My first job out of college was one I made up. People become entrepreneurs for lots of reasons, and for me (like most) it was the flexible hours. Armed with an English degree and a basic knowledge of marketing, I started a small agency creating written content for anyone who needed it.
I built a book of business by relying on my network and a surprisingly reasonable number of targeted cold emails. After a few years, a happy client took me on full-time, and I’ve been working in sales and marketing for other organizations ever since.
My somewhat unorthodox career path depended heavily on entrepreneurial skills. While it felt like a significant departure from the norm at the time, I would argue that rapid changes in the business landscape have made entrepreneurial skills more important than ever. That’s true whether you’re trying to run your own successful business or perform well in an established role.
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Table of Contents
Why Entrepreneurship Skills Matter
The internet has been fundamentally shaping every industry since its widespread adoption, and quite a few experts anticipate an even greater level of disruption from AI. That feels hyperbolic. But, if you told my 22-year-old self that the biggest content creator in 2024 would be AI, I never would’ve believed you — even if the content it cranks out is “mid” at best.
While I can’t go toe-to-toe with the big thinkers trying to decide if the huge changes wrought by AI will be positive or negative, I can tell you one thing: change is always coming. Those who can adapt will stay ahead of the curve. Those who can’t will fall behind. If you want to be in the former camp, be intentional about building the following six entrepreneurial skills.
Essential Skills Entrepreneurs Need
1. Networking
No one succeeds alone, which is why I believe networking might just be the most important of many vital entrepreneurial skills.
Need your first customers? Like most companies, HubSpot started with its founders’ networks, according to former Chief Revenue Officer Mark Roberge. The better you are at networking, the easier it will be to start, grow, run, and even eventually exit your business.
How to Build This Skill
Maybe you’re a natural extrovert, or maybe networking requires you to get far outside your comfort zone. Either way, the key to building this skill is simply to start. Bastien Paul, co-founder and CEO of Hublead, recommends that you meet two new people in your industry every week.
“That’s something I did for four months in a row, and it helped me gain experience, meet incredible people, and find new ways to grow myself, my career, and later my company,” Paul says.
Not sure where to meet people? Try an organized networking event, a volunteer opportunity, or even some cold emails. Form relationships, and then — most crucially — do the work to nurture them so they’re meaningful and mutually beneficial.
2. Sales
Whether you’re trying to convince a company to sign a seven-figure contract or you want your CTO to scrap a half-baked feature, so many outcomes are determined by your ability to sell.
Convincing other people to buy into your ideas will help you implement them. That enables you to win customers, attract investors, garner valuable media attention, and more. Be purposeful about honing your sales skills to give yourself the best possible chance of entrepreneurial success.
How to Build This Skill
Work on “selling” your product or service to the people closest to you. Then, instead of soaking up their knee-jerk praise, encourage them to look for holes and opportunities to push back against your ideas. Every objection you can address in the workshopping stage will improve your chances out in the field.
From there, I recommend that you refine your pitch to fit in 30 seconds, two minutes, and 10 minutes. From there, you can make the most of whatever time you’re allotted with a prospect or potential investor. I always make sure I’m using a story to convey my ideas to my audience in a more appealing and digestible way.
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3. Resilience
If you’re reading about entrepreneurial skills, you might be interested in the How I Built This podcast. Guy Raz does a great job interviewing entrepreneurs from a wide variety of backgrounds and industries. While their stories are generally quite unique, they universally face daunting setbacks.
Bob Moore of Bob’s Red Mill had his mill burn to the ground. Honest Tea had to recall their products from every market because of defective glass bottles. Bill Shufelt of Athletic Brewing had to reinvent a beverage category that had languished since the Prohibition era.
These and all the other stories Raz shares on his podcast would never be told if the leaders had made the easy choice to give up.
How to Build This Skill
Building resilience should be uncomfortable. One of the best ways I’ve found to get out of my comfort zone is to cold call prospects. Cold calling is 5% learning to sell and 95% learning to cope with rejection.
