How To Learn Entrepreneurship In Your Spare Time
Let’s say you’re a young guy or girl and you’re either still at school or studying at college. You’ve decided entrepreneurship is for you and yet you’ve got studying to do or your parents are threatening to cut you off if you don’t finish your studies.
Or, maybe you’ve graduated and got a 9-5, potentially with a family to look after and so you can’t quit it all to go rogue in Chiang Mai with your blog “start up.”
Most people don’t get to start with all the free time in the world to work on their business, and sadly a lot of business advice is pretty bad as far as that goes.
In this article, I’ll try and help the two above groups of readers and give a blueprint for building entrepreneurial skills – as well as telling you what to avoid spending your time on too.
First though, let’s talk about bad advice and gurus.
Bad Advice And Gurus
There are plenty of gurus out there who’ll say to a nineteen year old kid, “Quit college! Live your dreams! Having a job is for slaves! Buy my $197 lifehacking business course and live free! Ditch your girlfriend! Hit the gym! Be a real man!”
There are also plenty of gurus who will say to a married guy, “Quit your job! Tell your boss to fuck himself! Jobs are for slaves! Tell your wife you’re following your dream! Feed your baby noodles while you bootstrap!”
… In reality, those are bad ideas. I’m not a fan of college and I don’t have a boss, but you’ve got a classic case of the proverb “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush” or even “the grass is greener on the other side.”
Dropping out of your life to pursue a dream is not really the smartest or lowest risk option out there at the best of times. If your dream is entrepreneurship and you’ve no experience with business and you want to quit tomorrow, I’d advise against it. If you’ve got a family to support, then I’d doubly recommend taking a breather on your employer’s payroll for a while yet.
In other words, don’t be daft. Entrepreneurial success won’t come over night, and it’s unlikely you’re going to immediately stumble across an idea that you need to devote eighteen hours a day to.
Take your time, get some knowledge, build some skills and then consider switching to full time (providing you have seen to prior commitments.)
How To Get Started With Entrepreneurial Thinking and Skills
With the above disclaimers covered, here’s what you need to learn about business using only an hour or two a day.
Firstly, you need to honestly assess yourself. This is difficult. You’ll think it’s easy – you might not even think it is necessary – but you’d be wrong on both counts.
We’re all unique beings and that’s why the “off the shelf” business template never works.
When it comes down to it, business success is about finding something you can do better than other people and well enough that you’re able to charge money for it. An added feature of this should be that you don’t hate it.
But that’s it. It’s assessing what you can do and how that is the tricky bit. People get this wrong. If you’re not an extrovert, then you’re not going to succeed as a celebrity. If you have no social skills, you’re not going to magically develop them when you’re fighting for your financial survival. On the other hand, if you are an extrovert planning to be a guy who sits in the basement coding a world-beater app is probably going to make you a miserable ball of mess.
Think long and hard.
After you’ve written down a list of possible avenues, I suggest you do the following. They will be individual for whoever you are and whatever you do:
- Write a list of minimum viable services you can offer (be they dog-grooming, freelance writing or financial services)
- Find out the laws regarding freelancing and self-employment in your area
You can do all of this part time and it’ll give you what you need.
Start Freelancing
You can start freelancing part time. I recommend you start with a freelance service business as opposed to a product business because:
- It’s a lot easier
- There are lower overheads
- Product businesses – even digital product businesses – can swallow your time and spiral out of control easier
- You learn many skills that you won’t get otherwise regarding time management, talking to customers, niche selection and more
In addition to that, there are only three things you need to master to have a successful freelance business:
- Find a service people require
- Deliver it to a high standard
- Do this on time, without issue and leave a smile on your customer’s face
If you can do that, you will get many customers who repeatedly seek out your services.
That’s basically it. Let’s talk about what not to do before we wrap up.
What Shouldn’t You Spend Your Time Doing?
In short; don’t spend hours worrying about stuff that really doesn’t matter.
If you search online for “how to learn to be an entrepreneur” or some other related thing, you’ll get bombarded with stuff that’ll complicate the process without helping.
People spend hours “building a brand” on social media. Waste of time.
They “research” all manner of ridiculous things from SEO through to investment strategies and incorporation nonsense in places they don’t even live. They’ll consume “entrepreneur news” about Zuckerberg’s latest takeover and they’ll spend hours reading terrible motivational fluff lifehacker nonsense that is just a waste of time.
Sometimes, those things will become important. Once you’re up and running, you might need a website. Once you have a website, you might need to think about some of those things.
But they’re not necessary and if you’re planning for the long term, eradicate them from your mind. Trust me; the guru rubbish will still be there when you get back with your up-and-running business.
Final Thoughts
People are going to forever ask, “What do I need to start learning about business?” and the answer is always going to be unsatisfactory.
“Not a lot.”
I could have just peppered this article with affiliate links to entrepreneur books for you to read or courses for you to spend your money on. But realistically, the simple answer is the right one.
You need to find something you’re good at, find how you can deliver a service (or product) that solves a problem using that skill and then scale up from there. There’s no magic key or secret book of wisdom that’ll help you bypass all of the effort, despite a million gurus claiming that they’re the only one who sells it.