So you’re ready to start a small business. You have everything in place. You have the passion, the vision, the plan, and even acquired the capital from a small business loan you applied to get started. No matter how ready you are, you’ll always want to know more about what it takes to run a successful business.
You might already know that running a small business requires strong leadership skills and experience. However, to be truly successful in your entrepreneurial endeavor, it will need unique qualities that will move beyond the essential characteristics of a good leader.
In this article, you’ll learn about four qualities that will help you move past the challenges of building a thriving business. Developing these skills will enable you to solve problems more effectively and cost-efficiently.
1. The Ability to Prioritize Activities That Produce Results
Being a business owner is not a walk in the park. The idea that an entrepreneur can control their schedule and dictate what work they can make sounds freeing to an outsider, but it’s quite the opposite. You have more tasks, responsibilities, meetings, e-mails to answer, and higher expectations from your customers and investors. Deciding which activity deserves your attention can become overwhelming quickly.
It’s easy to get lost in tasks or matters that seem urgent. But as a leader and a business owner, you have to focus on the tasks you do best and only what you can do for the company. This is why having the ability to determine to prioritize activities that produce the most significant rewards for your business is crucial for success.
For example, if you need a new website, don’t go and build a website on your own or learn the skill to create one. Delegate the task to a professional as not to undergo avoidable burnout or stress.
As a business owner, you have to master the art of delegation to save your energy for tasks at which you’re most effective.
2. The Ability to Focus on Your Main Priorities
Now that you have determined your main priorities as a business owner, the next challenge is to focus on them. Most of the time—and this happens quite often to visionaries—business owners lose focus once they see another project they want to do or an element they wish to include in their business. Your main priorities can range from running a new marketing campaign to launching a new product or service in the list of offerings.
You will have hundreds of ideas popping into your head, which is not uncommon. However, once this happens, the risk of losing focus creeps in, and then nothing gets done. Or when it does, it’s not as good as you expect it to be.
Combat this by always staying on track, re-evaluating your goals, and staying away from distractions.
3. The Ability to Multitask Effectively
Multitasking is an essential skill for a business owner. It’s not enough to know how to do it but when you need to juggle responsibilities and how to do it effectively.
Effective multitasking doesn’t just mean crossing off a task from your list. It means being able to complete a task effectively without burning yourself out.
To multitask effectively, you need to:
- set a goal,
- prioritize and plan,
- categorize and group tasks together,
- set a schedule, and
- remove all distractions.
Multitasking is inevitable; however, never juggle work of great importance. This includes tasks that have a considerable impact on your business or clients. If you’re writing a client contract or proposal, focus on that and avoid distractions. Work that requires attention to detail and brainpower will need your undivided attention, so don’t risk making the mistake of crossing out a menial task from your list.
4. The Ability to Reinvent Yourself
Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg all share one quality (aside from being tech multi-billionaires. These industry giants all can reinvent themselves along the way to adapt to each situation. They understand that change will come, and unless they don’t learn more, change will swallow them whole.
In Elon Musk’s case, he took a giant leap from running an online payment system like Paypal to running SpaceX’s own aerospace company. As Elon’s story goes, he gathered knowledge to equip himself with the skills needed to design a rocket. He read books, visited NASA, interviewed NASA experts, and talked to his engineers at SpaceX until he learned everything they knew.
Musk and these tech giants were famous and wildly successful because of this hunger for knowledge and understanding that change is inevitable but unconquerable.
Starting a business is a liberating endeavor. While being an entrepreneur is difficult, you can never go wrong with being prepared and equipped to handle challenges and unknown forces that will come your way.
If you already possess the qualities listed here, your road to success will be less harsh than most. If not, you just gained helpful insight into what qualities you need to hone. Now that you’re aware of them, you can make your journey to success a lot smoother.
