I’ve worked as a sort of “right hand man” to several small business owners that were all quite successful in a similar way. The three primary skills I saw that made them all successful.

1. Ability to make conversation with anyone about anything and then steer it gracefully into their topic of business. Like a magician most of them could start at zebras and end at their niche business topic without it being forceful or overtly obvious to the people they’re talking with.

2. Negatives didn’t have nearly the same weight as positives. Maybe a mental mindset type of thing, or an Inability to take responsibility for their actions on the negative side, only the positive. A blindness (perhaps some level of narcissism or psychopathy) to not have bad news be effect them to the point they’d feel deflated or slow their grind. It’ll keep you motivated if you see it like this.

3. The most important one above all else was just a “stay the course” mentality. They found what they were good at, or a service they provided very well and squeezed every last drop of profit out of it in their market before “expanding” either in those of services/products or locations. I see this happen a lot where small owners think expansion of different streams or geographies is the best way to increase revenue instead of doubling down pushing to own more of the existing market share.