Who doesn’t want to be a more successful entrepreneur? Here are 10 things to study if you want to become an entrepreneur.
For the economy to thrive there are some people need to take extraordinary risks and provide more job opportunities for others. Entrepreneurs are a gem in the economy and general society because of how much they sacrifice.
According to Merriam-Webster, an entrepreneur organizes, manages, and assumes the risks of a business or enterprise. You can become an entrepreneur from wherever you reside. All you have to do is identify a problem you can solve, and are passionate about, then implement the solutions.
Entrepreneurs solve problems, and sometimes they succeed at it while sometimes they don’t.
For example, Henry Ford saw how his competitors were selling cars that only the rich could afford. He decided to do mass production, which most Americans were on wheels and not just the rich.
Henry Ford unleashed the power of mass production. After mass production, the company’s mission was to create faster, better, and cheaper cars.
Article Topics
How can I become an entrepreneur?
As big a title as an entrepreneur is, it starts with a big idea. From there, you can now start thinking about all the technical and manual help you’ll need to turn your vision into a reality. To move forward from there, below are more steps to take to be an entrepreneur.
Identify the kind of business you'd like to start (solve a problem)
Whatever big idea you have, make sure it’s something that solves your customer’s problems in the most efficient ways. Passion is also a necessity in the process of creating your business. When it’s passion driving you, you’ll always enjoy what you do and create even more efficient options for your customers.
For example, Sam Walton picked a market no one was willing to explore, then even reduced shipping by putting warehouse stores between each Walmart store. This significantly reduced the amount of money he was spending on shipping goods.
Due to the low amount of money he was spending, he started selling things at a substantially lower cost than his competitors, increasing his client base.
On the other hand, Mark Zuckerberg came up with the idea of Facebook as a way to connect people. He saw apps for all other things, but none for person-person connection.
Expand your education formal or informal
Education is essential when starting as an entrepreneur. Figure out if you’ll need to go back to college or pursue specific short courses that will help you know the work terminologies and more about business.
You could even look into people who have taken the same career path as you and see their failures and achievements.
Reading about all those failures and success stories will help you know more about your business and pitfalls to prevent as you make your way to success. Success stories will encourage you as you go through hard days in your business.
Create a business plan and build your network
When you have a business plan, it makes things easier. A business plan will help you come up with goals and ways to achieve those goals. A good business plan will also help you have something to show your investors.
Big ideas need a lot of input, especially financially. When you have an extensive network, you will have investors interested in putting money into your business. These contacts could also give you essential advice and share more significant opportunities that you couldn’t know otherwise.
You can look for fellow entrepreneurs from friends, family, and former classmates. Once you reach them, make sure you interview them and learn a thing or two from them.
Find your target audience.
Not everyone will be your customer. When you do your research correctly, you will notice your client base’s age, race, gender, and income. Your target audience will also determine whether you open your physical shop if you even need one, and the location of your shop.
Someone like Henry Ford, whose aim was to make cars affordable, had to know the income of his target audience and make the cars he was selling an amount they could afford.
Sell your idea
First off, you must be sure your idea solves the customer’s problem. From there on, convince your customers that what you have is what they need.
Customers always want products, but they don’t always know what products to pick. Make sure your product stands out and use the difference between your products and your competitors as the selling point.
For example, when Mark Zuckerberg introduced the News Feed feature, most people weren’t pleased. Despite the criticism, the Facebook team knew that they were onto something, and now I’m sure you can’t imagine Facebook without its News Feed.
Market
You might have the best services or goods, but if no one knows about them, you won’t be able to sell them. When marketing your products, make sure you market to your target audience.
For example, it will be hard to market products to millennials using billboards. The best way to sell your products to this specific target audience would be through social media.
What to study if you want to become an entrepreneur
Some famous entrepreneurs dropped out of college and were still successful, like Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates. But this doesn’t mean you should follow the same path. Studying to become an entrepreneur will be very helpful for your business, especially if you need it to prosper. Many famous companies were founded by people who schooled together like Bill Gates and Paul Allen.
- Marketing: As an entrepreneur, marketing will determine how many products you sell and how fast you sell them.
- Business: A business degree will help you launch, protect, plan, and operate a business.
- Finance: A degree in finance will help you have critical knowledge to protect your business’s financial future.
- Economics: Economics will not only teach you about how the economy works but also about markets.
- Communications. An entrepreneur must have good communication skills. Good communications skills will help you make significant relationships with your customers and investors.
- Psychology: It gets easier to handle your employees and customers efficiently with a psychology degree or knowledge.
