Skill development

If I am really going to get serious about being an entrepreneur again, there are a number of skills and skill areas that I must improve:

• Sales and salesmanship - at least starting with a more positive attitude
• Communications in general and interpersonal communications in particular
• Empathy for whoever I am dealing with as well as customers
• Negotiation - when to push harder, when to back off and give a little, and when to walk away
• Ambition - how badly do I want something, is it achievable, is it worth the costs, how to manage it
• Patience, persistence, and pacing - going the distance but not off into the weeds
• Demographics - deep understanding
• Popular culture - deep understanding
• Buzz - how to get it, promote it, leverage it, how to do something with it, how to manage it, how to keep it alive
• Passion - understanding its role, but like fire mishandling can lead to either an incendiary disaster or dead lack of activity
• Trends - which ones matter, how to measure, what to watch
• Hits and blockbusters - do they matter for a given business, how they matter, how to get them, and how to manage them
• Appearance, perception, and image - understanding their importance, cultivating them, managing them, exploiting them, evolving them as the world evolves
• Reputation - what factors are controlling it, what forms of influence do you have, responding to weaknesses, responding to attacks
• Public speaking ... ugh!
• Graphics design - their role, achieving competence and credibility, measuring value
• Brand - conceptualizing, creating, cultivating, managing, and evolving
• Value proposition - getting the elements right and then getting the formulation right, how it manifests itself in every aspect of the business, products, services, and reputation
• Generosity - role in making a business a valuable part of society as a side effect of delivering great business results and how that perpetuates a "virtuous cycle"

Obviously there are many other aspects of starting and running a business, but these are some that I would definitely need to improve dramatically to achieve a reasonable level of business success.

-- Jack Krupansky