Skills you should start building now if you want to be an entrepreneur

• Chris W. Dunn, 
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Het Nieuwe Instituut/flickr

Becoming your own boss and an entrepreneur is the new coveted career choice of the 21st century.

People are fed up with working jobs that leave them underpaid and unfulfilled.

Although some entrepreneurs say they were born to build a company, it's never been easier for anyone to learn entrepreneur skills that can propel them into building a successful business.

Here is a list of 12 effective ways to build entrepreneurial skills that matter:

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1. Take a different path

"Creativity is the root of entrepreneurship." — Karndee Leopairote, Thammasat University.

Creativity is the ability to see things differently and to provide solutions where there are gaps. To build your creativity skills, intentionally try something new. Do something that others won't do. Read unusual books. Watch a movie in a different language. Travel to an unexpected spot. Talk to people that are out of your circle of comfort.

"The Big Short" is a movie that depicts how several opportunist entrepreneurs and investors managed to profit from the 2008 financial crisis by going against popular opinion.

Richard Branson.Paul Kane/Getty Images

2. Start a business

"You don't learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing, and by falling over."— Richard Branson.

There is nothing like real-world experience. Whether you run a business on the side or full-time, you get the opportunity to grow your skills such as business planning, negotiation, sales and marketing.

I started my first business when I was 16 years old, and learned more through making mistakes than I could through reading any business book. My mobile car detailing business was successful only because I was able to learn and make changes quickly.

3. Stick with challenges

"It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer." — Albert Einstein.

Every successful entrepreneur has learned to develop their perseverance and tenacity muscles. The life of an entrepreneur is never smooth sailing, and it takes guts to keep going when people doubt your abilities.

To build perseverance, create a goal or challenge that is meaningful and don't give yourself the to quit. Alternatively, give yourself a deadline to aim towards. For example, if you want to create a better blog, make a commitment to write 1,000 words every day for a year.

Elon Musk.VCG/Getty Images

4. Delay gratification

Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla, Solar City, and SpaceX set himself a challenge to live on only $1 a day to see if he had what it took to lead life as an entrepreneur.

Entrepreneurs have to get used to countless failures and almost zero rewards until they finally hit the jackpot. To train yourself to be able to delay gratification, start small. Say "no" to the extra donut. Keep your old car instead of going into debt to buy a new one. Wake up at 5 a.m. on the weekends to work on your business idea instead of staying in bed.

5. Manage your own finances

Understanding basic finance is essential in running your own company. You don't have to be an accountant, but you should at least be able to understand the basics around cash flow, assets, and profit and loss.

Start by learning how to do your own taxes and manage your own budget and investments.

Volunteers for Habitat for Humanity in Oakland, California.Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

6. Volunteer to lead

The ability to lead a team and stay organized is important when you become an entrepreneur. You can start by looking for volunteer and leadership opportunities around you. Volunteer to lead a Meetup group, start a fundraising project for your favorite non-profit organization or get involved with your local community board. Alternatively, coach a local children's sports team or just plan your mother's birthday party.

By getting involved in bigger roles, even if unpaid, you get to practice your time management, organization, leadership and teamwork skills

7. Practice communication skills

The best entrepreneurs have learned how to communicate their passion and dreams in an engaging way, both online and offline. To learn how to speak publicly, join a Toastmasters group, offer to speak at workplace parties, or even emcee at your friend's wedding.

To improve your online communication skills, stay active on your social media accounts, blog, set up an online Facebook group or create a newsletter on your favorite hobby or topic.

The more often you put yourself out there, the faster your communication skills will grow.

The value of a mentor is priceless when it comes to building your entrepreneurial skills.Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

8. Learn from a mentor

The value of a mentor is priceless when it comes to building your entrepreneurial skills. Rather than make all the mistakes yourself, why not learn from someone else who has already made them?

Mentors are not only great sounding boards for your ideas but they also can be fantastic cheerleaders when the going gets tough. If you are lucky, you may find a mentor wiling to train you for free because they believe in you and want to give back. Some mentors will be happy to teach you in exchange for you helping them out in their own business. Others offer a paid service.

If you are young enough or at the start of your career, try to apply for internships as those are great opportunities to wet your feet in the real business world.

9. Work in sales

"To me, job titles don't matter. Everyone is in sales. It's the only way we stay in business."— Harvey Mackay.

In every business, sales play a vital role in the survival, sustainability and success of a business. You can have the best product in the world but if you don't know how to sell it, it is worthless.

One of the easiest ways to learn how to sell is to get a sales role. It doesn't matter if you are selling Tupperware at parties or selling complicated technology solutions, you will pick up valuable skills, such as learning how to ask questions of your prospect and researching your target market.

Kevin O'Leary, an investor in 'Shark Tank.'Andrew Burton/Getty Images

10. Get involved with other entrepreneurs

Whether it's attending entrepreneurial events, conferences, seminars or meetups; spending time with other entrepreneurs will help you grow in your own entrepreneurial skills.

If you have the time and guts, you can compete in an entrepreneur competition like "Shark Tank" where any gaps in your entrepreneurial skills will be revealed very quickly. However such a demanding experience will also multiply your learning speed.

