Does Education Help Entrepreneurs Succeed?

Posted on March 12, 2019 by Douglas Muir, MBA

The other night, I was having dinner with some friends when someone asked me a typical American question: “What do you do for a living?”
“I’m a professor at a local university and teach entrepreneurship,” I replied, knowing the usual follow-up question that would come next: “Hasn’t Bill Gates (Microsoft), Steve Jobs (Apple), Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), and Larry Page and Sergey Brin (Google), shown that you do not need to go to college to be a successful entrepreneur?”
There is a growing misconception that higher education is not needed for entrepreneurial success, but that is just not true. A Kauffman Foundation study revealed that over 90% of American tech company founders hold a bachelor’s degree, and those with MBA’s are able to start and build their companies faster.
For the passionate entrepreneur, educational programs (especially those using the case study method) offer a great place to start learning practical skills that can reduce the learning curve for running a company. Let’s look at four ways entrepreneurship education can help the aspiring entrepreneur:
1. Innovation Labs (i-lab) and Accelerators:
There’s certainly overlap between incubators and accelerators, but the big difference is in the stage of the start-up. An incubator is a place where pre-revenue start-ups go to learn about their business model and how to build a company. The accelerator in most cases is post-revenue, has a specific amount of time in the accelerator, and receives a certain amount of funding for equity in the company. They are more interested in creating growth with the assistance of investors and connections.
There are 243 i-labs and accelerators located within universities around America. The University I teach at is creating an i-lab, which is slated to open April 11, 2019, for students, faculty, and local start-ups. These i-labs and accelerator programs connect young entrepreneurs to real start-up resources such as business mentors, lawyers, marketing personnel, classes, accountants, access to investors, and much more. This type of immersive education in entrepreneurship is harder to come by when you are starting out on your own.
2. Experiential Leaning
It is imperative that when studying entrepreneurship, you choose a university or set of courses that are taught by professors with real experience in the start-up world. It is just as important that the class be an experiential learning class (which emphasizes “doing” by applying learned skills, instead of just learning from the textbook). While some believe that entrepreneurship is not an innate talent that people are born with (which is a debatable claim), and you can therefore study to be an entrepreneur, entrepreneurship is—above all else— a skill that can be cultivated through learning, studying, and creating businesses. I agree when people say, “You can’t learn to be an entrepreneur from a book,” because books alone will not teach you all you need to know. That is why experiential learning must be part of the entrepreneurial development process. It is absolutely critical.
Entrepreneurs are much better off learning by “doing” and meeting mentors who have been down the start-up path and experienced most things themselves. These mentors are invaluable when it comes to learning and making the fewest mistakes as possible. They can give you advice from the journey they forged before you. Learning from the mistakes they made is one of, if not the, greatest opportunities to grow as an entrepreneur.
3. Learning Leadership Skills:
It’s often said that more than half of new businesses fail during the first year. According to the Small Business Association (SBA), this isn’t necessarily true. The SBA states that only 30% of new businesses fail during the first two years of being open, 50% during the first five years, and 66% during the first 10.
The good news? Business majors with a track in entrepreneurship are required to take courses in leadership, problem solving, entrepreneurship creation, and introductory management skills, which heighten their chances of defying those statistics.
Entrepreneurship courses like the one I teach, “Presentation Strategies for Entrepreneurs,” will help you determine whether your business model will be feasible before you put any money into your new venture.
When I truly understood that I was never going to be the smartest person in the room just because I was CEO, I started trusting my expert employees to do what they do best: create and execute. I learned that I was only a teacher that gave them the vision they needed, and then I would turn over the reins. The secret then is to measure and double measure my metrics to help guide my employees. This type of leadership worked well for me. Leading is knowing where you are going and communicating that clearly to those working with you.
4. LOVE what you do:
As I tell my students at the beginning of class and the closing of the semester, “You have to do what you love, because you will spend one third of your life doing it.”
Entrepreneurship is very lonely at the top. It consists of ungodly amounts of worrying, anxiety, time, effort, and much more. If you don’t like being on the edge—living life one day at a time—then entrepreneurship is not for you.
I was an airline pilot for 20 years and hated it! When I created my first company in 1992, built it, and sold it to a larger firm, I knew I was going to be an entrepreneur for the rest of my life. The 25+ years since then as an entrepreneur have been the most exhilarating, educational, and fun years that I’ve had in my entire life.
Teaching entrepreneurship at universities is also filled with a great deal of excitement. Being able to give back what was so freely given to me is the joy of my existence these days.
You must do what you love, or you will be miserable for a long time.
Happy entrepreneuring!😊

