The 5 skills entrepreneurs need to succeed in 2025

While sometimes it can appear that becoming an entrepreneur comes with a dream lifestyle, trying to get a business off the ground during a cost-of-living crisis in a cash-strapped post-pandemic world is neither easy nor glamorous. However, it is doable. But you’re going to need a certain set of skills that will set you apart from everyone else. So what skills does an entrepreneur need to succeed in 2025?

1. Entrepreneurial Flair
   Are you really an entrepreneur?  Definition: an individual who creates a new business, bearing most of the risks and enjoying most of the rewards.  Creating something new is not necessarily rocket science. MacDonalds didn’t invent the hamburger, but they did distribute it in a more convenient, hygienic and very efficient manner.

   Maybe you have always been an ideas type of person. Constantly questioning why a task or product isn’t delivered or made differently. Great ideas just bubble out. Now is the time to put that to the test.

2. A really good idea
   Better known in marketing circles as a Unique Value Proposition.  A value proposition defines the kind of value a company will create for its customers. Finding a unique value proposition usually involves a new way of segmenting the market. Often, a novel value proposition expands the market. As brilliant as your ideas are, at the end of the day would a stranger actually pay money to experience your product or service?

   Few ideas would survive the reality test if they didn’t use technology in either the product/ service or administration of the business.  The use of technology is increasingly required to allow scalability.  Interestingly everyone in business is required to be a bit of a technology nerd to survive.

3. Confidence
   To be brave is defined in the Webster’s dictionary as “having or showing mental or moral strength to face danger, fear, or difficulty: having or showing courage “  Some folks may be surprised to learn that presenting your great new idea and suggesting that you are considering investing your time and career in this idea…is brave. Maybe even heroic. Experienced entrepreneurs use the term “crazy brave”. No clear definition required.

   Test your great new idea on friends and family. They will usually love your ideas if they think of you as an entrepreneur. Of course, every family has a cynic. Treat them respectfully. They may be correct.

4. Risk-taking
   Being brave enough to tell the world that you have a great new idea is hard enough. Then you are required to bet on yourself. A risk with real money that belongs to you.  This can be the deal breaker for many aspiring entrepreneurs.

   Following your dream sounds great. Abandoning your secure job and risking your home and maybe the family that shares it with you is a whole new world. It can be living the darkest nightmare. The goal now is to reduce the risk from a gamble to a measured risk.

5. Business plan
   The cold reality is harder to face than a captive crowd.  The business plan asks all these niggly questions that after some pages of great ideas results in cash flow. Put simply getting your money back. Cash is king! The audience is no longer extended family and friends by a disinterested observer who is being asked to risk their money on a great new idea. That investor is in fact you. The you that wakes up in the middle of the night wondering…what have I done?

In 2025 a plan would be difficult to sell without the use of technology. Most great new ideas are in effect an increase in productivity.

The new field of productivity that is often the essence of any new idea is technology and the implementation of the same. In the business world, productivity is a measure of the efficiency of a company’s production process, Put in layperson’s terms. Doing more with less resources. Not to be confused with reducing staff salaries or benefits.

Whilst considering a change in your career a business plan should also consider if the great new idea doesn’t work in its purest form.

Allow for the idea to adapt to survive.

Written by Alan Manly.
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