Making “The Entrepreneurial Generation” Work for You
I had the great honor of speaking to a group of future entrepreneurs at Clemson last night. Although entrepreneurship isn’t one of the topics I normally speak about–even though I write about it fairly frequently–I was extremely eager to share what I’ve learned so far as an entrepreneur and how they could learn from my successes and mistakes.
Before jumping into running a business, of course, there are a few questions you need to ask yourself:
Self-assessment
- What are you passionate about?
- Are you willing to take some risk?
- What are your personal goals?
- What skills do you bring to the table?
Business assessment
- What business do you want to go into?
- What does the SWOT analysis look like?
College students are actually in a nice position to start businesses. They have a lot of resources at hand–from media outlets (Inc., Entrepreneur, SmartBrief on Entrepreneurs) to on-campus entrepreneur institutes to community organizations, like SCORE.
All of these places will tell them to at least have something resembling a business plan before getting too far:
- Executive Summary
- Business Overview
- Products/Services
- Market Analysis
- Marketing Plan
- Management & Personnel
- Financial Data
Of everything I said, though, a few things seemed to resonate the most:
- To partner or not. There are definitely benefits of bringing on one or more partners, such as an expanded skill set (compensate for your weaknesses; complement your strengths). But, things can go wrong. Get the agreement in writing with the help of an attorney.
- Free sells. Hook your customers with “free” (content, products, services), then keep costs competitive and overhead low.
What is your big business idea? What do you plan to do to bring it to fruition?
