When developing your business, there will be a time when you need to consider what talents and skills you have at your disposal, and what gaps you’ll need to fill. It becomes clear that things fall into one of two categories…
- Category 1 – something you’re already skilled at or something you can learn to do yourself in a cost effective, timely manner,
- Category 2 – something you find deeply challenging or will find impossible to do well or which will take you such a chunk of time to learn, that you would be better off paying someone else to do. Freelance, part-time basis to keep costs low.
Here is a list of skill sets to running a business
- Strategic skills
- Leadership skills
- Branding and marketing skills
- Financial skills
- Legal skills
- Operational management skills
- Human resources skills
- Sales skills
- Computer skills
You may already possess some of these skills, others you may be prepared to learn, others will need to be brought in through employees or via an on-demand basis, using freelancers or other businesses.
You must have a good sense of self awareness, and be able to take an long, honest look at your strengths and weaknesses. It’s important that you don’t fool yourself here.
There is a triangle of mutually supporting elements that you should have when starting off any new business. They are …
- Your proven talents
- Your real passions/interests. Is there commonality between 1 and 2.
- Evidence of a market
You don’t need all 3 for success, 2 might be good enough to start.
Branding 101
- Branding 101: start here
- Assessing your brand
- Finding brands authentic purpose
- Brand strategy
- Brand purpose, vision and mission
- Branding: talent
- Brand values
- Differentiating your brand
- Focusing on your ideal customers
- Developing brand – six legged spider
- Brand positioning
- Brand story
- Brand name
- Crafting the Internal brand positioning statement
- Shaping the external brand positioning line