Being an entrepreneur is not easy. It requires creativity, patience, a willingness to take risks, expertise, endurance, and a whole lot more.
According to Growth Hackers’ co-founder and CEO Jonathan Aufray:
“An entrepreneur must be audacious, calculating, enthusiastic, and passionate. Creativity and managerial capabilities are also important to the success of an entrepreneur. An entrepreneur needs to be a talented multi-disciplinary individual, a bit like the growth hacker job description, which is very complex, the entrepreneur job description is even more complicated.”
“Contrary to popular opinion, entrepreneurial skills and qualities can be learned, practiced, and developed. You must, however, make a conscious decision to nurture these qualities and skills. Once you begin to make a conscious effort to acquire these skills, particularly skills in the area where you are deficient, you would have repositioned yourself for tremendous accomplishments as an entrepreneur in the business world.”
Aufray has identified 29 skills as important for successful entrepreneurship. Here are ten of them:
- Personal capabilities
- Image building
- Effective communication
- Ability to negotiate
- Ability to lead
- Ability to sell
- Ability to concentrate (focus)
- Customer relations
- Preparedness to learn
- Inquisitiveness
Click the image for a full discussion of the above 10 skills and to see Aufray’s whole list of 29 entrepreneurial skills.
What strikes me about the 29 attributes and what it takes to be an entrepreneur is that the confidence and assurance that is needed are for team building and extroversion and not egotism.
Excellent article – I have read umpteen number of articles but most writers are so focused on negotiation, brand recognition and effective communication that team motivation almost takes a back seat. It was nice to read that Jonathan considers “keep your worker motivated and eager to make sacrifices for business growth.” as an important Leadership skill. I believe that the ability to motivate the team and provide them the flexibility to find innovation and creativity in their current repeatable tasks is a key skill in today’s world. Technology is changing at a much faster pace and everyone wants to work on the new shiny stuff – and giving your team the flexibility to define that for their current work with the current constraints is really an ability that today’s leaders should work on acquiring
A thoughtful article. Seems to run the gamete of attributes needed to be a successful entrepreneur and or leader. However, I look at this list of twenty-nine, and would also throw a few other attributes into the ring. As a leader/entrepreneur I believe they must have a persuasive vision and strive towards innovation. They must work with extreme passion with an ability to surmount any failure with success. That’s my two cents.
I too find this article an excellent source. I do agree and want to echo Jyotsna’s comments in regard to leadership motivation. I personally find this in my day to day. When a manager (leader) seems indifferent that obviously is trickled down to other employees. I also would like to point out that it takes an excellent leader to motivate but also to show trust in employees and delegate work product. I also would like to point out that a few of the characteristics in the list of ten highlighted, to me, seem to be secondary. To clarify, an excellent leader should have those skill sets, but it is not mandatory. Those skills can be delegated to a team member.