The Best Skills to Learn as a Fastlane Entrepreneur

[Yoda]

Selling.

The premises of Entrepreneurship are based on selling something. For you, branding is the marketing and attention arm, but you need to sell something. It's selling you (or your time), or a product you're offering.

 

[MJ DeMarco]

Selling.
Written communication.
Oral communication.
Setting expectations - (there is no shortcut!)
Persistence.

 

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[Penguin]

Disclaimer
(Sorry about the title I am trying to work on copywriting I will change it if you guys want me to)


I have read a quite a few books, watched videos, read from the forum and what I have noticed is the most important skill you HAVE to learn is......

Selling​

Nothing else really as much from what I have seen as many other parts of a business can be outsourced on freelancing sites, CL, or to people you know in the field. By learning to sell it would also help against being a wantrepreneur or action faking because you would have to practice selling in order to become better at it. I also don't know if copywriting and marketing fall under selling.

I know other threads have been started on selling (@Scot has some really good threads on it filled with valuable information if you are interested in learning) just wondering what everyone else on the forum thinks of this and would be glad to hear if you think any other skill is far more important.

 

[Andy Black]

Here's an interesting take on this.

I was on a course on Tuesday and the guy giving the course contended that the most important skill for a business person is the ability to "control the silence". (I can't remember exactly how he phrased it - I'll check my notes later.)

In a negotiation you say your price then you need to shut up and wait for them to speak. You don't undo yourself by continuing to speak.

When you ask a question you shut up and let them answer. You don't answer it yourself.

According to Blaise, anyone can get to the line, but it's our ability to hold our nerve at the crucial moment that will allow us to get across the line and bring our biggest wins.

It's how we handle ourselves in these tiny yet crucial moments that can make the biggest difference.

Food for thought.

 

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[AndrewNC]

I'm curious what people think the most important thing an aspiring Fastlaner could learn/teach themselves to create the opportunity to get in the Fastlane? Obviously a big part of being in the Fastlane is the Law of Effection/the ability to affect thousands or millions of people. As MJ discusses in the book, if you're giving out hair cuts one by one or selling sandwiches, your "speed limit" is probably capped at 100 or so a day. But if you own a website/sell something online, your theoretical "speed limit" could be thousands or tens of thousands of people a day. Who has a better chance at launching a Fastlane business...a person with a speed limit of a 100 or 3,000?

I know for me personally it was taking the time to learn Facebook marketing. I had a "taste" of the Fastlane the last couple years. I started a T-shirt business and went from working at a job making $12/hour to having days where I would make 3 thousand bucks without really having to do too much. That obviously was a HOLY SHIT moment for me. But I don't think the T-shirt business ever could have gone Fastlane unless I learned how Facebook advertising worked. That was really what launched it. If I was paying individual IG accounts or selling my shirts face to face, it never would have been "Fastlane".

So I'm curious, what do you think is the most useful skill someone trying to get into the Fastlane could teach themselves? If you consider yourself to be a Fastlaner, what was the most important thing you learned? The mindset is obviously very important, but the book should have taught all of us that. For anyone trying to get in the Fastlane, what skill do you think is the most valuable to teach yourself?

All answers welcome obviously. You don't have to be a "Fastlaner". Looking forward to the answers.

I'd say learn nothing, gain experience in the following:

1. How to find problems and create solutions to them. How to help people
2. How to sell.
3. How to reach your target market (advertising/marketing).

4. Internal human behavior - being self-aware, understanding how you work.
5. External communication skills - understanding how other people work and are driven.
6. Understanding the universal system as a whole - how the world works, so you can flow with it

7 . How to gain specific industry experience.

 

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[The-J]

Sales, first and foremost. If you cannot convince someone that your solution is the best solution, then you're not going to make it. How else are people gonna give you money?

