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Sure, entrepreneurship can seem glamorous at first glance. White-on-white Miami yachts, yellow lambos, and exotic bikini models on Instagram lounging in a 6 bedroom private villa in Bali (did I mention rooftop jacuzzi?)
Calm down, Skippy. The hype isn’t always real. I mean of course – you can have all of those things and then some – but without the proper foundation, your dream of being an Entrepreneur can spiral into sleeping on your Grandma’s floor – especially if you don’t plan your future accordingly.
We caught up with the multi-talented Forbes Top 20 Entrepreneur, Matt Young, as he breaks down the Top 5 Skills every entrepreneur must have in order to scale.
- Communication Skills
Warren Buffett once said, “If you can’t communicate, it’s like winking at a girl in the dark”. Now apply this quote to your business. If you don’t learn how to communicate your product or service to your dream clients, nothing happens. Any excitement or desire that you want your client to have for your product or service comes directly from your ability to transfer those emotions through communication, whether verbal or written form. If you can learn to package your words in a way that your dream client understands, they will likely buy from you and feel comfortable coming back as a repeat customer. This skill also applies to leadership as well! Learn how to communicate with your team to inspire unity, trust, confidence, and commitment.
- Leadership
If nobody follows, your business gets swallowed. Remember that. Leadership is about getting those around you to see your vision, trust your direction and allow you to steer the ship when necessary. If you don’t learn leadership skills, you can’t truly scale, because you’ll be stuck doing everything in your business. The goal is to work “on” your business, not “in” it.
- Time Management
A business owners’ biggest bottleneck to scaling a company is typically lack of time management. They spend time caught in a vortex of pointless tasks that aren’t related to driving revenue or scaling their operations. My advice – prioritize what’s important – outsource the rest. I personally have assistants who handle 75% of my emails, client fulfillment, backend support (plus other smaller but equally important tasks). This allows me to free up my time so I can continue to focus on growing my companies the right way.
- People Skills
In my opinion, people skills are one of the most important skills to have as an entrepreneur. Teamwork, empathy, listening, rapport building, customer service..all of these fall under the vague genre of “people skills”. Since most people tend to do business with those whom they like and trust – you can imagine how much your business can suffer if you are unable to connect well with others. Contrary to what we learned as kids, I believe the best way to increase your people skills is to talk to complete strangers. If you can have a smooth, organic conversation with somebody who had no idea who you were two minutes ago, I’d venture to say you have great people skills.
- Flexibility
Albert Einstein once said, “We cannot solve problems with the same level of thinking we used when we created them”. As entrepreneurs, we face problems almost daily, so it’s important we remain flexible. That important email you thought you sent got stuck in space and never reached your client. The last-minute flight you booked to Cabo was canceled. That package you urgently needed arrived 5 days late. Things happen. The idea is to stay flexible in your approach to problems, which will allow you the ability to easily navigate and find solutions, instead of marinating in the problem itself.
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