If you can spend just an hour each week cold calling qualified leads, you probably won’t sell anything. However, you’ll learn about your product and the market while cultivating the ability to bounce back from anything. That’s helpful for professionals at any level.
4. Time Management
I constantly sit down at my desk and think, “Today is the day I’ll finally be immune to distraction.” Then, I open my inbox. Five minutes later, I’m tweaking the graphic in my email signature to get it juuust right.
You don’t have to be an evolutionary biologist to realize that most of our brains just aren’t designed for deep, sustained focus, which makes effective time management even more important. Entrepreneurs have to ideate, create, iterate, and still somehow find time to sell their products and services. That requires a careful juggling act, and keeping key initiatives progressing smoothly is no accident.
How to Build This Skill
First, take an inventory of how you spend your time each day. I’d recommend you start with the lowest-hanging fruit, which unfortunately means diving into those scary screen time metrics. I use Apple’s internal tool (Settings > Screen Time > App Limits) to put a cap on the apps that cost time while delivering almost no value.
In the spirit of transparency, my nemesis is Reddit. Luckily, changing some of your more time-intensive habits can happen quicker than you might think. Once you’ve gotten that out of the way, flex your time-management muscles by working in sprints that start short (think 10 minutes or so) and get longer as you get better at maintaining focus.
5. Delegation
In my experience, delegation is inevitably the most difficult skill for entrepreneurs to learn, let alone master. Entrepreneurs are often independent to a fault, stubborn, idealistic, and overconfident in their own abilities (no offense meant, this applies to me for sure).
These traits make it far easier for an entrepreneurs to just take on another task themselves instead of farming it out. However, the ones who pile more and more on their own plate are less and less likely to succeed. If you hope to grow one venture or even several, if you’re a serial entrepreneur, you can’t do it all on your own.
How to Build This Skill
Make a list of all the skills you need to achieve a big entrepreneurial goal, then rank your proficiency in those areas — and there can’t be any ties. Start by delegating out the functions you’re least capable of performing on your own, and see what you can accomplish by staying in your lane.
I’ll bet anything it’s more than what you were getting done on your own, no matter who you are. Learn from this exercise, rinse, and repeat.
6. Pattern Recognition
In his six years as executive director of Venture Asheville, Jeffrey Kaplan has helped dozens and dozens of startups launch successfully. In his mind, pattern recognition is one of the most vital entrepreneurship skills for aspiring founders.
“Pattern Recognition is the gateway drug in the entrepreneurial mindset that allows you to spot trends, see unarticulated needs, and seize opportunities that the competition may have missed,” Kaplan says.
In my experience, curiosity is a common entrepreneurial personality trait, and it’s also one of the driving forces behind pattern recognition. If you’re not naturally curious, you can still make regular inquiry a habit.
How to Build This Skill
Talk to both happy and dissatisfied customers regularly to understand their frustrations, and as you ask questions, try to listen to what’s not being said. Read books and case studies in fields that aren’t familiar to you and try to find ways they might intersect or be relevant to your own area of expertise.
A diverse network that spans industries can help encourage pattern recognition, exposing you to different ideas and perspectives. Many entrepreneurs cite their initial lack of experience in their field as a competitive advantage because it allows them to think outside the box. So, don’t be afraid to explore uncharted territory.
Everyone Is an Entrepreneur
You may have heard the saying that every company is now a tech company, and it’s true. We live in a tech-driven world, where we move from one digital experience to another both at work and on our own time.
In the same way, I believe that everyone is — or at least should aspire to be — an entrepreneur. Even if you’re in a rote job where every little task is standardized, new tools are being built daily that could automate manual work or improve outcomes. All you have to do is learn how to implement them.
Ultimately, for both aspiring founders and those looking to weather the evolving job market as AI takes hold, mastering some of the skills of an entrepreneur will only help.
Free Business Startup Kit
9 templates to help you brainstorm a business name, develop your business plan, and pitch your idea to investors.
- Business Name Brainstorming Workbook
- Business Plan Template
- Business Startup Cost Calculator
- And more!
Download Free
All fields are required.
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