Being an entrepreneur is not only much easier in the modern digital age, but also a choice far more people in the US, and indeed the rest of the world are making. Following the problems in the job market in the last decade, more and more people have looked for ways to use their existing skills to make money on their own, and thanks to the opportunities for things like remote working, ecommerce and networking that modern technology has given us, being an entrepreneur is a very real option for lots of people who may never have considered themselves ‘business types’.
Of course, this does also mean that a lot of people with a good idea or marketable skills are coming into business without the kind of formal training most business owners would have had in the past. This is a good thing and brings a lot of diversity to our business world, but can mean many individual entrepreneurs find themselves lacking in certain fields they need as they start to grow a business. If this sounds like, you, then luckily, there are lots of things out there that can help you become a better business person, even if you didn’t inherit a family business or go to business school!
Mentoring
Finding a good coach or mentor who has experience in a business sector related to your own can help enormously. Not everything it takes to run a business well is about learning tax and commerce laws or how to recruit good staff – there are lots of things that really only come from having seen similar situations before. If you’re a business student, you learn a lot from case studies, but a mentor can teach you about things they have dealt with first hand.
Online Business Schools
There are lots of things you could previously only do at college but can now do remotely, and getting an online business degree is one of them that could really help an entrepreneur gain the well rounded knowledge to push their business further. Many colleges, like the well respected Arizona State University, offer an online bachelor’s in business administration which you can do alongside developing your business, letting you apply things you learn immediately. There are pros and cons to online degrees for full time students, however for entrepreneurs who want to study on the side, they can be ideal.
Free Online Resources
As well as learning from other people and from formal courses, you also have many options when it comes to simply learning for free online about business. There are eBooks, web presentations, online TED talks and all kinds of other stuff you can access for free, and putting the time in to find these kinds of resources and absorb what they have to teach can strengthen up your weaker areas and even give you new ideas.
These are just three ways that as an entrepreneur, you can seek out useful new knowledge and improve your skills.
