“My focus right now is business growth and not skills development.”

It is a statement I often hear when I’m talking to entrepreneurs, which makes me wonder, how can business growth go without skills development? Shouldn’t the two go hand-in-hand?

I’ve always believed that if you were to grow your business organically through selling directly to clients, it is important to master several vital skills, among them:

• Strategic thinking and planning: This is the process of crafting the direction you want your business to go within a three-to-five-year framework.
• Team building and management skills: Unless you are a Solopreneur, it’s very hard to attain operational excellence without a team to deliver your product/service.
• Customer service skills: You need to ensure your customer’s expectations are met and they are kept happy. It would be really hard to grow a business if you keep on losing customers at the same rate you’re acquiring them.
• Financial Management skills: Cash flow is the life-blood of all growing businesses and is the primary indicator of business health.

These are a diverse set of skills that you would need to master through experience as well as business courses such as the Advanced Entrepreneurship Program(AEP) by ISBI at Strathmore Business School.