I want to share with you, the skills and competences that a Successful Entrepreneur has (or acquires), to create a high impact on digital business, and make an idea a reality.
My goal with this is that you try to reflect and identify if you have these skills and competences, and if you don’t, define an action plan on how you can acquire them, either with educational training (personal development) or in practice running your business idea. It is common to think that success comes from an innovative idea, plus the amount of money that the business managed to raise.
But the truth behind this is that the real value of a business is not in the idea, let alone in the capital it managed to raise, but in the Entrepreneur.
The main criteria of an angel investor are the Entrepreneur (or the team of founding partners). And this is not by chance, as the idea may be great, but without an extraordinary capacity for execution, no idea will work on its own.
What Are the Skills of a Successful Entrepreneur?
The scenario of an innovative idea in its initial phase is chaotic, as there are many uncertainties, guesses, hypotheses, and the entrepreneur’s first job is to validate these hypotheses and transform them into facts, data, certainties, confronting his idea with real customers.
The first skill that we think is most important is the Execution Capability, which means working hard, sweating the leather, grating making it happens, to get out of the field of ideas and go to practice as soon as possible, to confirm that you are right, or what is wrong and with that make adjustments to your product, business model, team, in short, in everything that involves your idea, and adapt according to the real needs of the market.
I tell you that the magic is in the ability of Creativity in synergy with the Lean Mentality since it is us with low resources that the most impactful businesses arise. However, it is necessary to be creative to create solutions with the resources you have, and at the same time, be lean to save these resources to the maximum, but still deliver an above-average result.
All these phrases make clear the lean mental model, of those who do with little, and are not afraid to make mistakes, because they know they will never be ready enough to launch, so why not launch today, see what is wrong, and immediately identify the what needs to be corrected?
Finally, I want to share the administrative skill and competence in being humble. This is connected with the ability to hear what is wrong and correct it quickly. Listen to what your mentor, much more experienced than you, has to say, instead of confronting your ideas with him, or justifying ideas that are nothing more than hypotheses and guesswork. Be humble, in the sense of having a “beginner’s mind” even if you already have some experience in your market or as an entrepreneur, but be aware that you don’t know everything, and you will have to look for the answers to your business problems.
And what are the competencies of a Successful Entrepreneur?
The first competence is connected with execution, which is Resilience, it means having the ability to hear/observe feedback from the market (even if they are negative and harsh) and adapt quickly, maintaining motivation and self-esteem up there. So if a successful entrepreneur identifies a flaw in his business, which could surprise and overthrow him, he is unmoved and moves on to adapt according to what he has discovered and do better in the next attempt.
Connected to this competence we also have Persistence, because the entrepreneur tries in several different ways a way to reach the expected goals. Elle knows that the way he solves the customer’s problem matters little, and can (and should) change, but what always prevails is to be passionate about the problem, rather than the solution (whether it’s a website, an application, or a physical store, it doesn’t matter). And don’t confuse it with Insistence, which would be pushing your client to what you think, without considering what he is saying or showing you through his behavior towards your solution.
But as a Successful Entrepreneur manages to deliver a product/service to his end customers, with excellent Execution Capacity, having few resources, little money, little time, little experience… which is the reality of our majority of people who want to undertake but never have undertaken before …
Being open to learn and improve every day, is one of the main skills and competencies of a Successful Entrepreneur.
Watch our webinar and find out how to develop the skills needed to be a successful entrepreneur.
Conclusion
Don’t be arrogant, don’t own the truth. Be a Successful Entrepreneur, and create a lean business that solves people’s real problems, who is not afraid to change the solution according to the feedback and market observation.