11. Help others with their businesses

"You will get all you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want."— Zig Ziglar.

Being an entrepreneur is about solving problems with the resources that you have. The more you help others solve problems with their own businesses, the more your own skills will grow.

For example, you can create an accountability group for entrepreneurs where you each help each other out. In this way, you learn and grow together.

Keep your own learning and personal development active.Kathleen Murtagh/flickr

12. Keep learning

"I am still learning." — Michelangelo.

Keep your own learning and personal development active. There are so many courses online, both free and paid, that teach a variety of entrepreneurial skills such as Skill Incubator, Udemyand Udacity.

With such easy access to knowledge and resources, there really is no excuse that you can't build skills to succeed as an entrepreneur.

Relationship facts everybody should know before getting married this weekend .Thank God it is Friday

• Shana Lebowitz
 

Are you and your beloved star-crossed lovers?20th Century Fox / Getty

You can drive yourself crazy deciding whether to marry your partner.

Can you two really survive a lifetime together?

I mean, you adore them — but they constantly leave hair in the shower. They tell the worst jokes — but they're always there to comfort you after a hard day.

Perhaps it would help to turn to the scientific research, which has pinpointed specific factors that can make or break a romantic relationship.

Below, we've rounded up 15 nontrivial things you might want to keep in mind before hiring a wedding planner.

This is an update of an article originally posted by Drake Baer.

View As: One Page Slides

If you wait until you're 23 to commit, you're less likely to get divorced.

A 2014 University of North Carolina at Greensboro study found that American women who cohabitate or get married at age 18 have a 60% divorce rate, but women who wait until 23 to make either of those commitments have a divorce rate around 30%.

"The longer couples waited to make that first serious commitment [cohabitation or marriage], the better their chances for marital success," The Atlantic reported.

Flickr / Macnolete

The 'in love' phase lasts about a year.

The honeymoon phase doesn't go on forever.

According to a 2005 study by the University of Pavia in Italy, it lasts about a year. After that, levels of a chemical called "nerve growth factor," which is associated with intense romantic feelings, start to fall.

Helen Fisher, a psychologist and relationship expert, told Business Insider that it's unclear when exactly the "in love" feeling starts to fade, but it does so "for good evolutionary reasons," she said, because "it's very metabolically expensive to spend an awful lot of time just focusing on just one person in that high-anxiety state."

Two people can be compatible — or incompatible — on multiple levels.

Back in the 1950s and '60s, Canadian psychologist Eric Berne introduced a three-tiered modelfor understanding a person's identity. He found that each of us have three "ego states" operating at once:

• The parent: What you've been taught

• The child: What you have felt

• The adult: What you have learned

When you're in a relationship, you relate on each of those levels:

• The parent: Do you have similar values and beliefs about the world?

• The child: Do you have fun together? Can you be spontaneous? Do you think your partner's hot? Do you like to travel together?

• The adult: Does each person think the other is bright? Are you good at solving problems together?

While having symmetry across all three is ideal, people often get together to "balance each other." For instance, one may be nurturing and the other playful.

Stephen Lovekin / Getty

The happiest marriages are between best friends.

A 2014 National Bureau of Economic Research study found that marriage does indeed lead to increased well-being, mainly thanks to friendship.

Controlling for premarital happiness, the study concluded that marriage leads to increased well-being — and it does so much more for those who have a close friendship with their spouses. Friendship, the paper found, is a key mechanism that could help explain the causal relationship between marriage and life satisfaction.

The closer a couple are in age, the less likely they are to get divorced.

A study of 3,000 Americans who had ever been married found that age discrepancies correlate with friction in marriages.

The Atlantic's Megan Garber reports:

"A one-year discrepancy in a couple's ages, the study found, makes them 3 percent more likely to divorce (when compared to their same-aged counterparts); a 5-year difference, however, makes them 18 percent more likely to split up. And a 10-year difference makes them 39 percent more likely."

Julian Finney / Getty

If you get excited for your partner's good news, you'll have a better relationship.

In multiple studies, couples that actively celebrated good news (rather than actively or passively dismissed it) have had a higher rate of relationship well-being.

For example, say a wife comes home to her partner and shares an accomplishment. An "active-constructive" response would be the best, according to Amie Gordon, a social psychologist at the University of California at Berkeley:

• An active-constructive response from the partner would be enthusiastic support: "That's great, honey! I knew you could do it. You've been working so hard."

• A passive-constructive response would be understated support: a warm smile and a simple "that's good news."

• An active-destructive response would be a statement that demeaned the event: "Does this mean you are going to be gone working even longer hours now? Are you sure you can handle it?"

• Finally, a passive-destructive response would virtually ignore the good news: "Oh, really? Well, you won't believe what happened to me on the drive home today!"

Resentment builds quickly in couples who don't tackle chores together.

Over 60% of Americans in one poll said that taking care of chores plays a crucial role in having a successful marriage.

"It's Not You, It's the Dishes" coauthor Paula Szuchman recommends a system where each person specializes in the chores they're best at.

