MBA1045 Q&A Wednesday: What Is The #1 Skill I Should Work On as a New Entrepreneur?

Hey O. Welcome to the Hundred Dollar MBA show here for you every single day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher, Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the Hundred Dollar mba, a complete business training and community online. And today's episode is a Q and a Wednesday episode. On our Q and A Wednesday episodes, I answer a question from you, one of our listeners. Today's question is from Vanessa and Vanessa asks, what is the number one skill I should work on as a new entrepreneur? Solid question, Vanessa, because there's so much to focus on when you get started. There are so many things that you can work on. But in today's lesson, I'm going to tell you what is the number one thing? If there's one thing you really need to be strong at as an entrepreneur, this is it. I'm going to share with you that number one skill as well as how to cultivate that skill and how you can do it right now, how you can get started in developing that skill today. This is going to help you and your business now, tomorrow, the next week, the next year and for the rest of your entrepreneurial career. It's going to have the biggest impact on everything you do. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. Before we jump into today, today's lesson, I got a question for you. How much sleep did you get last night? Getting enough sleep and waking up on time aren't easy, but it can be thanks to the help of today's sponsor mattress firm, the Sleep Experts. They have the widest selection of America's top best selling brands and they have beds for every budget. Everybody and Everybody go to mattressfirm.com podcast and save 10% with the code. Podcast 10. That's podcast 1 0. Or, or if online shopping isn't your thing, Mattress Firm stores are in your neighborhood. So better sleep is just around the corner, literally. Mattressfirm.com podcast so in today's Q and a Wednesday episode, Vanessa asks, what's the number one skill I should work on as a new entrepreneur? First of all, Vanessa, this is not an uncommon question I get asked, but at the same time, it's a really good question because it means that you really are focused on getting better and becoming the best entrepreneur possible. So what is that one skill that I recommend that you work on? Communication. Having great communication skills are really going to open up a lot of doors. It's going to affect everything you do in your business. Your ideas are worthless if you can't communicate them properly. That includes on your sales pages, in your emails, in your one on one conversations, if you speak on stage, on your webinars, if you're selling a product through a sales negotiation, if you can't communicate your ideas, if you can't communicate properly and effectively, you're going to hit a lot of roadblocks, you're going to have a lot of problems. And I can give you countless examples of when businesses fail because of this reason. They don't really shore up their skills when it comes to communication. A lot of tech founders, a lot of people that are really good with the code and the programs that you create, but they can't sell their product because they can't communicate its benefits to their customers. No sales, no revenue, no business. I believe communication is the mother of all skills. A great communicator makes a great salesperson, a great teacher, a great mentor, a great conversationalist, a great person, A person you want to have a relationship with. This is why it's the number one skill we look for when we hire our employees. But as an entrepreneur, it's even more important because you have to do all the communicating with your team. You got to communicate your vision, you got to communicate your goals, you got to communicate what you're all working towards. Nearly everything you touch as an entrepreneur deals with communication. So this is a skill I'm constantly trying to refine to get better at. So how do you refine your communication skills? Well, you got to choose a way to consistently challenge yourself to communicate better. Let me give you a few examples. One of the best ways I found that helped me become a better communicator was starting a blog. When I started blogging, it was a real challenge because I had to write down my thoughts on the computer screen, read them back to myself, and ask myself, does this make sense? Am I actually communicating what I really believe? Do I actually believe what I just wrote? You're constantly challenging yourself when you're writing, and you're also challenging yourself to get better as a communicator. And writing is one of those things that is great to get started with because it's low pressure. You can write and refine and edit. So if you want to become a better communicator, you got to choose a way to refine that skill on a regular basis. I a blog is a good way to do that because you're on a publishing schedule. Like, say, for example, you publish a new blog post every week. So you know you have to publish an article that communicates your ideas every single week. This gives you a chance to get better every week. Now, if you're listening to me right now and saying, ugh, I don't like to write, you're in trouble. If you don't like to write, you're really in trouble. As an entrepreneur, you have to get used to that because writing is a great way to refine your ideas, to refine what you believe in, to refine, find what you're trying to communicate to others. Writing is where everything starts. Whether it's a great speech, whether it's a great sales page, whether it's a great video you're shooting. So you better get started. Now, you're probably cringing at the idea of writing because maybe you don't feel comfortable with it. Maybe you don't feel good yet with that skill. And I felt that way as well. I wasn't some sort of writing champion in school and grew up writing novels. I used to love to draw as a kid. Writing wasn't really a strong suit of mine. But I forced myself to start blogging, to start writing, and it's the best thing I have ever done because it's affected everything in my business in a positive way. Even if you want to start a podcast as your regular thing to refine your communication skills, big surprise. Podcasting is very scripted. Even if it sounds like I'm speaking naturally right now on the mic, I write detailed notes for every episode to make sure I'm concise, to make sure that I'm communicating, getting clearly. I'm not just fumbling about and wasting your time on the podcast. This is how we're able to, you know, crunch a whole bunch of information in 10 to 15 minutes each episode. Same thing with a great video. If you want to start a YouTube channel, same thing. Even if you're doing an interview, podcast or show, you're going to script out some questions after you do some homework and research about your guest. This is going to help you communicate better. Now, I highly recommend that when you write things or you type things up to read them back to yourself aloud. This is going to double down that skill, your writing and your speaking. So the first step is again, have some consistent way to refine your communication