Were you an entrepreneur before you knew you were one?
Before even knowing what an entrepreneur is, you can learn the skills to make money! A business doesn’t have to be an established corporation. In fact, it can be as simple as selling anything in exchange for something to make a profit.
Last week, we asked E-Club members on our Instagram story what was the first business they started. We analyzed our responses and were intrigued by how creative people’s first business ideas were.
Learn by doing
As college students, we have a lot to learn from our past childhood experiences. Children are not confined to their skills; as kids, we all acted on the impulse to explore new things that interested us. Children are always eager to change and learn new behaviors. They learn by doing and seek out answers to their many questions and can learn from mistakes firsthand.
Even now as a college student, it shouldn’t be scary to learn how to be an entrepreneur! After all, the foundations of entrepreneurship can be boiled down to simply creating something new for other people. This definition doesn’t require any degrees or exceptional skill, but instead just the ability to identify a valid problem and find a needed solution.
Building a business is all about forming new skills through managing money, marketing products, and working with customers. Naturally, the more you practice these skills, the better your business acumen becomes.
We asked the E-Club community about their first business…
“There’s only one way to find a good product idea: observe real people, and recognize the real struggles they face” — Justin Jackson
As it goes, people start businesses when they see an unmet need. Whether this is something that one is passionate about, or an opportunity to sell something unique to others, many people find themselves creating a new business from an idea. The best way to start a business is to see a real problem people face and find a solution to alleviate it.
This intuition comes naturally to even kids! As the quintessential first business idea, running a local lemonade stand can teach essential business skills. Convincing potential customers, making and selling drinks, handling costs and orders, and performing customer service — these are just a few of the skills learned from working at a lemonade stand. In doing so, children can be exposed to how real businesses operate.
Many members of our E-Club community can relate to having a first business at a young age, with most of them being unconventional in nature! All submissions shared a common theme of selling a product to others, but differed in setting and relevance. Some people sold personal items at school, like trading packed lunches, or in the community with bake sales, and the list goes on.
Here are some featured members!
Anyone can be an entrepreneur!
The short answer is that anyone is able to be an entrepreneur. Even if you aren’t a business major or actively pursuing entrepreneurship at the moment, you might already be one — and your past self can vouch for the experiences that you’ve already encountered with entrepreneurship.
If you’ve thought of something that you think would make people’s lives better and are willing to follow through on your idea to turn it into a reality, congratulations! You’re one step closer to embracing entrepreneurship.
Building a business is all about forming new skills through managing money, marketing products, and working with customers. Entrepreneurs embark on a difficult journey filled with twists and turns, and deciding to start a business should not be taken lightly, and requires immense dedication and endurance. But at the end of the day, entrepreneurs can be the beacons of change for new products, innovation, and solutions to our everyday problems.
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