In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell stated that it takes 10,000 hours to master a skill. A lot of doubt has been thrown toward this theory. But when you think about it, what this means is that if we really want to be good at something, then we should be willing to put in the time and effort.
Well… are you?
As an entrepreneur, you tend to be a “jack of all trades,” especially in the early days of your business. I mean… we know you want the business to run perfectly and smoothly and you feel like nobody can be a better job running it than you!
That’s the catch. You can’t really be everything all the time. Soon enough, you would need to delegate. Soon enough, you would need to focus on one thing that makes the most impact to your business.
For most, it’s on the business development side; others tend to flourish more in the creative aspect of the business.
How about you – what are you best at?
In order to identify this, a business owner would need to pinpoint his or her strengths and weaknesses. Upon knowing this, you then need to focus all your time and effort to becoming the best at that one skill.
Here are our top 3 tips on how you can successfully own the art of mastery:
1 – Spend time on the skill that you would love to perfect
I know, I know… we’ve mentioned this over and over again – but there’s really no better way to master a skill than by actually sitting down and doing it for a number of hours each day. Be consistent with your work. After all, practice does make perfect.
2 – Monitor your progress
You really don’t want to be sitting for hours on end doing something and not actually getting any results, right? So you’re trying to master the art of negotiation. Have you had any successful sales calls? Have you closed a deal at terms you’re comfortable with? How many times have you had to go deep into the negotiation process and succeed (or fail)?
Measure your results. You can set metrics for yourself; but the best way to identify whether you’re actually doing good is by relying on the numbers. Track your progress using spreadsheets or an analytics tool.
You’ll thank yourself later on.
3 – Pass on your learnings to others
I don’t know about you, but when I learn something new, I try my best to share my learnings. It actually helps you hit two goals: 1) you help someone gain a skill they probably are needing and 2) you repeat what you’ve learned, and in essence, you solidify that knowledge into your system.
It’s a win-win situation!
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What are your own mastery hacks? Any tips and tricks that you feel would be beneficial to entrepreneurs who are starting out and want to polish their skills? Let us know!
