What are Entrepreneurship skills?

Starting your kind of work or job, setting up a business, requires several skills. The capability and willingness to build create; manage a business venture along with all of the risks to earn a profit is entrepreneurship.

For example, you are really good at creative art and you want to start selling your own artwork. This becomes a business for which you have to diligently build a portfolio of your work, showcase your work, earn trust and finally be able to earn from your work.

The risks would then be the questions you ask yourself generally; like, what if I cannot sell anything? What if I don’t have enough money to buy my art supplies? What if the buyer is not satisfied with my work? All of these questions would become risks for your business and you would slowly mitigate one after the other and move with your startup business.

These risks are common for anything you are building new. There isn’t anything to worry about. You just have to keep persisting and start expanding your business.

The other option for many people is to take up a job, which is a standard 9am to 5pm timings; where the boss will tell you what to work on and you would simply follow the schedule and requirements from your boss and work as a team. This setting is less risky compared to starting something of your own and so many people opt to be job holders.

But, if you have a passion for something and a drive to accomplish something in life, then you should always start on your own. That’s when your creativity and innovation will flourish and the world needs people like you now, more than ever.

Entrepreneurs create business and set up job opportunities for other people. Most naturally entrepreneurs need several qualities to set forth on this tricky path.

What are Entrepreneurship skills?

Entrepreneurial skills incorporate various kinds of soft and hard skills. These skills are crucial when you start your very own business firm.

Various hard skills include financial and technical skills; besides these mastering, several soft skills are a wise thing to do if you plan to become an entrepreneur. Leadership, problem-solving, and communication skills are among those that need to be mastered.

Proficiency in these skill sets will inevitably make you a better entrepreneur; you will appear approachable and will be efficient in your performance as an entrepreneur.

How important are Entrepreneurship Skills?

Inculcating the skill sets needed to be an entrepreneur is an education in itself. It needs you to be more creative and demands you to be a better decision-maker. It develops a potential to analyze, think, create and innovate. It makes you recognize the dynamic of the business and economic world. Entrepreneurial skills improve flexibility and adaptability in individuals.

The objective of this education is to instill in young minds the benefits and creativity of setting forth a start-up of their own. To take up a private initiative one must have the correct sense and competency about the ongoing economic activities locally and globally too.

Creativity, the spirit of initiative, and the ability to encourage team members are some of the transversal skills that are vital for an entrepreneur to develop. Devoid of which, one may face excessive challenges in the field taken.

Examples Of Entrepreneurship Skills

Business Management: The entrepreneurs rely most on business management skills. Business management means performing all actions in the most efficient process- planning, building, monitoring to make profits in the business.

For example, if you have a significant individual project in school, you would first plan how you want to come up with the presentation, what types of materials to use, how to present, how long to present, what props to use and then finally you would perform on the big day. For your work to be the most productive, you plan well and then execute well. This is what you do on a large scale where you have a team to which you delegate work when you start your own business.

Teamwork and Leadership: To become a successful entrepreneur you must encourage and motivate your team in the right direction. You must be mindful enough of the concerns your subordinates have. You have to act as a mentor as well as a part of the team to get to the ultimate goal.

Let’s consider an example. Now, carrying the last example forward, let’s assume that you are leading a group project. As a leader, you must guide your team in the right direction. Right from helping them out with understanding their topics to guiding them in case of any confusion in presenting them, you should be the team leader. Similarly, in a business, you are the leader. And if you want to achieve success in your business, you need to ensure that the others on the team are on the same page as you and all of you need to work as a team to achieve greater success both in terms of your school project and business.

Communication: Lending an ear to the problems faced by your team members, listening to the opinions and advice of your colleagues, and being equally vocal about your expectations can alone solve a lot of issues, misunderstandings, or miscommunications.

Now, suppose you, as the team leader in the school project, do not communicate your expectations properly to your team members. In that case there is going to be miscommunication leading to last-minute blunders. So, let’s say you have a Geography project and you need to cover Europe. Now, if your team members have no clue which country in Europe to work on, there might be chaos in the result.

So if there are 3 members in your group and all 3 work in the same country, there is duplication of work. In this case, the efforts put in by each member is a total waste of time, and in the end, the project is a failure. However, if you take the initiative and allocate three countries each to each member, they know exactly what to do, and the outcome will be in your favour.

Similarly, in a business environment, miscommunication leads to blunders and double work. It also causes tension between colleagues, and the outcome is sabotaged. To avoid this, avid communication is a must.

Monetary Skills: Going for your business venture also means you have to have a profound understanding of the financial aspects of the organization. But remember, for a founder of a new idea, you don’t necessarily have to have the full financial knowledge to start your own company. Typically entrepreneurs are very creative but not financially sound or strong. So, you take help from your friends and family initially or learn the basics of money management, or you can hire a professional when your business gets that far.

Discussing these topics with your parents, siblings, friends or reading the basics of finance will help you a lot as a young budding entrepreneur.

Don’t ever think that this subject is difficult and you are too young to learn. Definitely not. Sit with your parents or older siblings and start discussing finances with them to grasp the basics better.

