Toolie® Garner, SPOC®, SMC®, SAMC®

Make time to learn "hard skills," the ones that will keep your business up and running. My small business clients understood, for example, that it was essential that they learn website skills so they could themselves make that late-night content tweak, or fix spelling and grammar mistakes left behind by their web designer or assistant. Never be too proud to learn tech skills and understand finances. Your business success may rest on your ability to do either or both.

Be aware that you're trading one boss for another: you're leaving your corporate boss, and now your clients will dictate much of how and when you do business. Unless you've developed a residuals-only business, you're going to have to have a consistent schedule, i.e. office hours and a phone. Expect to spent at least 15% on admin tasks and 35% on Marketing. That leave 50% for actually doing the work. If these figures bother you, then you may need to re-think why you're leaving your corporate job. If you're OK with doing everything yourself when you start, then go for it. If you don't know marketing, then learn quickly, because it affects everything you do. Good luck!

To be a good writer, read. Read a lot -- take in all kinds of material: physical books, audiobooks, newspapers, newsletters, blogs, and so on. Read what's inside your area of expertise, and topics outside your comfort zone. You're not just taking in information, you're studying style, sentence construction, storytelling, strategic pauses, imagery and more. You learn how to be a good writer by writing, but you'll gain insights on the process by studying other people's writing. Visit the home of a fine artist, and you will see walls covered in art (I live in one!). Visit the home of a good writer, and you'll see bookshelves full of other people's writing -- it's part of the writing process.

First, understand that becoming an entrepreneur means everything is on your shoulders. If you're up for that, then good. Secondly, for most solo-preneur businesses, you're going to be beholden to someone: the schedule of your clients (meeting at their time preference), your operations (fixing that website at midnight the day before the launch), or to your budget. Forget about the idea of sleeping until noon. That's fun for about a week, maybe a month. After that, get ready to work. Establish a routine: get up at the same time every day, get to your desk on time, quit on time -- whatever times you set for yourself. Be prepared to spend 10%-15% of your time on admin, 25% on sales, and the rest on creating for your business. Hesitating? Good!

There are two levels of entrepreneurship in my view: the kind of entrepreneurs who want to go big and seek venture capital to fulfill their dreams; and the kind of entrepreneurs who self-fund because they want the independence, and who aren't trying to be bazillionaires. Both kinds tend to be idea-people, and that's how you spot them among your team members. When you say you want to encourage them to be entrepreneurs, are you looking for people who can operate autonomously, or people who are full of ideas? Having left Corporate America for entrepreneurship and returned to 10 years later, I miss the autonomy but I am hoping to find a company that is open to good ideas. So listen to everyone's ideas. You never know how important it might be.

Future leaders need to behave as leaders, not drive-by managers (issue a command and walk away). They need to be someone who inspires others, instills confidence in their direct reports, someone who is trustworthy and engenders loyalty. These qualities are especially important when leading globally dispersed teams (hybrid, remote, international). You must be able to lead remotely and draw out of your teams the kind of collaboration and productivity that we know is entirely possible without being in the same physical location.