Essential skills every small business owner needs
As a small business owner, you must be a jack of all trades. If you’re in the market to learn new things, you could try these out, or you could also further your education. There’s no way around it: to succeed as a small business owner, you must have certain skill sets, or it’s not going to work. You don’t have to be good at all things, but you need to be good enough so that you know when someone you hire is doing something wrong. If you have no idea if the person is doing something wrong, you’ll never be able to successfully run your business.
You must have a firm understanding of financial management
No one is saying that you need to be a CPA; however, you do need to be able to tell where your money is going. Luckily, these days, there are software programs like Excel and free spreadsheets that will help you calculate all of this. However, you will need to be able to do some calculations on the fly.
It’s vital that you’re able to figure out your profits, expenditures, and everything else in between. How can you know if you’re making money if you don’t keep tabs on how money flows in and out of your business? You can’t, and money is the lifeblood of your business, and if you don’t treat it as such, you’ll bleed it dry.
Communication is vital for consistency
As a small business owner, you’ll need to be able to communicate with more people than only your employees. You’ll need to be able to communicate with your suppliers, vendors, customers, and any investors you might have.
Think of communication as the barrier between your ideas and reality. If you’re unable to communicate what your vision is, your vision will never come to fruition. So, you need to be able to both orally and visually communicate what your goals are so that you’re able to meet them.
Small business owners often don’t think of it, but if you’re not able to communicate with people in your chain of supply, usually kinks happen along the way. Just think about the amount of businesses that have suffered recently because they weren’t able to get enough supplies to operate their business. The reason they don’t have access to the products required for their business may not be the supply chain but their ability to effectively communicate what their needs are. That’s something to think about the next time you think communication is just barking out orders to the people who work under you.
Marketing is an often overlooked area
There’s so much more involved than just picking a good location to make a small business successful. How do people know about your product or service? The average person will know about your business through the marketing channels that you choose.
You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to figure out how to effectively market your business. The best way to find out what’s working for other businesses in your niche is by seeing what they’re doing. Are they running ads on Google? Maybe they have a blog that brings in organic search traffic, or maybe they plaster their signs all over town to get the word out. Imitation in marketing works, and don’t be afraid to do what everyone else is doing because if it’s working for them, it’ll probably work for you.
Networking is a must for your small business to succeed
So, let’s take the example of a person who runs a small business washing windows for restaurants and retailers. Almost no fast food restaurants or stores wash their windows these days. These big businesses hire small businesses to come and wash their windows for them.
How will you get businesses to hire you? Well, you could do marketing, which is something that you’ll need to do anyway. Another thing you’ll have to do is network and get to know the managers of fast-food restaurants and businesses in your area. The more people you know, the more likelihood that you can turn some of them into customers. You’ll never make a dime if you don’t have the inside track to get your foot in the door.
Always seek out networking opportunities, no matter if they’re trade shows or any local gatherings that you have. Any chance you have to shake hands with people in charge of local businesses is a good thing for you if you’re in the window washing business or any business that is looking for B2B customers.
Time management is what will make or break you
So, we’ll end on this note, which might be the most important skill of them all. You need to learn how to properly manage not only your time but those who work for you. If you spend all your time in the office looking at Facebook, you’re going to fail. Time is worth more than money, and if you hap hazardously spend it, you’re setting yourself up for a huge failure.
Always schedule everything and make sure that you delegate tasks to those who are the most capable of doing them. Are you the type of person who sucks royally at doing a certain task? If so, find the strongest person on your team and have them do it. Nothing is worse than wasting time doing a second-rate job when someone else can zip right through it.