Traits of Successful Small Bunsiness Owners
It takes a lot to become a small business owner. Some things needed are physical like a roof over the business’s head so to speak and the capital to get started. But some (if not most) of what it takes to run a successful small business comes from inside the entrepreneur. There is a special skill set needed to drive a company to success including both hard and soft skills. Some of these skills can be taught and learned, while others need to be practiced.
Hard skills are those that can be taught in the traditional sense. Branding for example comes naturally to some, but for others there are a ton of resources to turn to in order to learn the craft. Skills like marketing, finance, and legal know-how are the pieces that keep your business running day-to-day and each of these is a skill set that can be acquired either through personal knowledge or otherwise. Say you do not know anything about accounting, you can always hire an accountant. However there is a another set of skills needed to help a project succeed that cannot be easily acquired.
Lindsay Broder of entrepreneur.com defines these as soft skills. There are the extra something that makes some people entrepreneurs at heart. Things like ambition, the ability to overcome all challenges and adversity, and good ole fashion moxy are the heart of a successful small business owner. They come naturally to some, but for others they have to be learned. No regular teacher in a classroom setting or though a book or article can imbued a sense of moxy and fortitude into someone, it has to come from the individual through practice. Practicing those skills that do not come naturally and cultivating those that do are the marks of success.
Capital can buy you a start, the storefront, and even an accountant to do the math, but success is not at thing that can be bought and good leadership is not something you can learn from a book, it takes the fortitude , know-how, and elbow grease to start a business and to grow it into something worthwhile.
“How to Develop the Soft Skills of the Successful Entrepreneur.” Broder, Lindsay. entrepreneur.com 20, Feb. 2015