I read lots of business articles before writing one, and so should you.
6. Proactiveness and Curiosity
Every entrepreneur should be proactive and curious about literally everything. If you think that to open your business, you need to be an old man in a suit, then you’re absolutely wrong.
Entrepreneurs are highly creative people, and if you want to become a real one, you should remove all the seriousness and skepticism. In other words, you need to open your mind.
Don't try to imitate your brain with some borders; instead, think broadly and see the whole picture. It will give you an understanding of everything. And by understanding everything, you will come up with absolutely new ideas that will revolutionize this world.
I will always say that Steve Jobs wasn’t some clerk, the same is true of Elon Musk and other highly successful billionaires. They were exploring this world and trying to innovate it by making others' lives easier and better!
7. Risk Management
Risk management is probably the most obvious one. Many of you know that successful people become successful after risking almost everything they have. I’m not talking about gambling; these were risks with some sense in them.
To become a real entrepreneur, you shouldn’t risk everything; you just need to understand when it’s needed and when it’s not. Sometimes you’ll have to make some decisions that will change the whole direction of a company, and for these types of situations, you need to weigh the risks.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I would say that if you really want to become an entrepreneur, then nothing can stop you. Even if you haven’t found some skills from this article in you, it’s definitely not a problem. Defining a weakness is the first step to crushing it. So now, you can analyze yourself and improve some parts of yourself before opening a business!