Pursuing entrepreneurial dreams during college prepares you for career success and inspires personal growth. Entrepreneurship has transformative power during this time in your life! Explore the impact of entrepreneurship on college students’ lives, because it’s important for students to gain confidence and for you to discover how it can shape your future life choices and success.
Entrepreneurial experience and courses make a positive impact through earnings and by preparing students for careers while enhancing practical life skills.
From a job perspective, entrepreneurial students gain confidence as they learn skills today that will take them into tomorrow.
As today’s jobs will morph into new and totally different opportunities, innovative, entrepreneurial thinkers will move forward seamlessly.
And don’t discount the enormous positive impact it makes by impacting other areas of your life and providing life skills practice. Those practical learnings can affect your entire life in a positive manner.
While in college, entrepreneurship helps positively impact these areas:
- Earnings
- Business skills development
- Life skills development
- Career opportunity exploration
- Learning to run a business in a safe environment
Entrepreneurs gain job experiences and earn through side hustles!
Yes, sounds basic, but it’s why you’ll work in the first place – to earn. You don’t want life to be all and only about money, but you do need to earn your way. Entrepreneurial efforts during college literally pay off.
School has to remain your #1 priority, but most of us worked while attending college. It’s do-able. My kids also worked full-time (by choice) to help contribute to school. It’s not overly stressful. It’s about choices and time management. They had the energy, they chose semi-fun jobs and it benefited them.
Entrepreneurial experiences help pay for school expenses, and create an ability to have fun without creating additional debt.
You absolutely want to gain real world experience while in this safer, more controlled environment. It’s a way to enjoy life as a student while growing, developing, and figuring out your direction in life. Take advantage.
Life as a student entrepreneur!
An entrepreneurship education equips you with key business skills.
Yes, you learn on the job. Yes, you learn by going through life. However, seizing the opportunity to study entrepreneurship at a higher level fills in the blanks. The focused coursework ensures you graduate with the exposure and skillset you need in order to succeed as a business owner.
The traditional disciplines of English, history, mathematics, science, foreign language, and fine arts enlighten us, make us worldly and raise our ability to succeed. Your focused discipline takes that a step further and creates your expertise.
Entrepreneurs need to know how to run a business. They need to know how to start out alone. They must find and create resources then properly use those resources as they will not be gifted with a corporate new hire training program. They need to develop a business plan, manage time, power through down times and self-motivate. Their team may be internal but also they’ll work directly with vendors, other partners and need to reach, then satisfy their consumer. Knowing how to effectively collaborate and negotiate is just as important to an entrepreneur as it is in a corporate office.
Entrepreneurs create value Every Single Day!
There’s no staring off at the ceiling and waiting for 4pm to show up.
They need to bring it.
If not a paid job, no worries. Focus on skill development. Focus on life skills development that offers multiple benefits and fits into your schedule. Tomorrow’s success starts with what you do today.
If offered a mentorship, take it.
If not offered a mentorship, create one.
Maximize this time.
Entrepreneurship affects your life skills development.
All students can and should take full advantage of opportunities that develop life skills.
It’s a way to take a brain break from studies while actually doing so much for your future.
I once took a job cleaning windows. I lasted just a matter of days, but I learned that people actually do tilt in or remove and clean their windows and screens and how. I learned what was important to one homeowner is not what’s important to another.
- I learned how crazy difficult it is to create a clean, streak-free window.
- ‘And I learned it was a skill I did not care to develop, and believed there had to be a better way.
- I learned that the intense effort on the home led only to it looking exactly the same on the outside as every other home,
- but learned it was very important to the person looking out from the inside, which was all that really mattered.
- I learned no small amount of money was worth working for that person or cleaning windows ever again.
In addition to actually receiving the best training of my life (to this day) on this life skill, I learned I could (and should) appreciate what was important to one person while appreciating what was also important and best for me.
Do not pass by those opportunity to learn to clean, to wash, to iron, to protect your assets, to make things last longer, to mend and weave – and weed. Learn to waste not. Learn to stretch a dollar. Learn how to be proactive in order to save time on the back end.
Use your problem-solving skills! What else can you do?
Run your first entrepreneurial business.
These are important skills but not complex problems. Think real-world. Who needs help?
Solve their problem for a fair price.
- Fold laundry for busy students. $10 per basket.
- Before parent’s weekend or a big game, offer 30 minutes on the clock cleaning up their dorm room for $20.
- Have local homeowners purchase weed spray as needed and you spray a select area once a week for $20.
- Use your social media skills to support or coach a fellow entrepreneur. Barter or charge per coaching session or post.
Entrepreneurship allows you to use this time wisely and to also build networks and friendships.
Life Skills Make Effective Mentoring Activities (envisionaryme.com)
It’s important for students to explore career opportunities as they pursue an entrepreneurial education.
What is your dream?
Is entrepreneurship part of that dream and why?
Are you a fit or does it just sound good?
While your risk is limited (not limiting),
use this time open doors, explore, and truly define your why.
Entrepreneurship in practice and as a major empowers college students and young entrepreneurs. It helps you thrive in a competitive job market, and prepare to build out your dream now and tomorrow.
Competitive job market? Yes. It affects you too.
Your entrepreneurship program and the individual entrepreneurship courses are designed to help students, yes.
This time allows students to practice beyond the classroom too though.
The program is built to empower students like yourself become an entrepreneur, but there’s more to this. You don’t just graduate and business blossoms. You leave school with real-life timetable on your hands and real-life bills to pay. It’s all worth it in the end, but you will need support and partnership as you become an entrepreneur full-time.
Talking about entrepreneurship and innovation isn’t enough on its own. Saying you’re passionate isn’t enough either. Your business requires more than that from you.
Use this time to make decisions for yourself but also build yourself, your skillset, and your resume so that you have more to offer after graduation.
Even if you are launching your own business, you want a solid resume. It empowers you and tells your story. It introduces you and gains buy in from your future network.
How you fill in that space helps you now and helps you later in life.
“Study while others are sleeping.
Work while others are loafing.
Prepare while others are playing,
and dream while others are wishing.”
~ William Arthur Ward
Study entrepreneurship while learning to run a business in a safe environment.
As you explore opportunities, build your business.
While it’s a relatively safe environment filled with mentors and coaching, learn to master startup principles and hone that skillset.
- Practice business foundational skills.
- Use your resources. All of them.
- Build your business plan. Challenge and perfect every piece of it.
- Validate your hypothesis or innovative solution. Or invalidate it.
- Embrace change and welcome the opportunity.
- Learn to smile as you build confidence and character.
- Learn to smile when you feel you have enough confidence and character.
- Embrace a lifelong learner’s mindset.
- Persist in spite of difficulty or outright failure.
- Build your stamina and develop resilience – grit.
Entrepreneurs and students of entrepreneurship graduate with a variety of options and an ability to assess if entrepreneurship is for them. You know ahead of time if your idea is valid and worth pursuing. You know their options if it isn’t.
Even if you follow a completely different path, you are armed with life skills, business skills and real-world practice.
A best-case scenario: You have already implemented your learnings, built a foundation, and are walking away and into a full-time job working for yourself.
The growth of a sustainable company and job opportunity is for some but not for all. Regardless of your direction, you are armed and ready for success. You got this.
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