Problem Solving Skills: This skill requires an individual who is adept at identifying the fundamental cause of the problem and executing a solution. It is a soft skill. It is developed through rigorous training, analysing and education. This skill makes you extremely self-reliant.

Let’s take an example to understand this better. Say you fought with your friend. Initially, it started as verbal arguments but later you both picked up a fight. You have a bleeding elbow, and your friend’s shirt is torn into pieces. Seeing this, your teacher takes you to the principal. Now, you think that you were not at fault and on the other side, your friend feels the same.

In this situation, what does the principal do? As a last resort, they might call your parents. But before doing this, they might want to understand what happened. In the end, whoever is at fault, the principal will resort to giving both parties equal punishment. Why? It is because both parties were equally involved in the fight. You both created the problem. Hence, both parties will be punished.

This is a classic example of problem-solving skills. Your principal is the ultimate leader of the school. She is the end all and be all decision-maker and whatever they decide is final. So, this is how you even need to tackle your problems. You need to understand that problems are everywhere, but the most important thing to have is the skill to solve them. In your entrepreneurship career, you might come across various challenges which might knock you off the table. But bouncing back stronger and nipping the problem in the bud is what makes you different from your team.

Strategic and Critical Thinking: Behind a successful entrepreneur are a lot of hard work, patience and effective strategic planning. The ability to analyze, plan, manage and think critically through a situation solely for growing your market reach and beat out the competition is vital.

Now let’s consider the game of football. Do you think the players win without a strategy? No. The captain of the team is always behind the field placements. This is why 11 players occupy 11 different spots on the ground, to defend, attack and cover the environment better. The end goal is to stop the opposing team from making a goal, but the planning and strategy that goes behind this is the actual secret to victory.

Of course, teamwork is important, but imagine, what would happen if a defender is put at the striker’s position? Or if the goalkeeper is put at the defense position? In such a case, be ready to say bye to victory. Now you understand why strategic and critical thinking is important right?

Technical Skills: There is tons of software available and accessible for finance management, planning and business strategies, it would be immensely beneficial to become efficient in the technical skills needed for an entrepreneur.

What if we told you that software helped you organise your notes, create a to-do list and help you achieve your daily goals? More like an accountability partner? Yes, that’s right. A software called Notion There is a software called Notion that allows you to create a to-do list, take notes, organise your monthly schedule, plan your week and so many more features that are an amazing add-on for students like you. And the best part? It’s 100% free.

Today, technology is built to ease and organise human work. You can cut out the paper and pen from your chart and switch to a much more organised software like Notion that helps you access everything you need in one place. You should just know where to find this technical help and use it to your advantage. Similarly, as an entrepreneur, you need to be aware of the technology to ease and add productivity to your operational business goals. Being aware of technological advancements and learning these skills always keeps you a notch ahead of your competitors and helps you grow your business smoothly.

Organisational and Networking Skills: Time management and organisational skills is a saviour. Setting deadlines, doable lists for tasks that one should complete in a day come to the rescue for a business owner. Networking and marketing skills are essential simply because it promotes your work and your brand increases goodwill and helps maintain healthy professional relationships with fellow entrepreneurs.

Your teacher knows each student in the class very well. She knows their skills, their strengths and their weaknesses. This is exactly why, she can suggest students who dance well to the dance teacher for an upcoming school event, she knows exactly who to send for debate competitions, she knows who will ace the singing competition, she also knows who is capable of dominating the sports field and lastly, she knows who’s the artistic one in the class. A teacher would never send a student for a quiz who is not very good at studies. So, how does she do this?

This is called networking skills. When operating in an environment, you need to interact with people around you to understand what they are good at. You need to learn to read people. This is what a good entrepreneur always counts on. Similarly, as an entrepreneur, you cannot be disorganised. Can you imagine a class where students are sitting on the floor, boys are hitting each other, girls are busy doing make-up and the teacher is nowhere to be seen? This might seem like a classic example of a disorganised class. But, when teachers are present in the room, each person is disciplined. These are called organisational skills. Let’s take another example.

The night before your exam, apart from revising your notes, what do you do? The answer is simple, organise. You organise your pen, pencil, sharpener, eraser, set your bag, keep your writing pad, iron your uniform and put an alarm for the next day so that when you wake up in the morning, you do not have to run around searching for things. This is the best example of organisational skills and after growing up, this skill will take you places. As an entrepreneur, being organised is crucial. Paying your rent on time, paying your taxes on time, paying your employees on time, everything counts as organisational skills.

If you are thinking, these are too many skills and too difficult, don’t worry. You are working on all of these skills indirectly on your school team projects and also developing some soft skills with your friendship groups etc. All you have to do now is to go through this list and make sure you are following what needs to be done to become the best and follow that to the extent possible. You will slowly get there.

To Succeed As an Entrepreneur: 5 Basic Skills

Never Cease Learning: One should be willing to learn and should never let go of an opportunity where one might obtain knowledge. Learning is a relentless journey and boosts wisdom and experience. There should be a willingness to correct one’s mistakes; this attitude helps a long way in any field.

