Gap years taken after your high school or college graduation offer significant benefits for young entrepreneurs. Take a gap year to develop your thoughts, plans, and additional skills. A well-planned gap year helps entrepreneurial students focus with the support of mentors and other experienced professionals. It’s an opportune time to practice in a safer environment, test out ideas, and prepare for your future. Gap year benefits for young entrepreneurs are investments in your future.
Take your gap year opportunity seriously. A well thought out plan will help student entrepreneurs and young entrepreneurs develop a business strategy and skillsets at the same time through experiential learning.
Realize you have options. No decision is wrong.
No path sets you back. Each option prepares you. 😊
Realize though – the gap year is not play time.
It’s not an excuse for the unmotivated to do even less.
It’s an opportunity for development.
How to create your gap year program
Approach your gap year thought with intentionality.
- Evaluate your needs, timing, and finances.
- Do early research. Do formal and informal research and get a good grasp of what gap years can look like and what resources are out there for you.
- Consider your goals. Be flexible, but know you eventually want your year backed up with SMART goals.
As part of your research, make sure you can return to school!
- If you just graduated, you may be able to defer enrollment for a period of time.
- Deferred enrollment is sometimes granted for personal circumstances. Deferring enrollment allows you to start at a later date without having to reapply, which is important.
- Acceptance requirements and school enrollment needs change. Don’t be cocky. Make no assumptions.
- If you are transferring schools review the specific policies and procedures for transferring credits and readmission carefully. Again – do not make assumptions.
- Some universities offer academic leave of absence policies allowing students to take a break from their studies for a specified period. During this time, you typically maintain your enrollment status, allowing your return to the same institution at a later date.
Budgeting is also an important factor.
If scholarship or grant monies are involved know if you keep them or forfeit them. Taking time off comes with a cost – either in time or dollars. Losing scholarship or grant money is an important factor to consider.
Research gap year programs that match your needs and your interests.
Will you remain close to home, head to another country, earn, or volunteer?
Be aware of cost factors vs. the benefits. It’s essential to your success.
~ Spending your gap year abroad can be invaluable but it may also come at a large cost.
~ If you take a gap year to save money and learn new, specific skills you may want to remain close by.
~ If you can only obtain this skill by traveling, how are you paying for that? Is what you will earn enough to pay for getting there, the living expenses, and your return?
Know if this plan meets your primary goal and moves your career forward.
This isn’t a negative discussion. It’s part of your gap year planning, which is part of your career planning, which for an entrepreneur, will turn into your business planning.
Have hard conversations with yourself. Have convictions but have answers. Be ready to earn your way. Be ready to succeed!
Take a gap year with entrepreneurial passion!
There are pros and cons to taking gap years.
Let’s explore topics that benefit you!
Gap years are an important part of a young entrepreneur’s strategy.
1) You have time to build a viable business plan.
You have ideas and that is great.
Don’t underestimate yourself.
But is it a sure thing? Of course not.
Be humble. Work on your plan.
At this point you likely understand the value of an entrepreneur’s business plan. This is not the time in life or economic time to go old school and think you don’t need a plan.
Entrepreneurs give up every day.
An incredible number of entrepreneurs crash and burn from wastefulness and a lack of focus.
Take this time to evaluate and update your choices. Take responsibility.
- Evaluate your experience.
- Your personal needs.
- Your business needs.
- Network.
- Time this time to determine your direction.
2.) It’s an opportunity to learn.
Formal or informal learning can be available and tweaked to meet your needs.
- Take trade school classes
- Create an apprenticeship.
- Volunteer for a non-profit or business that is similar in concept to yours.
Know where you need help.
- Business development?
- Planning a productive day?
- Creating balance to avoid burnout?
- Gaining work experience in a hands-on environment?
- Building your own business while working full-time to pay the bills?
- Wishing to spend your time with a great mentor to learn new skills hands on?
- Learn what it means to put in the hard work?
Get to know what you need and then plan for it.
3.) Time away can support your personal well-being.
Supporting yourself mentally and emotionally may be a completely valid reason to take a gap year. You can take this break and still become accomplished.
Similar to starting a major and realizing it’s not for you, this time can save money spent developing knowledge and skills that will not be part of your future.
However, needing a break from stress and pressure does not mean putting yourself on a yearlong vacation.
Intentionality is very important here.
~ It’s not a vacation
~ It’s not to delay the inevitable
~ You do not take a gap year because you are lazy
Apply critical thinking. It’s a long life, full of challenges.
- Ask yourself what it will take to get better?
- Ask yourself: how can I prepare to keep going?
