APPRENTICE TIPS: Skills an entrepreneur needs to have

Most entrepreneurs and motivated professionals know the importance of investing in themselves—building valuable skills and improving their strengths over time. By now, many business owners have made their business-related plans for what they want to accomplish in future.

Their new roadmaps include growth targets to achieve, products to launch, new markets to enter, events to participate in and relationships to build.

If you have these types of clear targets and milestones built into your plan for the year, that’s a great start.

However, it’s equally important to set skill-building goals that’ll ultimately help you become more successful in your business. Whether it’s setting aside time to improve on your weaknesses, or hire a coach to help you push into a new playing field with one of your strengths—investing in your skills is never a bad move.

In fact, looking at the current situation following the economic transformation towards New Tanzania (Tanzania Mpya), it is no doubt that each financial year will be another disruptive year in the world of business, characterized by transformational shifts in how companies engage customers, and in how business people learn new skills.

As an entrepreneur therefore, you need to strive the best to change the game. You need to sharpen your communication skills. Your business can quickly go from good to bad when communication lacks purpose, clarity and impact.

Effective communication can revolutionize an idea, breathe new life into a product or brand. Be a powerful communicator. Experts and psychologist believe that communication is the most important skill an entrepreneur can learn.

The ability to genuinely connect, understand and empathize with your customers is also critical to establishing and growing your audience. Initially, empathy will help you assess your audience’s challenges, identify their pain points and gauge whether or not they will willingly pay for your solutions.

Gone are the days when you can fly by the seat of your pants without a plan of action for your business. With countless commitments and distractions wanting to monopolize our ever-shortening attention spans, the knack for planning—from simple daily checklists to long-term strategic decision-making—has become indispensable to career and business survival. In every financial year of your business operational choice, you must learn the ability to strategize for achieving long-term goals. Start by breaking down big goals into small, incremental wins that lead to major successes over time.

Manage and grow your financials.

This is key to success both in your business and in your personal life. Lack of which will expose you to the risk of becoming unsustainable, which leads to bankruptcy, regret and going back to a full-time job. Develop discipline and prudence, especially when it comes to purchases for personal and business purposes.

After all is said and done, the one skill that keeps the lights on in your business is sales. If you fell to sell you’re quickly going out of business.

If you need funding, you have to sell your idea to investors. If you want to be a successful painter, you must compel people to buy the aesthetics of your craft. Whether you’re a job applicant, you simply have to sell yourself.

Build relationship. In the new economy where social currency is the standard by which your value is assessed, you need people to make progress. From offering up referrals, to giving endorsements, recommendations, inspiration and moral support, your network of people is your most valuable resource. So, make friends and build mutually beneficial relationships that will give you the potential for big new opportunities in the future.

Stress can be... well, stressful. But failure can be devastating. Major failures can obliterate your motivation and affect your mentality for weeks, months or even years. Just like marriages, businesses fail all the time.

The secret to success as an entrepreneur is to get back on your feet again, pick up the pieces and apply what you’ve painfully learned so that you’ll get different results the next time.

Every New Year, entrepreneurs look back on their accomplishments and plot a new course with the goal of exceeding the previous year’s performance.

There are many ways to plan for future business success, but investing in yourself by building new skills or improving existing ones, remains one of the smartest decisions you can make as an entrepreneur.

Julius Landou Bulili | Business Coach| Email: [email protected]