Are you a young entrepreneur in college wondering what you’ll be doing once you graduate? If so, you’re not alone. Many of us are in a constant battle between: getting a “job,” continuing to work on our startup, or doing both.
Choosing to go the 9 -5 route or working full time on your business will depend on many factors such as:
- Will I have enough money to support myself?
- Will I move back home with my parents?
- Is my business strong enough to support me?
- Should I get a job to raise capital for my business?
- Should I get a job to gain some experience?
- Should I just go for it and jump head-on into my startup?
- Is my idea really strong enough to take off?
These are just a few of the questions that you’re probably grappling with when thinking about what to do after you graduate.
For the bootstrapping entrepreneurs, you may be more inclined to get a job to start raising capital for your startup. When I graduated less than a year ago, I got a job for a few months to raise a few thousand in capital. To be honest, I didn’t like the work, but I liked the money that I was able to save and invest into my business; it was just something that I had to do.
Many of you were fortunate enough to scale your business to a decent size in college, so you’re not thinking twice about going the corporate route after college. You’ll continue to build your business full-steam ahead. Right on!
For others, getting a job and working on your business on the side is the perfect situation. You feel that it’s important to gain experience for a few years and at the same time, use that experience to help grow your own business that you tend to at night and on the weekends. This is a great plan for those wanting to be in an environment where they can learn from others.
And lastly, some of you will lose interest in your startup altogether once you graduate. You’ll get a job, become situated with your new life, and begin build a career within your new company – as an employee.
You’ll forget about your college days when you were running and building your startup and all the fun you were having turning nothing into something. Work at your new job now consumes your life and entrepreneurship is nothing but a lingering thought in the back of your mind.
So, my fellow young entrepreneurs, spend some time to consider and carefully plan for what you will be doing after you graduate. Sure, we’re young, but making the wrong or right decisions now will determine what we become in the next 10 years. Don’t do something you’ll regret.
What’s your plan?
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Wow David, you hit the nail right on the head here for me. I’m graduating in about 6 months with my B.S.B.A. in Finance and going on to Business School for my MBA.
My delimma is my ventures have finally started to grow fairly strong (after many years of work!) and I’m finally having a Blast doing what I love. However my ultimate goal when I started working on my Finance degree was to go into the Banking Industry and build a successful career there, then in the next 7-10 years after I’ve made good connections, learned the industry and hopefully made some good money to venture off on my own again and create my own banking firm.
I think I’m going to pursue my corporate America job in finance, but I know flat out that I’m an entrepreneur for life, so I always will continue to work personal ventures (especially real estate centered operations) on the side. Once again, great article David.
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I agree completely. Right now I’m working at a CPA firm to learn from others as to how and what accountants do so I can take that knowledge, coupled with my dad’s knowledge, and my own theoretical knowledge, to add value to my customers accounts.
- Mari
William: I think that your plan is sound; you’ll be playing both sides of the board and learning from the corporate world while continuing to grow as an entrepreneur — that can prove to be very synergistic. From the little time that I’ve known you, I see you making it BIG in any route that you choose to go even — just keep that entrepreneurial spirit alive!
Mari: I think you’re headed in the right direction with working with your dad and family. Business and family are very powerful forces, but when you find a way to combine the two — they can be deadly!