Aspiring to become an entrepreneur? Your early 20s are the perfect time to get started! By dedicating this formative time in your life to acquiring the relevant tertiary qualifications, developing positive personal attributes, and growing your professional network – you will thank yourself later!
To learn more about how to make the most of your early 20s by dedicating yourself to your future career ambitions, just keep reading.
Acquiring a Higher Education Qualification
Your early twenties are the perfect time to obtain a tertiary qualification. This is especially true if you aspire to become a business entrepreneur! Indeed, if you are looking to start a new business venture, enrolling to complete an MBA online, for instance, will provide you with invaluable life skills, capabilities, and technical knowledge that you can bring to your new business.
Also known as a Master of Business Administration, an MBA will effectively teach you the many skills you require to be successful as a business entrepreneur. Some of the course material you are likely to cover during an MBA degree will usually include:
Business Function Skills and Expertise
If you’re venturing out on your own, you need to have some knowledge of the business world, and how it functions and operates! Studying core MBA units around strategic decision-making, planning and analysis is essential to becoming a business expert. Your business studies will also focus on learning how to understand and leverage marketing concepts. Some of these concepts will cover the areas of consumer demand, supply chain management, and marketing data analytics – just to name a few!
Leadership and Management Capabilities
Being a competent leader is essential to running your own business. If your venture is successful, you may even be hiring your own staff in the not-too-distant future, even in your early 20s! The best part about this is that by training your employees to understand how to operate your business autonomously, your own workload will be greatly reduced. Ideally, you want to be able to employ staff who can run the business without you. Essentially, the goal is to generate somewhat of a passive income without having to physically be involved in the daily operation of your business.
Transformational Change Techniques and Strategies
Lastly, in our ever-involving consumer landscape, you need to learn how to be adaptable to change. As such, learning and developing techniques and strategies that will assist with adapting to transformation and change is invaluable for any business entrepreneur. Some of these capabilities involve understanding how to navigate the complex and changing landscape of the business world. Additionally, how you make strategically-beneficial business decisions.
Developing Relevant Personal Characteristics
As well as pursuing formal education, if you’re serious about becoming a business entrepreneur, there are certain personality traits, characteristics, and personal attributes you need to cultivate. These include:
Passion, Drive, and Ambition
No doubt, if you are an aspiring entrepreneur, you will already have passion, drive, and ambition in droves! You may also have a new business concept in mind. It is your passion for this concept that will drive and propel you forward. Of course, passion is a quality that not everyone possesses. That is why, if you are in your early 20s and you are already passionate enough to want to start your own business, you definitely have it in you to succeed. Next, you’ll just need to do the hard yards, and put in the work!
Discipline and Motivation
Sometimes, passion isn’t enough! You also need to stay consistently motivated. However, this is easier said than done. Sometimes, the ups and downs of life can get to us. It can leave us feeling less driven than we would like to be! If you’re not feeling especially motivated, then, you need to learn to be disciplined. There is, of course, a difference between being motivated and being disciplined. Importantly, discipline is what will enable you to stick to your positive habits, routine, and objectives, even when motivation is lacking. As such, it is vital to develop this important attribute to stay on track toward your business goals.
Dedication and a Strong Work Ethic
Lastly, having dedication and a strong work ethic is central to succeeding as a business owner. Undoubtedly, the road ahead will be bumpy, and there will be many obstacles that come your way. The only way to combat this is to work through the challenges and remain dedicated to your cause. By showing dedication, hard work, and commitment, you also become somewhat of a role model to the staff you potentially employ to help run your business in the future.
Building Your Professional Network
There’s no way around it, if you want to be successful in the business world, you need to network! Perhaps the best way to expand your network is to engage with a professional business mentor. But what is a business mentor, and how can they help you to succeed in starting up your own business venture?
Importantly, engaging with a mentor who can show you the ropes of the business world is extremely helpful, especially when you are starting out on your own! Likely, your mentor will already have experienced exactly what you are about to go through as a new business owner. The highs, the lows, the ups, and the downs, they will have been through it all! As such, you can learn and take inspiration from their experience, and crucially, not make the same mistakes. Most importantly, a business mentor can share the knowledge and experience they’ve acquired throughout their own journey, and provide you with the advice and guidance you need, to help you follow in their footsteps.
Your early 20s are a formative time in your life. And, if you make the most of these years by developing the skills and characteristics required of a business owner, your ambition to become a successful entrepreneur is well within your reach. So, take the time to invest in higher education, cultivate desirable personal qualities, and grow your business network. You will thank yourself for it later!
