It’s a perfectly reasonable question. Entrepreneurial thinking and self-starter achievement are so rare most people likely think you need some kind of advanced education, network of millionaires or unbelievable luck to start your own business and turn it into a financial success.
Surely there must be some kind of business degree a person can get? There must be a way to get a degree in entrepreneurial studies. How else could someone figure out the answers to all the questions. It must be overwhelming!
While it is true there are degrees in entrepreneurial business and courses of study that will certainly make a lot of the details of starting a new enterprise easier, the fact is almost all successful companies are started by people who have little more than an invincible drive to forge their own path.
Education First
Although being an entrepreneur doesn’t require a degree, there are some courses of study that will make starting and running a business a whole lot easier.
For example, every business owner needs to know basic accounting. Learning the subject the right way in school is an indispensable step. Learning it through trial and error with accounts receivable and a box full of receipts won’t do much for the long term success of the enterprise.
Customers Next
As many experienced business people will tell you, sales solve everything. In fact, most successful companies are surprised into their markets by a sudden multiplicity of sales of a product they weren’t particularly banking on being a big hit. One need only take a cursory look at the entertainment business to see example after example of films, songs and books that went on a money-making rampage despite everyone being certain they would flop and take the company with them.
As long as the company has sales, everything else falls right into place, even if you don’t necessarily have the business degree and all the knowledge everyone tells you is necessary.
Forging your own path and bootstrapping a new enterprise is a romantic notion to be sure. The image of someone getting ahead of the curve and earning advanced degrees before putting all that knowledge to work is compelling, but rarely necessary or even practical. At the end of the fiscal year, what matters most is sales and a lot of them.