Effective communication. This goes along with sales but isn't exactly the same thing. Effective communication essentially means making sure you and the other party are understanding each other on multiple levels. One sentence to you may mean something completely different to the other person. Your job is to make sure that what they hear is what you mean.

Emotions and vision management. Everyone who is in your corner needs to be on the same page. Again, this goes hand in hand with communication but it's more about applying it to different contexts. Customers, investors, strategic partners, employees, they all need to believe in what you see. They need to believe in your vision. Not only that, you need to keep them feeling good about your vision. They need to always feel like your vision is going to benefit them in some way. (Also, your family needs to believe in your vision. If your wife doesn't believe in your vision, guess what? She'll be gone soon.)

None of these skills have anything to do with computers or money, but they have everything to do with people. Think about how human you are, how unique you are, the stresses you feel... well every customer, business owner, decision maker, manufacturer, or employee you come across is just as human as you are. No more, no less.

There's also a lot that has to do with oneself as well. You need your head on straight in order to succeed at this. People who are wavering and weak do not become successful entrepreneurs.

 

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[Real Deal Denver]

Very true. Lately I've been applying for entry level sales jobs in order to learn the ropes. So no matter how many times I fail at business at least I'll have that as a transferable skill.

Well.

I'm not sure quite what to say.

I would not call it a transferable skill. It's a lot more than that.

It's like being able to develop a business from thinking, and then building it, and then managing and guiding it. Is that a transferable skill? I wouldn't say that. I'd say that is who you are. It is who you have become. Hopefully, over time, you grow and learn and become better at everything.

Which brings me to my next point. You may not have succeeded in business before. No matter how many times you fail? Wrong. No matter how many times you tried. After each try, I guarantee you that you learned something, and you became more confident and stronger. So you couldn't succeed right away. That's pretty much the RULE of how things go. I have worked for years on things that I'm pretty good at now. It might have only taken me 5-10 years to be an overnight success! Tried, failed, learned, and kept trying the whole time. I still fail - but I succeed much more. I now succeed 80% of the time. I don't succeed 100% of the time, and I doubt that's even possible. When I started, I failed 80% of the time. THAT'S how you become successful. You just - fail - less and less. But you still fail. Or, learn. Someone once told me that success is the worst teacher in the world, because it neither teaches you anything, nor makes you stronger.

You think I got this strong and this good looking by accident? Haaaaaaaaaaa. Little - very very little - humor there. You see my point?

I know you are incredibly young Johnny. You can fail miserably for ten years and STILL be ahead of the game of 90% of the people "in the game." Don't put yourself down, and don't rush yourself.

The fact that you are here speaks volumes. Do you think - pick anyone - say, Steve Jobs was successful when he became rich? No, he wasn't. He became rich because he was successful. YOU are already successful. Sorry - you're in chapter one of your story right now. You have long ways to go. When you're in chapter seven, things will be very different. You will be "more" successful - but you couldn't possibly REACH chapter seven unless you went through chapter one first! Starting to make sense?

How can you learn 7th grade material - if you don't take grades 1-6 first?

I can see you smiling now. You get it. I knew you would. That's why you're here in the first place. You already speak the language of success, and you're hungry to learn more.

You can be your own best friend, and you can be your worst enemy. You want to know which one is stronger and going to influence you more? The one you FEED.

List your qualities. List your experiences. List what you want to do in five years. And THEN list the steps you need to take to get there. Then list the steps you need to do for every step. Do THAT honestly and completely - and THEN work it. What are you going to do the next week to better yourself? Next month? This year?

You. are. already. successful. Start on the next chapter. Yourself, five years from now, is counting on it - and waiting for you! The meeting is already arranged.

Don't be late.

 

[devine]

The best skills entrepreneur should have have nothing to do with entrepreneurship actually.
Sales? Can be outsourced.
Delivery cannot.

Copywriting? Can be outsourced.
Linguistics cannot.

Business management? Can be delegated.
Personal management cannot.

Invest in yourself, develop personal qualities, take a road less traveled.

