Kurt Sanborn is an entrepreneur who has found great success in the engineering industry. Kurt’s main focus is on helping engineering firms with risk and crisis management, two keys to carrying out any kind of engineering project, and necessary steps which engineering firms must take prior to even applying for a project. Kurt knows a thing or two about what kind of skills are needed in order to be an entrepreneur, and he has been kind enough to share some of those skills with us. If you have any interest in one day becoming an entrepreneur, here are the skills and characteristics that he recommends that you have.

Passion

Without having passion for what you are doing, you will never achieve anything as an entrepreneur, regardless of how great your business mind is, or how smart you are. The reason for this is because entrepreneurs must display drive, commitment and focus, things which you will not be able to do without raw passion for your business. Many people have passion for success but not for what they are doing, if you want to succeed as an entrepreneur however, you must love what you do.

Relationship Building

Entrepreneurs must have the ability to build relationships throughout the business and the  non-business world. Throughout the career of an entrepreneur there will be many situations which will call upon you to ask favors from a contact or ask for advice, and in such situations you will need to have solid relationships to help you out.

Team Building

Being able to build a greta team is about more than simply putting exceptional individuals together. Building a great team is about putting the right collection of individuals together, who will compliment one another an be able to work as a single unit. Your team must also believe in the vision that you have for the company. The team behind every entrepreneur is where the real success lies, and if you want this success, you must be able to put together a wonderful team.

Inspiring

As a CEO or leader of a business, you must have the ability to inspire and motivate other to a common goal. This is not always easy because not everyone can be inspired in the same way. For your part, you must be able to identify how to inspire and motivate each member of your team, learn their ways and then tap into it in order to get the best out of people.

Forward Thinking

There is a saying in business that if you don’t innovate, you die, and this is something which we have seen lots of evidence of over the years. With this in mind, as an entrepreneur, you should always have one eye on the future of your business. Doing this not only helps you to plan growth and ways to exploit the market, but also so that you can see any storms which are on their way. The present is important of course, but so too is the future.