Have you ever heard that lack of money is a little bit of a problem? Lack of money is not a problem; lack of money is simply a symptom of the problem. The problem is a lack of skill. Have you ever heard stories of lottery winners, who suddenly have a windfall of money coming into their lives, millions and millions of dollars, only found themselves a few years later broke and bankrupt?
Now, why is it that they have money, but they don’t have the skills of the rich? So today, I’m going to teach you the seven skills that every successful entrepreneur has mastered, the seven skills that I believe you need to understand and master if you want to be a successful entrepreneur. Now, as I go through each skill, I want you to ask yourself a question, comment below, and rate yourself from 0 to 10. 0 being absolutely horrible, and 10 being world-class. So here we go.
1. The ability to talk to customers persuasively. I call that selling skill.
Do you know how to sell? Can you articulate the value of what you do to your potential clients? Do you know how to ask powerful questions that compel people to buy? Are you comfortable talking to strangers, presenting your ideas, demonstrating your product or service? I believe that selling skill is one of the most important, if not the most important skill you need to master. If you want to be successful, when you’re talking to customers, when you’re closing deals, when you’re talking to vendors, trying to persuade them to give you better terms, you need this skill, even when you’re talking to your employees. So that’s a skill—number one.
2. The ability to speak to groups. I call that public speaking skill.
Do you know the number one fear that most people have in life is not a snake? And it’s not even death? The number one fear that most people have is public speaking. Why do so many people ask why they are afraid of speaking to groups most of the time because they worry about if they’re going to sound bad? Or are they afraid because they might say something wrong? All these things. But you look at great leaders, almost all great leaders. They’re all great public speakers, such as Steve Jobs, Tony Robbins, and Warren Buffett. So ask yourself, are you afraid to speak to groups? Do you know how to present your ideas to groups? Can you communicate with conviction and certainty? Can you interact with your audience? To be a successful entrepreneur, public speaking is one of the most valuable skills you must master.
3. The ability to communicate with words in print, or what I call persuasion in print. I refer to that as your copywriting skill.
When I say copywriting, I’m not talking about being all grammatically correct. However, it’s good to do that, and I’m not talking about what you learn in school, ‘academic writing’ I’m talking about communication, I’m talking about your webpage, your video, I’m talking about your email, how do you communicate with the written words? Now, why is this so important? Because in day-to-day communication, the emails you send or the social media posts or the agreement, a contract, your LinkedIn posts, or your blog, a lot of that is written communication.
When you know how to communicate effectively through written words, it gives you a tremendous amount of leverage. Let me give you a perfect example. Let’s say you create a social media post; you have a decent amount of following that gives you leverage because what you write is seen by hundreds of people; it could be millions of people. In fact, copywriting is the first skill that I developed as a young entrepreneur, and that’s the skill that changed my life, how I went from losing money and not making enough money to earning well in my 20s. This copywriting is not taught in school; school taught us writing. So that’s skill Number three, the ability to communicate with words in print.
4. The ability to communicate clearly and effectively with your team. I’m talking about your leadership skill.
To be an effective leader, you also must be an effective communicator. Do you know what the vision is for your company? And are you discussing that with your team members? Do you communicate clearly? The vision to your team does not create a good culture within your organization? You see, all that is a leadership skill; business is not a solo sport. Business is not only an intellectual sport, but it’s also a team sport. As an organization, you’re only as good as your team; it’s essential to develop that leadership ability to inspire, motivate, and lead your team.
5. The ability to manage and organize your time for maximum results. Some people refer that as time management.
I refer to that as priority management. Because at the end of the day, we all only have 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and 365 days a year, you cannot actually manage time because we all have the same amount of time. However, what you can manage are your priorities. What are the important things you got to focus on? What are the important things that will move the needle to help you move closer to your goals? The problem is school never taught us how do we manage our priorities, right? You’re doing your homework; you’re taking exams; you’re taking care of your family; you’re doing a bunch of different things.
Most people never take the time to slow down and look at what we do and ask ourselves, okay, why am I even doing this at all? What is the payoff of these activities? We never ask ourselves those profound questions, and at the end of the day, piety management really is self-management. How do you manage yourself, and if every single day, you can manage your time efficiently and effectively, and you focus on just a handful of things, right, that two or three things that, you know, if you keep doing that consistently, would get you the results that you want.
So rich people understand and realize the value of their time, that’s why they avoid what I call minimum wage activities. If someone can get the job done, costing you less than what your time is worth, we delegate it. So that’s skill number five.
6. The ability to read financial statements. I call that financial literacy skill.
Now this skill is not taught in school in school. In the real world, we look at your financial statements, and financial statements in the business world are your scorecard; they tell us how well you are doing financially. Financial Literacy is the language of money, how money works, your balance sheet, your income statement, your cash flow statement. When you look at the statement, do you look at the numbers and say, oh my god, man, I don’t know what’s going on? Or I’m not making enough money this year? I have a loss this year in business, or can I read between the lines? What is it telling me? What’s the story? Am I managing my money alright? You need to understand the basics of some of these vocabularies of cash, credit score, return on investment, profit and loss, Capital gain, capital loss, depreciation, a lot of these words; that’s what you have to understand. So financial literacy it’s an essential skill You must master if you want to be successful.
7. The ability to manage your own mind. I call that your mindset skill
Frustration, negativity, fear, envy, depression, limiting belief, procrastination, how do you manage your emotions? How do you manage your mind? you can master all other six skills, but it’s not going to work if you don’t have your mindset. Napoleon Hill’s book, Think and Grow Rich, talks about managing your mind. What are you feeding in your mind? How many times you know exactly what you need to do to accomplish your goal to achieve results, but you cannot get yourself to do it because of procrastination? How many times in your life you have opportunities slip through your fingers? And you cannot get yourself to step up and take action because of self-limiting belief. Or what about how often you know that other people believe in you? But you don’t believe in yourself because of self-limiting beliefs. That’s all mindset skill.
So those are the seven skills that every successful entrepreneur should have.
“Mastering others is strength. Mastering yourself is true power.
Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.”-Laozi.
I believe as an entrepreneur, you should be able to master all seven skills to be successful.