 

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[Andy Black]

I don't think it's about hard technical skills.

If you're selling a service, then sure, you need skills that people will hire you for, then you need to be able to sell those skills or you'll go hungry. A hired gun who isn't hired doesn't need to be much of a gun-slinger.

After you get beyond thinking of yourself as "The AdWords Guy" or "The Social Media Marketing Guy", you should start hiring those people and thinking of yourself as the business owner.

Then I think the most valuable skill is "problem solving", and the ability to keep moving forward.

Can you call "persistence" a skill?

I put my money on someone who's relentless over someone with skills any day.


We all here need to get skilled at building businesses that make us money. How about that?

Anyway, here's some aha moment I had recently:

• www.thefastlaneforum.com/community/threads/youre-selling-the-wrong-product-4-mins.68704

 

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[Scot]

Marketing is very important, of course....

I would argue the ability to spot opportunity is even more important. Often, this is just a change of mindset like it has been for me...."How can I help someone today?" "How could I help this person increase their business?" "How could I help a neighbor and provide them valuable service of some kind?".

If you develop that mindset, you don't really have to "sell" much because word gets around that you're great and you really "helped this person". All of the sudden, people start contacting you because a friend that you helped referred them to you.

I've gotten clients that way as a web developer. I always tried to go the extra mile and check up on them and their site I built. One friend recently told me anytime anyone talks about needing a website, he tells them my name. Just great customer oriented mindset like MJ describes.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe Musk said he's done basically no marketing at all for Tesla because he always focused on building the best product and serving customers. He said that he understood "word would get around".

Don’t confuse marketing campaigns with selling. Musk may not have run ads for Tesla, but you better believe he’s selling.

As for web design, referrals are fine, but ask @Fox how well selling does for him.

Also, Tesla has solar roof reps in s lot of Home Depot’s, selling them.

Good products sell themselves.

Good selling can move bad products.

Good selling and good product is the best.

Good products don’t always sell themselves.

Take mine for example. I have raving fans, a big fan base online. Sure, I can sell a couple thousand units online a month, but in order to get true scale, I need to get into wholesale.

Grocery stores with valuable shelf space don’t just bring products in on their own. You need to get into the stores. By selling to them.


All skills are important to build a business. Hell, not selling, you can still build a decent lifestyle business. But selling is the only way to scale your business.

 

[GuestUser155]

Finding problems to solve.

Everything else can be outsourced.

 

[The-J]

Sales? Can be outsourced.

Not when you're trying to convince a group of VCs to give you money for your vision. That's a form of sales.

 

[safff]

It depends on your business really. Some are core, some that seem core aren't so much.

Selling to a degree, it depends on your goals. But then we're constantly selling our own image to get people's buy-in so it becomes not limited to just sales..

Similarly - Copywriting is something that I had vastly underestimated until recently and you don't have to be building websites or selling products for it to become an essential.

Coding - if you're not going to need it then less so and could be time poorly spent.

Learning 'people skills', or as a course I did refereed to them as people mechanics. Learn how to strike a chord with people, influence people and make people want to know you. It's amazing where the most obscure connections can lead you. True story, I recently got talking about hobbies to a guy at the airport, and now I'm on the verge of selling him a product through someone local to me with a small finder's fee in the form of a few free products. I'm typically a recluse in public and was determined to strike up a conversation with at least 10 complete strangers on my trip that day to break the habit - made me realise the potential if you could harness that approachability day to day..

I think the single biggest skill is life management and 'self understanding'.

What I mean by that, is a level of control over your belief systems, emotions, level of focus, self motivation that can only be developed, not flicked on like a lightbulb. Once you truly know what makes you tick, how to get yourself out of a jam, how to take a step back before reacting, what your real hapiness is, why you react negatively to certain situations etc, will you truly reach a level of constant drive that is conducive to entrepreneurism..

