You’ve decided that you want to get out of the corporate rat-race and be your
own boss. As you begin planning how to start your own business from home, you
begin listing down what you want to do and what you can do. You tell yourself
that you love to do a little bit of everything you can do research, Web
design, write, with a 10 years experience in legal and administrative support.
But then, you ask yourself, “What skills do I really need to have to succeed
as a home based entrepreneur?”
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If you are thinking of starting a business, you will need a broad array of
entrepreneurial skills to succeed in today's competitive market. You must
possess basic skills necessary to enable you to start, develop, finance, and
market your own home business enterprises. There are a number of qualities and
skills you need to have, including personal attributes, business skills and
management capability. While you may not have all of them right now, there are
five basic skills you really must have to run any kind of business.
These five skills are:
1.
Sales and marketing skills.
Sales and marketing are the two most important skills you must have when you
plan to start your own business. A business is nothing if it has no
customers. You may have the fanciest computer with the latest graphics
software, but if no one is knocking at your door to hire you as a graphic
designer, then you better rethink why you are in business in the first
place. Maybe you are better off employed by a firm. To have revenues and
profits, you first need to have customers. To get customers, you must be
able to market your business and possess the skills to close the sale.
As you plan your business, you must begin to think how to reach your
target audience and the people who may need your products or service. This
entails understanding the concept of marketing, and using the tools that
your budget permits. You must have a knack for understanding what people
wants, listening to their needs, and interact well with other people.
It would be extremely helpful if you possess excellent written and oral
communication skills to help you sell your products and services (more so if
you are a solo entrepreneur who will be doing everything by yourself). You
need to create a buzz about your business by talking to people and
presenting to them your business. You need to write ads, press releases and
story ideas about your business. Starting a business is a time to get out of
your timid self and begin to aggressively market your venture. That’s the
only way you can succeed.
2.
Financial know-how.
You are in business to make money. Therefore, the most important skill you
must have is the ability to handle money well. This includes knowing how to
stretch the limited start-up capital that you have, spending only when
needed and making do with the equipment and supplies that you currently
have. You also need to identify the best pricing structure for your business
in order to get the best kind of return for your products or services.
Success in business is not limited to those who have tons of capital in
the beginning. Look at the failed dot-coms with funding of as much as $100
million. Even if they are awash with cash, they still ended up as a failure
because they were not able to manage their money well. They lavished
themselves with high-tech office furniture and gave their CEOs fancy jets to
fly, only to have their cash flow depleted in less than a year.
If you are able to manage your cash flow well when the business starts to
run, you will be able to survive the ups and downs of self employment. The
important thing is to always focus on the bottomline. For every spending,
always ask yourself: “How much will this contribute to my bottom line?”
If it will not give your business anything in return financially, better
think twice before opening your wallet.
3.
Self-motivation skills. As
an entrepreneur, you do not have the luxury of bosses and bureaucracy to
tell you what needs to be done. Everything rests on your shoulder from
thinking where to get the money to fund the business, to developing the
product, to determining how to reach the customer, and so on. Only you will
create the plans, and change them should the situation shifts. You need to
be smart enough to know when you need to go ahead, and when to stop.
To succeed in business, you must be a self-starter with a clear desired
goal in mind. You must have the confidence in yourself, and in your ideas
(how can you sell your ideas to others if you yourself do not believe in
them?). More importantly, you must be willing to focus your energy and work
hard towards each and every step that will make your enterprise a success.
Especially if you work at home, it is doubly hard to get into the work
mindset: sometimes, the television is just too tempting that it is hard to
get out of your pajamas and begin typing in your computer. You therefore
must have that extra drive and commitment to make sure that you are taking
the necessary steps to make your dream of a successful business a reality.
4.
Time management skills.
The ability to plan your day and manage time is particularly important for a
home business. When you wake up in the morning, you must have a clear idea
of the things you must do for the day. Especially if you are running a
one-person operation, you must have the ability to multi-task be the
secretary at the start of the day typing all correspondences and emails,
become the marketing man writing press releases before noon, make sales call
in the afternoon, and become a bookkeeper before your closing hours. Imagine
if you are selling products and you still have to create the products,
deliver and fulfill the orders, rush to the bank to cash the checks. Lots of
job for a simple home-based business! No, you don’t have to be a superman
(or superwoman). You simply have to know how to manage time and prioritize
your tasks.
One difficulty of working from home is that you can never seem to stop.
There are simply too many things to do, as if work never stops (and it doesn’t!).
Part of having good time management skills is knowing when to stop and when
to leave work, and begin doing your other roles in your family as the
husband, wife, mother or father. You must be able to know how to keep your
home life separate from your work life, and ensure that there exists a
balance between the two.
5.
Administration skills. If
you can afford to hire an assistant who will organize your office space and
file your papers and mails, lucky you! However, most start-up entrepreneurs
cannot afford such luxuries. Over and above the tasks of managing, marketing
and planning your business, you also need to possess a great deal of
administration skills. You need to file your receipts so tax time will not
be a trip to Hades. You need to do all the work in terms of billing,
printing invoices, collecting payments, and managing your receivables.
Starting a business is never easy, even if you have the perfect
background and possess all the above skills. Having all the needed skills
and qualities will not even ensure your success. But having these basic
skills will, at least, lessen the pain of the start-up process, giving you
greater chance in seeing your business grow and prosper.
Recommended Readings:
Entrepreneurial
Skills : Cases in Small Business Management by Philip William Mahin
Girl
Boss : Running the Show Like the Big Chicks : Entrepreneurial Skills, Stories,
and Encouragement for Modern Girls by Stacy Kravetz, Amy Inouye
(Illustrator), Gillian Anderson, Amy Anouye
Girls
and Young Women Entrepreneurs : True Stories About Starting and Running a
Business Plus How You Can Do It Yourself by Frances A., Ph.D. Karnes,
Suzanne M., Ph.D. Bean, Elizabeth Verdick
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