Take a job or start a business? That is the question! I think working the first five years after college was instrumental in my #career. Here are some things that I learned while working that can be invaluable to your future as a #business owner.
You Can Learn An Industry
If there is a particular industry you’re interested in, you can get a base-level job within that industry and learn about it and see if it is for you (or not…).
Establish a Network of Critical Contacts
Three people who I had at one time worked for, have since come to work for me. When you work a job, you’re exposed to a lot of people, some who are talented and some who are not so talented. You can start building a rolodex of names that may end up being superstar employees or even partners for you in the future.
Seeing Leadership in Action
You learn good leadership by seeing good leadership in action and vice versa you learn what is bad leadership by seeing bad leadership in action! You get to see what the “adult in the room” looks like. When you are a part of a smooth business operation, you can see the critical components of leadership in action.
Flesh Out Strengths and Weaknesses
Find out your likes/dislikes when it comes to job responsibilities and types of activities you like to perform or manage. For example, I’m not great at physical labor. I’m best at setting projects in motion and managing them from there.
Ask Questions
You can ask how pricing is done, who is the competition, what differentiates the company from its competitors. You can make this an absolute learning experience by extracting knowledge in these and other areas.
See What Works In a Startup
…and what doesn’t. You’ll see money get wasted in things that do not matter and see what does matter first hand!
If you get a job in a startup, you will get first-hand experience in these areas that you would otherwise not get a well-established firm.
Develop Discipline
Working requires discipline. When I first started working, I learned to develop the discipline to work twelve hours at a time, to be on time, to create lists to manage my time and responsibilities.
Learn on Someone Else’s Dollar
You’re being paid to do a job and it costs you nothing monetarily to learn about running a business and build all these different skills at the same time. I learned how to run staff meetings and put together processes, hire and fire people, etc.