- Entrepreneurship: An entrepreneurship course will help you, especially if you have many ideas and don’t want to spend multiple years in school learning about different disciplines that you want to invest in.
- Computer science: Computer science knowledge will help advance your business using recent software to make it more conversant with your customers.
- Writing and composition: A good entrepreneur has to have a polished way of writing and speech. Good writing will help you create good speeches, proposals, among others.
- Any American history course: History will help you learn a lot about entrepreneurial figures, their mistakes, successes, and so much more.
10 things to study if you want to become an entrepreneur
1. Marketing
As an entrepreneur, marketing will help you sell your products to customers and ideas to potential investors. Every entrepreneur needs to understand the mechanics of marketing. There is no incredible innovation that will prosper without proper marketing.
A marketing class will help you conduct research and create products or services that customers want to buy. By going to a marketing class, you will learn that you don’t need to waste money on marketing if you haven’t discovered your target audience.
2. Business
A business course will help you learn how to form business plans based on the long-term and short-term goals of the company. The course will also give you knowledge on funding, whether public, private, the stock market, and all other issues that affect the evolution of your business.
A business degree/course is versatile and can help any business from healthcare to the food industry. A business degree will help you make any critical decision confidently in your business.
3. Finance and accounting
The finance aspect of a business can determine the downfall or success of a business. So, as an entrepreneur, you need to be at the top of your business finance.
A degree in finance and accounting provides essential knowledge in protecting and advancing your business in the future.
Finance and accounting degrees will help you track cash flow, conduct an in-depth analysis of finance and accounting functions, and create financial statements.
Balance sheets and income statements will be a walk in the park too. Finance and accounting courses also help you determine the longevity of your business.
4. Economics
Studying economics is of primary importance because you’ll get to learn about markets and how the economy works. An economics course will also give you knowledge of distribution, production, and consumption of goods and services.
When studying economics, you’ll also understand government policies that will affect your business and how you function in the global market. You will also learn about micro and macro economics.
5. Communications
A successful entrepreneur needs to have good communication skills, and this doesn’t come naturally to everyone. A communication course will reflect in both speech and writing.
Learning communication will help you understand messages from your customer’s point of view and speak to people in a way to show them that you value them.
6. Psychology
A psychology class will benefit you because you will understand why people say and do what they do, which is beneficial. It is also ideal for employing people to partake in specific tasks and interacting with customers and vendors.
A psychology degree will also help you understand yourself better. Learn your strengths and weaknesses and know how to improve them before they interfere with your business.
While at Harvard, Mark Zuckerberg pursued a major in psychology when he could have pursued other courses like programming. But when you think of it, psychology contributed a lot to the idea of Facebook due to the interaction required.
7. Entrepreneurship
An entrepreneurship course will benefit someone who has many big ideas and wants to invest in various industries.
The education you’ll get from this class will help you learn ethics, communications, and public relations. It will also help you avoid studying various courses for different businesses.
This class will help you choose your business location, marketing, good management skills, and learn how to manage your cash flow. An entrepreneurship degree will also help you know which ideas will bloom and which ones you should bury.
8. Computer science
Even if your business might not be in the tech niche, you might need to learn a few basic computer coding techniques, marketing, the internet, among others.
Computer science will help you determine ways in which you can advance your business in the technology-obsessed world.
New trends and technologies emerge daily in the business world, and it would be nice if you were on top of things. Knowledge in computer science will also help you develop better security for your online systems against hackers.
Great entrepreneurs like Mark Zuckerberg also took computer science, and that helped develop Facebook. Also, due to this knowledge, Facebook has become an app that keeps changing and getting new updates every other year.
9. Writing and composition
Whether you’re a good writer or not, this is an area you can improve. Whether you’ll be writing a proposal, blog article, or press release, being an entrepreneur means that there will be much writing in your career.
Writing and composition will help you communicate your ideas clearly and execute proper writing skills.
10. Any American history course
Maybe you think history is such a boring topic, but you might need it when you’re pursuing your entrepreneurial path. History sheds light on past experiences of other great people, their downfalls, success, lessons, and advice for people seeking the same direction.
You will also learn about big ideas that started small and the lessons learned along the way. My favorite history book is Richard Vague Business History of the U.S.
If you are looking for more entrepreneur courses online, check out that article!
Final Words
Entrepreneurship is a bold career path to pursue, but to maximize the chances of your big idea turning into a success story, you need to pursue other courses that will help boost your knowledge.
Not only will the above courses add to your ability, but they will also contain research and projects, which will help you learn more about what to expect in your future business endeavors.
