Assessing your skill set

Multi-tasking is a must-have attribute for all business owners and you'll need a host of skills and abilities to establish and grow your business. That said, you can't be good at everything so it's important to recognise both your strengths and weaknesses early on. This guide will help you assess your skill sets and highlight areas you'll need help with.

• Assess your strengths
• Recognise your weaknesses
• Develop essential skills
• Plug skill gaps

Assess your strengths

Everyone has a competitive advantage at something. Find yours and focus on it. Look at your strengths and concentrate on applying that advantage. If you can sell, spend your time selling. Don't weaken the impact you could have by doing something else badly.

• Find your competitive advantage
• Focus on your strengths
• Be careful not to weaken your natural advantage

Recognise your weaknesses

Nobody, even Richard Branson, is good at everything - and if you are, you shouldn't have time to be. Accept it, move on and get someone in who is. Don't waste time being ineffective at a lot of things when you could be being effective at a handful.

• Accept you can't be good at everything
• Recognise your weaknesses
• Limit ineffective use of your time

Develop essential skills

Of course, you won't have the cash to recruit a team of experts to plug all your skill gaps - and there are some skills you simply can't do without. Every business owner needs basic bookkeeping knowledge to stay on top of their finances and if you're employing people for the first time you'll quickly need to hone your leadership and motivational qualities. The good news is, all of this can learned and developed.

• Be realistic about what you need to know
• Assess areas you should develop
• Look at short-courses, books and support websites

Plug skill gaps

Once you've assessed your strengths, weaknesses and skills that can and need to be developed, look at plugging your skill gaps. Your budget won't enable you to buy in experts for all these areas but, any partners, investors or initial employees you take on should ideally compliment your areas of expertise. Embrace bringing in people with different skills and welcome delegating responsibilities where you aren't strong.

• Plug skill gaps
• Look for complimentary skills in investors and employees
• Delegate responsibilities

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