- What do my mind, body and soul require?
Prepare for it.
4.) It’s an opportunity to practice life skills.
You’re an adult now. Think through what it takes to live independently and run a household.
Essential life skills are not taught in a classroom.
As an entrepreneur, budgeting, managing resources, building, and maintaining relationships and effective communication promotes efficiency – and sales.
You must be adaptable, solve problems, be resourceful, and remain calm under pressure.
You learn all of this through life skills.
If you didn’t learn this growing up already, then there’s no better time.
Google it, and get started.
For example: Laundry is much more than simply throwing clothes in a washer. There are at least what? 30 steps to doing your laundry?
This task alone, requires reading directions, following those directions, timeliness, efficiency, and adaptability – among others.
5) You can become more culturally diverse.
It may not be easy to travel extensively after college or once you are employed full-time.
Maybe you will travel the world, learning about different cultures – especially those of particular interest to you and/or your business.
Experience living abroad, international travel, or gain a new perspective, and immerse yourself in a new culture here at home. Each offers the opportunity to grow.
The decision will be based upon your personal and future business needs.
Perhaps seek a paying job where you interact with your future target audience.
You might volunteer for a like-minded organization simply to experience a different culture.
Don’t rule out opportunities within your country and even right within your local area
Understand your “why.”
If your goal is to go far, far away, build that into your plan.
If your goal is to understand customers from a cultural perspective or where your product is created, build that into yuor plan.
Know if the cost is offset by what you’ll learn.
Or – if the travel isn’t as desirable but the cultural knowledge is, consider virtual options.
6) Earn $ / Save $$
Maybe you work and save.
Maybe you are a morning person who will benefit from a 2nd shift repetitive easy job that creates an income while you build your business for a couple hours each morning.
Maybe you can work at a job, developing the operational skills you need to scale your business.
7.) A gap year promotes personal growth.
You are undecided?
Didn’t get in?
Got in and didn’t handle it well?
Got in, graduated, still need… something?
~ Or maybe you did it all right but found a skillset you need to hone.
~ Or you know you need a different or expanded target market and there’s work to do.
~ Or maybe business took off and you can break to achieve that personal goal of remodeling the animal shelter or enroll in additional classes to build your trade or management skills.
It’s your chance to explore.
All said…
It is completely okay to dedicate your gap year to reflection and self-discovery.
The more you understand your passions and aspirations, the more dedicated and flexible you are.
Entrepreneurship isn’t about attending the school of hard knocks.
Become an entrepreneur who gets it in the beginning and save yourself from an unpleasant life experience.
Others also viewed these benefits to young entrepreneurs
- A gap year may be a perfect time to rebrand yourself, so you stand out among other applicants!
- You’ll make more informed decisions about startup and your next moves.
- Planning your own gap year and the activities needed to achieve your goals promotes independence, resourcefulness, confidence, and self-awareness.
- Taking yourself and your time seriously puts you ahead of your competition.
Start your gap year planning knowing…
Gap year benefits far outweigh negatives, and most negatives are negated by planning and taking yourself and your business seriously.
Take these actions:
- Plan your transition from school and back. Know the rules. Abide by them. You have a Google calendar, so use it.
- Have a budget. Know what activities add value and which just adds to your debt.
- Maintain routines so that a break from studying is welcomed, but followed once you return to class. Your academics have a purpose so use the time wisely and in support of your business. You won’t have time to re-learn it later.
- Why do you need history? Why do you need art? Well history repeats itself so enough said there, and you will run your own marketing department for quite a while. Your creativity and ability to reach your audience with and without words, and with colors and shapes that resonate is a critical need. Dig deeper if you lack understanding. Hold yourself to that higher standard.
Still pressured? Lonely? Feeling without purpose? Stalled?
The gap year experience can unravel unexpected feelings and needs. Center yourself by focusing on your future business. Get what you need in place so that you start according to a plan and develop a sustainable income.
College or trade school may be part of that equation. Or they may not. Your needs are unique and that’s perfectly fine, but restarting your academic path because you wasted time is not the goal.
A transformative gap year requires thoughtful planning and intentionality. Without it, a perceived lack of value and assumed wasted time can become a reality. Be a kid. Be young. Have fun. Yes. But remain responsible and build the fun into your PLAN.
See your gap year as a powerful opportunity, not a study break and chance to sleep in.
Respect yourself enough to see it as an opportunity to gain valuable experience and personally develop before moving your business forward.
Plan for your success and you will absolutely get there. Be the achiever. Sleep later. As in another time. Like Saturday morning.
You got this.
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