Complete Business Skills TIER LIST

Summary

• Sales: As an entrepreneur, it's crucial to focus on sales in the beginning. You don't need to build a large sales department; you need to learn if you can sell. The founder should be the first salesperson and engage in sales conversations to understand who your product or service fits.
• Finance: Understand your core numbers, such as revenue, margin, and net margin. Track your profit and loss (P&L) month over month, but learning to create a P&L yourself isn't necessary when starting out. You can outsource this task affordably and focus on using those numbers to drive sales and marketing efforts.
• Offer Development: Learn how to price, package, and communicate the value of your offer. Make sure to understand the terms of payment and develop offers in line with market demand. If you're having trouble, consider reading "100 Million Dollar Offers" for guidance.
• Product Development: Focus on creating a product that meets customer needs. Start with a minimum viable product (MVP) and iterate based on feedback. Take customer objections as ideas for improving your product or service.
• Communication: Improve by learning to listen actively and take different perspectives. Ensure that the information you relay to your team, customers, and vendors is received correctly. Adapt your communication skills to develop better offers.
• Human Resources: Begin by onboarding people effectively, providing them with context about your business, and imparting necessary skills. Adequate onboarding sets up a foundation for workplace harmony.
• Negotiation: Focus on creating leverage and understanding what the other party desires. Early on, this isn't a critical skill, but it's integral in vendor relationships and contracts in the long run.
• Hiring and Recruiting: Treat recruitment as you would customer acquisition. Use job forums and networking sites to build a "talent acquisition funnel" for your small business.
• M&A (Mergers and Acquisitions): This skill may be irrelevant initially but if your goal is to sell your business, design it with appealing features for potential buyers. Understand what such buyers look for.
• Marketing: Identify efficient marketing strategies that target where your customers are most active. Focus on a single channel before exploring others, and respond to customer feedback to refine your methods.

For established business owners:

• All Skills Upgrade to S-tier: Each of the mentioned skills becomes equally important as the business expands. As a leader, your role is to coach and cultivate a team that can excel in these areas to grow the business comprehensively.

Video

How To Take Action

I would suggest starting with sales because it's really important for you to know if your product or service will sell. If you're the first salesperson, you'll learn a lot about your customers. So, you should talk to lots of people and find out if they need what you're offering.

Then, I'd focus on understanding your basic finances. You don't need to make a profit and loss (P&L) statement yourself. You can hire someone to do it. But you should keep an eye on your revenue, margin, and net margin. This helps you make good decisions and grow.

Next, work on your offer. Make sure it's something people want and at a price they'll pay. You can make a simple offer and learn from what customers say. If you need help, you could read "100 Million Dollar Offers" to get better at this.

For your product, start with just enough to meet customers' needs, an MVP. Change it based on what people tell you. Listen carefully to any complaints or ideas customers have, and use those to make your product better.

Improving your communication is also key. Practice listening and make sure you understand different points of view. This helps when you're talking with your team, customers, and vendors.

If you're hiring people, give them a good start. Tell them about your business and what skills they need. This helps everyone get along and do their job well.

Marketing is important too. Try one way of marketing that's best for reaching your customers. Stick with that until it works well before trying other ways.

As your business grows, all these skills become more important. You'll need to help your team be good at these things too. But for now, keep it simple, focus on sales, understanding money, making a good offer, and talking well to people. That'll get you off to a strong start!

Quotes

"In the beginning, the best sales person is actually the founder"

– Leila Hormozi

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"The best way to sell is just be honest with people, to tell the truth and state the facts"

– Leila Hormozi

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"If you understand how to price something, how to package it, and how to verbalize the pricing and packaging in a way that maximizes value for the customer, then you can develop an offer"

– Leila Hormozi

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"What you need to know how to do is kind of like how somebody might know how to do paid ads; you need to understand how to acquire talent through a paid channel"

– Leila Hormozi

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"I actually think that the reason that I was able to quickly get good at communication was I learned to be very good at listening"

– Leila Hormozi