10 Entrepreneurship Skills Every North Carolina Business Owner Needs
Every year more than 43,000 people in North Carolina walk into a Small Business Center for help running their company. Around 645 of them end up starting one. The counseling doesn't cost anything, and all 100 counties have one at a local community college.
Most of them already know how to do the work. What they're still working out is how to price it, who to hire, and how to decide when they don't have all the information.
None of it is something you're born knowing. Here are the 10 entrepreneurship skills that matter most in your first few years, North Carolina owners who've built them, and the free programs that'll help you do the same.
What entrepreneurial skills are
Entrepreneurship skills are the abilities it takes to run a business: leading people, pricing work, reading your own numbers, deciding without complete information, and keeping customers. They sit alongside whatever trade or product the business is built on, and most owners pick them up on the job. All of them can be learned, and North Carolina has free programs built to teach them.
Entrepreneurial skills at a glance
- Lead before you have anyone to lead.
- Tell customers, staff, and lenders the same story.
- Sort decisions by whether you can undo them.
- Know your margin on every job.
- Find the cause before you pay to fix it.
- Think past this quarter.
- Change the plan when the market does.
- Spend your best hours on the work only you can do.
- Sell your own work, and keep the customers you win.
- Plan for the bad quarter before it shows up.
Core business skills for new owners
Leadership
Baker Roofing has been in Raleigh since 1915. It's grown to more than 1,000 employees and over 20 locations across the Southeast, and the principle it started with is still posted at headquarters: "We shall do good work. At a profit if we can, at a loss if we must, but always good work." (Read the Baker Roofing story)
That sentence does a lot of work. When a job goes sideways, an estimator already knows how the company wants it handled.
You don't need 1,000 employees for that to be worth having. Work out what you won't compromise on, then hold the line the first time a customer leans on you.
How to build it: name the two things you won't trade away, and put them somewhere your crew can see them.
Communication
You'll end up explaining the same business to three different people: the customer, your staff, and whoever is deciding whether to lend you money or rent you space. Your customer wants to know what it costs. A lender wants to know whether you'll still be here in 3 years.
Write each version down once, while nobody's waiting on you. If the lender version keeps stalling out, a Small Business Center counselor will go through it with you at no cost.
How to build it: write the lender version first. If it holds up there, the others will.
Decision-making and problem-solving
Early on, you'll be deciding with less than you'd like, so sort decisions by whether you can walk them back. Pricing and suppliers you can change, so make the call today. A lease or equipment financed over 5 years is harder to undo, so slow down and get a second opinion before you sign.
Before you spend money fixing something, make sure you know what's causing it. A truck that keeps breaking down might need a better maintenance schedule, or it might have a driver nobody trained. Those are very different bills.
How to build it: before your next big purchase, ask yourself what you'd do if it turns out to be the wrong call.
Financial awareness
Check your margin on every job or product monthly. Plenty of owners watch revenue climb without noticing that the work underneath it barely pays.
If numbers are the part you dread, EDPNC's Small Business Advisors will walk you through business structure, tax setup, and where to look for financing, free, on weekdays at 800-228-8443.
How to build it: pick your three biggest jobs from last month and work out the margin on each.
Time management
There's always more to do than hours to do it in, and in your first year nobody sets your priorities but you. Pick the two or three things each week that move money, and get to those before you open the inbox.
The trap is spending your best hours on work somebody else could handle. If you're the only person who can quote a job, quote jobs first thing.
How to build it: track where your hours go for two weeks before you try to change anything.
Business skills for the growth stage
Strategic thinking
Strategic thinkingDr. Gary Pace built Cell Microsystems in Durham on several different funding sources: Carolina Kickstart, NIH Small Business Innovation Research grants, the North Carolina Biotechnology Center, and NC IDEA.
Each showed up at a different point, because each was designed for one. That's strategic thinking day-to-day: working out which program fits where your company sits now, and which can wait until next year.
How to build it: look up the deadline for one North Carolina program this week and put it on your calendar, even if you're not ready to apply.
Adaptability
Avery Earwood spent 25 years in healthcare before he moved his family onto a 25-acre farm in Rougemont and started clearing trees for a living. The hardwood he was pulling down was headed for firewood or a landfill, so he began turning it into live-edge dining tables and kitchen islands. Wild Edge Woodcraft came out of that.
The idea came from inside the work he was already doing, handling that material every day until he saw what else it could be.
How to build it: list what your business throws away or turns down, and ask whether somebody would pay for it.
Sales and marketing
Plan on selling your own work for the first year or two, even if you'd rather not. You set the price, so you hear the objection firsthand. That's how you learn which version of your pitch closes.
Marketing is how you reach the people you can't call one at a time. Start with the channel your customers already use, and hold off on a second until the first is earning its keep.
How to build it: take the last three objections you heard and work out your answer to each. That's your pitch.
Relationship building
Deborah Matthews started InsideOut Body Therapies in Durham. Mischa Decker came on in 2006 and became co-owner 2 years later. The business is coming up on two decades.
Giving up part of the company was a growth decision. It brought in a second set of credentials and a second person who cared how things turned out.
Networking brings you people who haven't hired you yet. Good customer relationships keep the ones who have. Referrals come out of both, so treat every finished job as part of how you market.
How to build it: call two past customers this month with no agenda beyond asking how the work held up.
Resilience
You'll lose a customer you were counting on, and at some point a season will come in under what you planned for. Wild Edge Woodcraft came out of a tree removal business that was throwing away its raw material. Baker Roofing has held the same principle since 1915, through every kind of market.
How to build it: decide in advance what a bad quarter means and what you'll do about it, while you're calm enough to think it through.
Once those are steady, the questions change. Our strategies to scale a Southeast business pick up from there.
North Carolina entrepreneur resources that build these skills
Three North Carolina entrepreneur resources will help you build these entrepreneurship skills for free, statewide.
The NC Small Business Center Network runs a center out of a community college in every county, including Wake Tech in Raleigh, Central Piedmont in Charlotte, Guilford Tech in Greensboro, and A-B Tech in Asheville. Counseling is free and confidential with credentialed advisors, and they run training in person and online. Start here if you want somebody to look at your numbers.
EDPNC's Small Business Advisors will talk with anyone starting a business here, free, through a partnership with the NC Department of Commerce. They handle licensing, business structure, taxes, financing, and hiring. Call 800-228-8443 on weekdays, 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m.
NC IDEA is a private foundation that has granted more than $26 million around the state since 2006. Its MICRO and SEED grants are often the first outside money a young company sees. They're competitive and open on a set schedule, so check deadlines before you count on one. NC IDEA LABS also publishes customer discovery tools and holds open office hours.
If you're still at the registration stage, our guide to how to start a small business in North Carolina covers structure, tax IDs, and licensing.
Entrepreneur development in NC
Entrepreneurship skills build through experience and repetition. Pick whichever one is costing you money right now, book a free session with your county's Small Business Center, and come back in 90 days for the next one.
That's how entrepreneur development in NC usually goes, one problem at a time, and a mentor speeds it up. The counselor at your local Small Business Center watches hundreds of businesses a year face the same decisions you are, and NC IDEA LABS holds office hours where you can ask somebody who has raised money. Neither costs anything.
How to keep building entrepreneurship skills
Reading how other owners solved the same problems helps. Southeast Entrepreneur's spotlight features cover North Carolina businesses at every stage, from first-year shops to companies past their 100th. Find one in your industry and see what they did at your size.
Frequently asked questions