It’s a given in any field that learning is a must. It doesn’t matter how intelligent Einstein was, if brought back to life you cannot expect him to catch up with the current scientific advancements. There has to be a process. In the case of Einstein, he will need to learn and understand the progression of science as it took place in all these years and then somewhere he will be able to be at par with current events.

Similarly, as an entrepreneur, what worked for Ambani 10 years back might not even be valid today. Tools, techniques and working methods are constantly changing and learning is the only way to keep up with these changes. That’s what they say, if you want to be relevant, you need to keep learning.

Failure Management: One must fail first to succeed in getting to the top. Failure is an inevitable occurrence of life. One must know how to deal with it wisely. Getting hopeless and losing confidence will only lead you to the dark pit of regret and guilt. No business venture is a smooth process, it is a path filled with obstacles and challenges but is worthy and rewarding if one is courageous enough to face them.

Being an entrepreneur, you have to learn to be thick skinned. For example, if you failed once in a class test, should that stop you in acing your other test? Absolutely not. You need to be thick skinned and accept that failure is a part of success. Yes, without failure, achieving success is impossible. Because unless you do not know what failure feels like, how will you succeed?

Financial Management: When you own a business start-up you need to understand the accounts and finances. Profits earned and the losses incurred should be at the tip of your fingers. It is a vital skill for entrepreneurs.

When you get your pocket money for the month, do you spend it all in one day or do you save it up to spend it on things you like? Say, you want to buy a bag worth Rs 5000. Your pocket money for a month is Rs 2000. Now, if you plan it smartly, you can save either Rs 500 or Rs 750 per month and easily buy the bag in 8-10 months. But, if you have a reckless spending habit, that bag will forever remain out of reach for you. Similarly, as an entrepreneur, you need to know how to manage your money. If you spend all of it recklessly, who will pay your bills?

Creativity: Your creativity should lead your way out of the daily problems faced. One must be innovative enough to craft out ways to accomplish every market target. Aimless creativity does not help, if you get your brain working, your creative streak will help you efficiently work your way to the top.

Every problem has a creative solution. That is exactly why it is called a problem because you cannot think through your logical mind. To solve this, you need to put your creative mind to use. This is where you try to identify the loophole, create an effective solution that eliminates any lack and boom, your problem is solved. This is where entrepreneurs always win. Creative entrepreneurs are always one step ahead of others because they can think in a way that others cannot and that’s what makes them different – their creativity.

Lending an Ear: Communication is a valuable skill to possess even in your personal life. Listening to the opinions of others, lending an ear to their problems and interests, and being equally vocal about your expectations will mend a lot of issues.

How Do I Build Entrepreneurship Skill?

Taking a Course: Taking a course on business management, financial management or any other related course helps immensely. Management skills are unavoidable when you want to start your own business. When you take a course, you understand what is expected out of you. You understand what entrepreneurship is all about and that it is not a part of a movie. Taking a course guides you and prepares you for the challenges and how to face them. It also helps you identify the problems in this journey and gives you ways to solve them. A course is always a good choice. Most importantly, it helps you gain the skills that you need to become a good entrepreneur and stand apart from the crowd when you enter the professional market to do business.

Attending workshops: Entrepreneurial workshops where experienced people voice themselves can be of great help. Attending workshops is a good way to hear first hand experiences from entrepreneurs who have already worked in the market for some time. Listening to their thoughts, the challenges they faced and how they solved them gives you an upper hand over others. Moreover, it also lands you some insider tips which might help you make better decisions in your entrepreneurship journey.

Seeking Help: Reaching out to experienced mentors will guide you through some tricky situations. They have had tough times, and they know what works best when things get rough. So, seeking help doesn’t make you small. Infact, it helps you broaden your horizons. You can understand the world from a different pair of eyes and create something better than before. This helps you understand any problem that your current idea might have and seeking help might just give you the game changing suggestion that you might need.

Building Leadership Skills: You must know the art of encouraging people, and effectively work as a team as well as a leader to take your business to the top.

Doing your kind of thing has always been uncertain, a path full of dilemmas and challenges. Then again, it also has its kind of satisfaction, fulfillment of owning something indigenous to you.

Entrepreneurship in all its risks has immense benefits. To venture along this path one must be adept at the soft as well as the hard skills essential to accomplish every desire and goal. If you want to start becoming a young entrepreneur,

Activity- Identifying strengths and interests

(You can use paper cuttings, images or simply write down for this activity)

Step 1– Take a journal or a paper and write down the top 3 things that you are very interested in doing and that keeps you going. (It could be art, writing, reading, knitting, gardening, playing a particular sport, cooking, baking, science projects, reading etc.)

Step 2– Brainstorm ideas on how to improve on your skill and how to build a portfolio. You can take help from your parents or siblings.

Step 3– Write down actionable steps to see if you can turn this interest into a small business.

P. S- If you cannot find a business idea out of your interest, then work on what additional things to learn to make it one.

Step 4– Start building a portfolio. Post your work online and get some criticism from experts.

Step 5– Produce the work and start selling for a fundraiser activity or to your family and friends.

As you notice, the first step to anything is to identify your strengths outside of your school ranks, grades and subject learning. And to inculcate hobbies.