Entrepreneurship School

Entrepreneurship School

Entrepreneurship school is a fine place to start your business, but why waste time at a school when you could be out running your business.

Entrepreneurship school is not a complete waste of time, in fact the real entrepreneurship school will teach you things that you will never learn anywhere else.

In my opinion, there are two entrepreneurship schools:

There is a traditional school where experienced mentors show you what to do and then there is the real entrepreneurs school – the school of getting your hands dirty.

Both schools work in my opinion. The traditional entrepreneurship school where you have a mentor is great as the master can pass down information, strategies and advice to his student. The mentor has been through setting up before (hopefully) and can save the student literally months of work by showing them how to setup correctly and things to avoid. If you do it alone, you will not know these things and have to do it trial an error.

The benefit of an entrepreneurship school can be seen easily when you ask if you would climb Mount Everest alone? It can be done (possibly) but you would be insane to do so and if you were going to go to the top of the mountain, it would be well advised to go with a guide that has been many times before. It shows he knows what he is doing and the fact that he can back ever-time shows he is probably good at it. The same can be said of an entrepreneurship school. Your mentors have been before and can tell you the best way to go and the things to watch out for. Well worth it in my books.

The 2nd entrepreneurship school is the ‘getting-your-hands-dirty’ school. At traditional school they teach you accounts and planning and strategies, but what they can’t teach you is how to deal with real stuff that happens such as:

1) Your 100,000$ delivery is ready to go out and needs to be delivered by lunchtime and both your drivers call in sick!

2) Your cash flow is bad and all your staff need paying on Friday!

3) You find out your accountant has done all the books wrong and now you are in deep s##t with the local authorities!

4) 2 meetings have been booked at the same time, by your secretary and you HAVE to be at them both!

5) Your best customer becomes your biggest competitor!

6) You need a holiday, but you can’t take one because you are in charge!

And the list goes on and on. These are all situations that I have really experienced (and many more) and no one ever told me that this would happen (I was never ever told about this at entrepreneurship school) – everyone said how fantastic it is having your own business.

Well it is fantastic, however, when things go wrong, you cannot walk away as you are responsible and it is good to be prepared for some of these things.

A lot of these situations can only be learned from a ‘hands on situation’, but I suggest that if you are serious about getting your own business started, that you get together with others who want to do so and start a small “entrepreneurs club” where you can swap stories about experiences and how you can get out of it. Support each other through your own experiences.

This can be one of the best entrepreneurship schools you will ever have. Real people, real entrepreneurs , with real situations in life sharing their stories to each other.

I have been an entrepreneur nearly all my life and it was one of the best roads I ever chose to go down. It has never been plain sailing and there always seems to be the next challenge, but it has made me stronger and more knowledgeable than I could have ever wished for. If you ever need help I am happy to pass on my experiences. Send me an email or if you like more, you can be part of my small mastermind team and get help from my own small entrepreneurship school

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