skills like blogging or a podcast or a video show, which is going to involve you writing down your thoughts. The second thing I learned is one of the best ways to become a better communicator is, is to be a better listener. Whether you're in a one on one conversation or you're listening to a speech, or you're listening to some sort of course or video, taking note of what people are saying and how they're communicating. It is a really, really good thing to do because you're going to make mental notes of that was a really good way that person phrased that or that was really confusing. I should not do that when I speak. Also, communication is not only the way you say things, it's what you say. So when you're having a conversation with somebody and you're att listening to them, your reply to them is going to make a whole lot more sense to them. It's going to communicate a whole lot more because you're actually trying to have a back and forth and not just waiting for your turn to speak. You're using the information that you're hearing and what you're absorbing and responding, knowing that information. My third tip is to challenge yourself to communicate in high pressure situations. Now you don't have to jump a whole bunch of levels of pressure at once. Maybe a high pressure situation for you is initiating a conversation at a party. Maybe if you've been communicating and working on this craft for some time. That high pressure situation is trying to get on stage at an event and speaking and communicating to your audience on stage. What this does is that by putting yourself in a high pressure situation and challenging yourself and doing this frequently enough so you can feel the pressure a little bit is that when you hit your baseline, it's going to be a whole lot easier for you to communicate easily with other people. If you're used to speaking on stage to hundreds and even maybe thousands of people and you're communicating clearly and concisely and you perform really well in that high pressure situation. When you get off stage and you're having a one on one conversation, the pressure is a whole lot less. So you're going to find it easy to communicate even more clearly when you're in those one on one situations. This is like doing high intensity training for your body. You know, really working out and getting yourself into shape and then spending a week in Europe, walking in the cities, realizing, wow, I'm in great shape, I'm not tired at the end of the day, walking all day because I put myself in that high pressure situation beforehand. That training has prepared me to enjoy the, you know, normal baseline situations. Now we talked about listening. My next tip is all about reading. I found that reading has really helped me become a better communicator. A few years back, I challenged myself to read 50 books in a year and I hit that milestone. I think I hit 52 books in that year. And ever since I've been reading around 50 books every year. And it's really, really helped me become a better communicator. Because, hey, when you read, you're exposed to all these great different communication styles, great writers. You're exposed to even some new vocabulary or ways to phrase things or new ways to tell a story. Books are a fantastic teacher in communication. So if you're not in the habit of reading every day or getting through some books, you don't have to read 50 books in a year. But there's no reason why you can't read five to ten books a year. Give yourself a challenge, give yourself a goal when it comes to how many books you want to finish this year and tell me at the end of the year you're not a better communicator. I would love to challenge you on that. You're going to find immense benefit when it comes to reading and communication. I got more on today's topic, but before that, let me give love to today's sponsor. Building online courses, memberships and digital downloads is a great way to earn money by sharing your knowledge with others. But a lot of these tools out there are so complicated that it's a headache just to get started. Podia eliminates all the hassles. It handles your sales page, your email marketing, your payment processing, your content hosting and delivery all in one gorgeous designed package. It gets out of your way and makes it easy to create and sell. Best of all, unlike the competition, Podia takes zero and we mean zero transaction fees. So you actually keep what you earn. I love what Podia offers. The ease to sell your courses, your products and your memberships while looking gorgeous. And it's super simple to get started. Their customer support, top notch and they believe in their products so much that they give you the first 30 days totally for free. There's no commitment and there's no credit card required. Just try it and if you love it, just hang on. If you don't, you don't pay a dime. So there's no excuses. It's never been easier to get started and make money from your passion. Join over 10,000 creators and start selling today with a 30 day free trial at Podia. Just go to podia.commba to get this offer. Again, go to podia.commbA that's Podia P O D I A.com MBA to wrap up today's Q and A Wednesday episode. Question from Vanessa, what is the number one skill I need to work on as a new entrepreneur? Communication. Communication. Communication. I shared with you a whole bunch of different exercises, whole bunch of different things you could do to improve your communication skills. But the last piece of advice I want to give you is that communication or refining your communication skills is a lifelong journey. It's something that you're going to continue to do and continue to get better at as you grow and as you move throughout life. And great. Communication is not about talking a lot or being somebody who has the gift of gab. It's about efficiency. It's about being able to communicate effectively in any given situation whenever you need it. It's going to help every aspect of your business. So get going and get working on that communication. Thank you so much for asking your question. Vanessa. If you have a question you want to ask here on Q and A Wednesdays, just email me over at omar00mba.net. I would love to answer your question right here on the show. That's it for me today, guys. But before I go, I want to leave you with this. I love this question from Vanessa because she's asking about a skill that she can refine, not what to do in her business. Skills are transferable. She can use this skill, communication, no matter what business she starts, no matter what she does in her journey as an entrepreneur, she could apply what she knows, and she can apply her communication skills to any business idea that comes her way. So even if she has a business today that won't be around maybe five years from now, because maybe she sells it or maybe she decides to close it down, she can apply it to the next business and the business after that. So look to refine skills. Don't worry so much about tactics and specifics of what you have to do in your business. Your skills are always going to be there for you. All right, thank you so much for listening to the 100 LMBA show. I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care. Of sam.