 

[Yoda]

LEARN TO LISTEN

What?

 

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[GMSI7D]

the best skill to learn is mastering yourself

if you can't master yourself, you won't master outside obstacles

mastering yourself begins with believing that you can succeed

if you come from a poor background, odds are that you can't believe you can have the good life

self image, faith, etc : all these things are your innergame and innergame is the most important asset

discipline, will, energy, etc : all these military-like things will lead you nowhere if you don't believe that you can succeed



because your subconscious mind will sabotate or help your effort to fit your beliefs















just remember that one man with a strong faith in himself can lead millions of people and even master the entire british army
as Gandhi did.

 

[Manchild_Unbound]

Well, I think that @AndrewNC and @Arun Siva have given excellent answers. A very useful skill is being able to teach yourself things ie the ability to be an autodidact.

Next, everyone is hinting at Sales and Marketing as great skills to have.
Let's look at Copywriting, which is one aspect of sales/marketing that is also a very useful skill.

On this forum there are some valuable threads on this topic. The best contributor is probably @SinisterLex .
His method of learning copywriting?
Read and take notes on Cashvertising and start hustling. One part of learning copywriting is copying, by hand, successful sales letters. @IceCreamKid did exactly this. Here are the threads:
Z Changed How I View The World
How to Earn $1000 a Week with No Degree, no Feedback, and no Portfolio
Now the above is an efficient way of learning copywriting. A longer approach would be to go through the Gary Halbert 30-Day Challenge. Be careful however, as this can become a form of action-faking.

While searching for the above I came across this thread:
Best Skills to Learn as an Entrepreneur

For more about Sales and Marketing, I would suggest you check out The Personal MBA by Josh Kaufman. The entire book is online for free. Here are the relevant chapters:
Chapter 2: Marketing
Chapter 3: Sales

All the information in this book is from the author's own independent rigorous study which resulted in The Personal MBA Recommended Reading List. Here are some books from that list that you might find useful:

Permission Marketing by Seth Godin
All Marketers are Liars by Seth Godin
22 Immutable Laws of Marketing by Al Ries and Jack Trout
Made to Stick by Dan and Chip Heath
The Copywriter's Handbook by Robert Bly
SPIN Selling by Neil Rackman (This book was also recommended by the Forum Member @Ubermensch who wrote a solid thread on Sales)

 

[LightHouse]

People skills as it relates to selling, networking, hiring, managing, etc.

If you know what makes people tick on an individual level and scale it as you grow, you can move the world.

 

[Mikkel]

There are plenty of threads about which books you should read, but these books span the gambit of different topics. If you ended up reading each one of these books, you'd be mediocre at many of these skill or incredibly knowledgable with nothing to show for... because you spent all your time reading with no action. Anyways, you always hear people saying, get good at 1 or 2 things and hire people to do the rest.

My question to you Fastlaners is this, what skills have you learned that have proved most beneficial for you?

For myself, I have taught myself branding and social media in my spare time to help build large followings on social media platforms.

Pros: One of many techniques to get eyes on your company/product.
Great way to interact with your customers/followers.
Branding is incredible important when trying to help people envision what your product will help them do, the lifestyle they can live etc.

Cons: You need PLENTY of other skills to sell a product. Simply having a social media account will not bring in money. You need to provide value and make sure your customers know that.


Some ideas that I have heard are:
Writing copy
Coding
Learning about stocks
SEO
AdWords
Etc.


Now the list above is not necessarily the best things to learn, but rather examples.

What skills do you find useful to help you succeed?

I hope this will thread will surface some skills that people may have not though of previously. This is not meant for someone to learn all the skills listed but rather choose what may be most beneficial to them, so they can hone in their skills on one or two things.

 

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[TonyStark]

LEARN TO LISTEN

 

[kytro360]

The best skills you need for an online business (this after after talking to multiple 6-7 figure marketers) are:

- A solid grasp of direct response marketing (aka get good at copywriting and what makes people tick)
- List building (aka how to build a large email list)

...and of course you need to have a clear mindset that you will be successful no matter what.