"If you really are better at the dishes than remembering to call the in-laws, then that should be your job," she writes. "It'll take you less time than it'll take him, and it'll take him less time to have a quick chat with mom than it would take you, which means in the end, you've saved quite a bit of collective time."

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We have higher standards for marriage than ever before.

Northwestern psychologist Eli Finkel has found that marriage in America has gone through through three stages:

• Institutional marriage (from the nation's founding until 1850)

• Companionate marriage (from 1851 to 1965)

• Self-expressive marriage (from 1965 onward)

Before 1850, couples got hitched for the sake of food, shelter, and protection. Then with the Industrial Revolution people had more leisure time, Finkel says, so we started looking for companionship in our partners. The '60s brought a yearning for personal fulfillment through relationships, which we continue to strive for today.

You'll never get to know your partner perfectly.

After dating someone for a couple of years, you might feel like you know everything about them: what kind of toothpaste they use, which TV series they guiltily binge-watch, which foods nauseate them.

But you probably don't know them quite as well as you think you do.

According to a 1997 study, couples who had been together longer expressed more confidence in how well they knew each other. But as it turns out, relationship length wasn't related to accuracy.

Even when participants had to guess how their partners would rate themselves on intelligence, athleticism, and attractiveness, they were only right about 30% of the time.

Never Seen Before Photos of a Young Hillary Clinton

Seyi Peters 

Rarely seen photos of the Democratic presidential nominee reveal the human behind the former First Lady and Senator, Hillary Clinton.

As Madam Secretary prepares to accept her nomination for President of the United States of America at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, here are more photos of the young Hillary.

Wish To Be Successful And Rich at Work or Business? Then Quit This One Terrible Habit

PRODUCTIVITY SUCCESSBY LOGAN WALLACE

Complaining.

The amount of complaining you do is equivalent to the amount of power you don’t have. It’s the sound wave of defeat. Becoming a repeat complainer keeps your failures alive. The anger you feel every time you utter those words serves only to revive that negative memory- a memory that would be much better off dead and forgotten. As one of the pioneers of human development once said:

“We become what we think.” – Earl Nightingale

Complaining shows that you’re weak. You may believe that it serves you well because you’re releasing the “stress” but nothing could be further from the truth. When have you seen a successful person complaining to their friends at the bar about life being so unfair? Chances are.. never. If you have seen a successful person at the bar you can rest assured that they own it. I’m going to now go over 5 things successful people don’t do; these will reinforce why complaining destroys your chances of success. I’m also going to go over what you can do instead, so pay attention.

1. They don’t focus on the problem

Focusing on the problem is the reason why people crash into poles even though they’re one hundred feet away from it. Focusing on problems can cause a tragic situation and yes, it can even be the reason you’ll never succeed. If you keep focusing on the problem you’ll only gravitate towards more problems. Complaining is a form of focusing on the problem. Instead, you should be focusing on finding a solution. In pilot school they teach you to not focus on the ground (the problem) if you happen to have a system failure, but instead, focus on where you want to go (the solution) and your body will naturally follow. Rich and successful people are where they are because of their ability to find solutions. So the next time you catch yourself complaining, make sure it’s at least followed by a solution.

2. They don’t blame others for their failure

Blaming someone or something else for the lack of your success implies that you have no control over your situation. This causes a sense of powerlessness that overwhelms you to the point where you don’t want to take action anymore. Instead, you’ll try to look for other people to solve your problems for you, which causes dependency. Even if your failure was caused by a force outside of you, you should still find a way to take responsibility for it. Once you do this, you will find yourself doing things to move closer to your goal and you will find yourself succeeding more often. That’s much better than complaining and not doing anything at all.

3. They don’t procrastinate

It’s easy to do tasks that don’t move you closer to what you want to achieve. But procrastination almost never results in becoming success. You can look at complaining as a form of procrastination. It’s so much easier to complain about the problem instead of looking for the solution to the problem. Don’t fall into this trap or you’ll never become rich and successful. Instead, eliminate the source that’s causing you to procrastinate. If it’s complaining, just change the subject matter. If it’s social media, then make it harder for you to access your accounts. Doing so will ensure that you focus on the things that truly matter, such as solutions.

4. They don’t believe in limitations

This might be dangerous, but successful people don’t believe there’s a limit to the amount they can achieve. It seems almost delusional, but this is inherit in almost every successful person. They don’t listen to society when they say they can achieve something, because how would society know? Have they tested it? Most likely not. Rich and successful people know this so they tend to not listen to conventional logic. Complaining implies that you’re limiting what you can achieve. You say things like “I can’t do it! It’s too hard!” This is called a limiting belief. They’re artificial boundaries that only exist in your head. Instead, you should be asking yourself “What can I do differently to get to where I want to be?” This allows you to achieve things you never thought you could.

5. They don’t make a big deal out of mistakes

Making a mistake is not a big deal. In fact, the longer you think and complain about that mistake you made, the more likely you are to fail. You end up getting so fearful of making that mistake again that you decide to hold back and do nothing. You’ll never catch a successful person dwelling on their mistakes. Instead, you should look at the mistake you’ve made, get the lesson out of it and move on. You don’t want your fear to grow bigger.

Featured photo credit: Matt Yohe via en.wikipedia.org