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One of the pleasures I have in traveling the country speaking to thousands of business owners is hearing many of their challenges.

Of course the desire to get more customers and keep the ones they already having buy more is ONE big challenge.

However, I also hear from business owners who are FRUSTRATED in growing their businesses.

Indeed we see on The Profit, with Marcus Lemonis these “TV” challenges and indeed they’re a great illustration of the reality of running a business.

Thankfully it’s organizations like SCORE, Vistage, NAWBO, Adrian Millers Adrian’s Network – and many other organizations who provide a variety of guidance and mentorship for thousands of business owners every year.

The ONE question I think we should all ask ourselves, if we find that running a business is a CONSTANT CHALLENGE and HEADACHE….

Should I be in Business?

Ask yourself is being a business owner for you? There’s NOTHING wrong with working for a great company and contributing in that way.

Running a business is TOUGH WORK. You have to have a multiple set of disciplines. Not that you have to KNOW EVERYTHING but you have to have the aptitude to figure it out to some degree of success.

1. Marketing – this is a BROAD topic – but you’ve got to figure out HOW TO GET THE ATTENTION OF CUSTOMERS
2. Sales – how will you make a sale, how will you get customers to PAY for your products or service
3. Finance – you MUST be able to manage cash flow, price your services properly, focus on profit and and other basic things
4. Hiring – to grow you MUST be able to put a team together to help you execute and manage and nurture that team
5. Operations – how will you keep all of this running – this is operations – the day to day “back office” of running a business
6. Technology – I hear many people say “I don’t like technology…”. Guess what? Without technology your’e business is going to run LESS efficient and SLOWER.
7. Learning – You MUST have the ability and desire to constantly learn. We don’t know everything and so running a business is about CONSTANTLY learning.
8. Adaptability – how do you deal with challenges. Business is all about constant challenges and problems. How do you face them? What do you do with them?
9. Communication – a big part of business success is communicating – be it in sales, marketing copy, to your team, in networking

Republished by permission. Original here

Image: Smarthustle.com

This article, “Thinking About Whether Being a Business Owner is for You? 9 Skills You’ll Need” was first published on Small Business Trends