 

[MJ DeMarco]

An answer I provided on Quora, somewhat echoes the sentiments here:

http://qr.ae/TU1W0S

 

[HelpAndProsper]

Marketing is very important, of course....

I would argue the ability to spot opportunity is even more important. Often, this is just a change of mindset like it has been for me...."How can I help someone today?" "How could I help this person increase their business?" "How could I help a neighbor and provide them valuable service of some kind?".

If you develop that mindset, you don't really have to "sell" much because word gets around that you're great and you really "helped this person". All of the sudden, people start contacting you because a friend that you helped referred them to you.

I've gotten clients that way as a web developer. I always tried to go the extra mile and check up on them and their site I built. One friend recently told me anytime anyone talks about needing a website, he tells them my name. Just great customer oriented mindset like MJ describes.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe Musk said he's done basically no marketing at all for Tesla because he always focused on building the best product and serving customers. He said that he understood "word would get around".

 

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[Scot]

What I am getting out of you guys (I believe) is that selling with the proper mindset would be the skill? Sorry to sound redundant if that is the case.

No, just knowing how to sell in general. Whether or not your mindset is right is irrelevant. You can be a great salesman but lazy. Or you could be a good salesman but have loose morals (used cars).

But at the end of the day, every business has to sell something to make money.

 

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[Harti]

The most important topics for me are (in this order):

• Emotions (if you don't know how to work with them, you won't EVER reach your goals)
  
• Marketing (especially: buying traffic, copywriting)
• Identifying opportunities according to CENTS
• Outsourcing (how to find the best people for your budget)

 

[healthstatus]

If you are in charge, you have to know how to sell. You sell ideas to employees, vision to investors, products to consumers and bs to bankers.

Networking, you need to be able to walk into a room and meet people in a way that interests them in you and that means you being interested in them. This skill can really pay off.

 

[Mikkel]

Damn. All of these responses were fantastic! Definitely not was I was expected, but exactly what I was hoping for.

Major takeaways - It is not so much the skill but rather how you can influence people through communication.
Persistence is always talked about in this forum, but as a skill rather than a trait is new to me! @Kak has a fantastic forum post on just this right here.

 

[Guest34764]

The ability to win anyone over to your side, to get them to say yes.

While you could probably check it off as just "sales", It's more than that.

It's being clever, using things to your advantage, and getting people to agree with you.

Did Andrew have the best selling skills?Well, they were damn sure good, but he was able to sway people over to his side much more, and especially the people who worked for him as some of them carried special talents above himself.

Andrew was able to create a tsunami of agreements, and all of those agreements started to pile up and give him unimaginable wealth.

I believe that's the best skill as an entrepreneur can have.Your selling skills could be second, but if you can get someone much smarter than you to hop aboard with just words, than that I believe is amazing.

(too tired to write rest of skills needed, but I just wanted to put my two cents.)

 

[MitchM]

Finding a skill to learn may be putting the cart before the horse. Find a problem to solve and move forward from there.

For what I am working on right now, I learned InDesign, social media marketing, and many other things... just for an example.

A lot of the initial work is self-development. Becoming consistent, growing a stronger vision, and cultivating a mindset that will thrive in our economy.

 

[Bhanu]

For me it would be :
GIVING

Giving value to fellow human being . Quoting from one of my Favorite book :
"Watch out for the other guy. Watch out for his interest.Watch his back.Forget fifty-fifty son. Fifty-fifty is loosing proposition.The Only winning proposition is one hundred percent.Make your win about the other person,go after what he wants.
Because if you place the other person's interest first,your interest will always be taken care of.Always.Some people call it it enlightened self interest."

 

[NuclearPuma]

Good products sell themselves.

Good selling can move bad products.

Good selling and good product is the best.