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News flash—most entrepreneurs don’t have a business degree, and often their first experience in the business world is when they start their own venture. Business skills do help make the process an easier one, however, and will be required once you become established. This means you will have to acquire them yourself, create a team of people with the right skill sets, or hire experts. The contributions of your founding team are critical, and I cover founding teams at length in chapter 12.

Business skills aren’t a must-have, but there are two major skills that you will need. The good news is that, though some people are born with a natural aptitude for these skills, anyone can learn them. Even more good news: learning these skills won’t just help you become a successful entrepreneur. They are the foundation of a healthy and happy life regardless of your career path.

Self-Awareness

In what is sometimes called “the paradox of leadership,” effective leaders must balance humility and confidence. These two character attributes are often seen as opposites that are incompatible with one another, but that assessment leaves out a critical component of the equation—self-awareness. The Stoic philosopher Epictetus sums up the need for humility thusly: It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.

A healthy level of humility and self-awareness helps you to understand your strengths and weaknesses. Life in general is a long learning process, and the undertaking of starting your own business even more so. Humility is an expression of self-awareness that allows us to say, “I do not yet know enough.” Humility is what allows us to be willing to ask for and accept help when needed. No one does anything significant in life alone. We all need help and support along the way.

Successful entrepreneurs know that they don’t have all the answers, and they actively seek out advice and good ideas. The worst characteristic for an entrepreneur to have is suspicion and paranoia that everyone is out to get them and steal their great ideas. Not only is this behavior unbecoming, it also reflects another major misconception regarding ideas and opportunities. As discussed in the previous chapter, ideas do not have inherent worth. Only when they evolve into actionable opportunities do they develop a value, and this evolution is due in no small part to the composition of your entrepreneurial thumbprint.

Confidence is also an expression of self-awareness. Not to be confused with arrogance, recklessness, or egotism, confidence is the side of self-awareness that allows us to say, “Knowing the challenge in front of me, and knowing my experience, learning, and skills, I think I have a good chance of overcoming this challenge.” If self-awareness is something that you haven’t thought about before picking up this book, that’s okay. Self-awareness—and by extension humility and confidence—are not hardwired character traits. They are aspects of the dialogue you have with yourself and elements of the frame through which you see the world. As with any other skill, self-aware living can be cultivated through intent and practice.

Interpersonal Skills

Interpersonal skills such as communication, listening, empathy, and conflict resolution often get lumped into the category of “soft skills.” Soft skills are often seen as less valuable than “hard skills,” or the explicit skill sets required to execute a professional role. This book is not a debate about the relationship between hard and soft skills, but in the realm of entrepreneurship, traditionally “soft” interpersonal skills become essential hard skills for success.

Dealing with people and making connections is an unavoidable part of being a successful entrepreneur. Successful entrepreneurs are assiduous networkers and connection-makers. This doesn’t mean that you have to be an extreme extrovert or super salesperson. What it does mean is that business is done by people, with people, and for people. Avoiding contact with humans is not a recipe for entrepreneurial success. At times it may feel as though interpersonal skills are impossible to teach someone who doesn’t have a knack for communication. Either you’re born being comfortable talking to strangers or you simply aren’t, right? Not really. Unlike hard skills such as computer programming or accounting, interpersonal skills are tough to measure and evaluate, but that doesn’t mean that someone who isn’t a strong communicator is doomed to never improve.