5 Must-Have Skills Every Entrepreneur Needs to Be Successful

Growing up in a family of overachieving entrepreneurs was a luxury. That’s because it afforded me the opportunity to witness the requisite ingredients in a successful recipe, an experience that has stayed with me on my own 10-year journey as an entrepreneur.

These are the five characteristics of a successful entrepreneur.

1. Ambition

Ambition is super important. You either have it, or you don’t. There are certain types of people that you meet who are just a little bit more driven than others. They are forward-thinking, and being ambitious just naturally comes to them.

As a teacher of courses, I have gotten to be pretty good at recognizing ambition. If students come up to me right after class and just start engaging and asking questions, then I know they were paying attention. They were hungry and they wanted it. They genuinely wanted to learn, as opposed to people who are slacking off and not doing any of the lessons. If someone is three or four months in, and the course should only take three weeks to finish, then I know this person is probably not going to make it. But if they finish the course in two weeks, then that is a strong indicator that they’re committed and that they’re disciplined.

Related: How to Make the Most of Your Ambition

2. Discipline

Discipline ties into ambition. It also ties into perseverance and grit, which I write about later. Discipline means having a routine and sticking to it. For me, it is waking up at 7 a.m., having a quick cup of coffee, maybe a light snack and immediately diving into work. My laptop goes with me everywhere. I’m disciplined day in and day out, seven days a week. Eventually, it becomes a habit. At that point, you have a strong enough mindset to just stay disciplined and keep your goal in mind.

Discipline isn’t glamorous, but it’s the engine behind every successful person. It’s what keeps you working when motivation fades away. Many people are motivated in the beginning, but few can sustain their output after the initial excitement wears off. Discipline means doing the unsexy tasks like answering emails, tracking numbers or fixing backend issues day after day, without shortcuts. Yes, it is monotonous work. Of course, it means time in the trenches. It is about learning how to overcome obstacles. Over time, with that consistency, you build trust in yourself. You begin to expect results from your effort because your habits are aligned with your goals.

3. Grit

Grit is important, too. You have to be able to stick it out, even if things are hard. It’s like learning a new skill, which is challenging. You can’t outsource it yet. This is a quality that a lot of the younger generation is lacking right now. They will try a lot of different things, like whatever is the latest trend. They’ll stick with it for a few days, but they don’t feel like they are having any success because they expect immediate gratification thanks to all these unrealistic Instagram Reels or TikToks.

All you see on social media are the highlights — the successes. It’s people showing the best side of themselves. You don’t see the struggle. You don’t see the obstacles. There’s just so much distraction that you have to have grit to get through it. It might take a year, or it might take five years to become successful in business. That’s okay. You can’t give up.

4. Take advice

Being receptive to advice is another one. That said, you need to be wise about who to take advice from. Unfortunately, the people closest to you, maybe friends or family, might offer you bad advice. For example, when I was 21 or 22, I experienced my first success with an Amazon store. I was really excited. I was on a trip back east with my cousins. I was making $6,000 a month in profit, and everything was going great. I decided I was going to scale the store. Then one of my cousins said, “You should stay in school and take the conventional path.”

It broke my spirit a little bit. Even though it was from a place of care and love, she didn’t know any successful entrepreneurs. So, I took it with a grain of salt because she could have had her own reasons for saying that. The people closest to you could be subconsciously taking that position because they didn’t achieve what they wanted to in life. Then again, taking advice from people who have walked in your path before or are where you want to be can be super valuable. This is especially true if they have the same ethics as you, or they’re in a similar industry and they’re crushing it.

In fact, I would say that being coachable is a rare superpower. The most successful entrepreneurs aren’t the ones who act like they have it all figured out. They’re people who are always learning from people who’ve already walked the path. Coachability, in my opinion, is about both listening and applying what you hear. If you’re too proud to be corrected or too stubborn to evolve, you’ll hit a ceiling eventually. The key is to ask better questions and stay humble enough to know there’s always more to learn, even when you’re already doing well.

Related: The Best Advice I’ve Ever Received — 5 Keys to Entrepreneurial Success

5. Be a lifelong learner

The last point I want to make is to be a lifelong learner. For example, I read Marketplace Pulse every morning. I also subscribe to all the ecommerce newsletters and read them so that I am up to date on the industry. Our industry is moving really fast. So, I also go on YouTube at least once or twice a week to look at what the younger sellers are doing as well as to see all the trends in different marketplaces, whether it’s Amazon, Walmart, eBay, TikTok Shop and so on. It’s about continuing to educate yourself because this industry is changing rapidly.