Entrepreneurship Across Different Cultures

Posted on March 9, 2019 by Douglas Muir, MBA

As I get ready to start my Doctorial studies in Business Administration at Felician University, I’m already thinking about my dissertation that is due five years from now. In my thesis, I’d like to explore how different cultures other than our firmly established American culture of entrepreneurship view entrepreneurship, and what makes the American entrepreneur so resilient and plentiful?
Entrepreneurship is often thought of as an “American thing” and reminds us of “the American dream,” “bigger is better,” “of course I can do that,” and a whole list of other sayings (I myself have said many of these statements). We also think of the unlimited upward social mobility, and the belief that if you have a good idea and a good work ethic, you can start your own company and make plenty of money (which is sometimes true, but most of the time, not).
We also tend to celebrate the American garage heroes, such as Mark Zuckerberg, who started Facebook and the whole social media craze; Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who started Google and data analytics; and the renegade Elon Musk, who constantly pushed the envelope of ideas (and still does), even when most people didn’t believe his ideas would work.
Let’s look at some highlights of American entrepreneurial culture, as well as some different entrepreneurial cultures, such as those of Germany, Sweden, and China. These are but a few examples, but even with a brief look at how some of these cultures view entrepreneurship, we can begin to understand how Americans and other countries can further develop their entrepreneurial drive and methods by incorporating the tactics, attitudes, and experiences of different cultures.
America
Americans are the young kids on the block with the “can do” attitude and the “don’t tell me what to do” belief system. Personally, growing up in a solid lower middle-class family with an entrepreneurial father, who quit his job one day and started a busing company without a busing license, set me on my own entrepreneurial path. At the time, my father had three little children and a stay-at-home wife. This is the typical American dream: working hard and making something of yourself. Despite the many years of lean times, and dying at the young age of 54, my father’s dream and hard work turned out well. After all, this high school dropout ended up employing many people and created a successful bussing company.
In America, there is the mythological figure of the entrepreneurial billionaire who gets incredibly rich, incredibly fast. However, alongside that figure sits a very different reality. This different reality defines “entrepreneurial culture” in the United States as being inconsistent with the “notion of America.” This may seem counterintuitive, since the American dream was built on hard work, innovation, and the hunt for success, but if we take a look at some American trends, it will explain why entrepreneurship no longer fits into the way of America in the same way it used to when it was framed as the American dream.
According to the Kauffman Foundation, the American education system is still weighted toward placing graduating students into existing big companies, rather than equipping them with the skills necessary to start their own businesses. Some high schools are now offering a few entrepreneurship classes taught by non-entrepreneurs, but higher education is still primarily geared toward providing students with the necessary skills to climb the corporate ladder.
It is worth considering, however, that the culture of entrepreneurship is still relatively new. The Kauffman Foundation suggests that the prestige of entrepreneurship came as a response to recession-era layoffs in the 1970s and 1980s, leaving entrepreneurship as the only option for advancement. As the culture continues to grow, we can notice a growing interest in entrepreneurship, as collegiate courses on design thinking, innovation, and entrepreneurship spring up across the country.
Expanding one’s perspective on entrepreneurship is important if one wants to become a more successful business leader. The newer courses offered in entrepreneurship are a step in the right direction, but it takes more than that. While your personal history, culture, and values are all important, they shouldn’t blind you to other perspectives from around the world, because they, too, have plenty to offer. We now live in a globalized world, so, Americans can and should learn more by broadening their approach. This will help people find more creative solutions, build a stronger business, and possibly even find more fulfillment in their work and role as a business leader.
Germany
According to the U.S. News & World Report’s annual “Best Countries” rankings, Germany is, for the third year in a row, considered the world’s best country to be an entrepreneur.
Germans have a culture built around work ethic and are a notoriously driven people. However, despite its having been ranked as the best country for starting a business, doing so is much more difficult in Germany than it is in other countries. In fact, the World Bank ranks it 113th in the world in terms of ease of starting a business. Part of the reason for such difficulty is because Germany prioritizes jobs in the government and in large, established firms. The most talented and hardest working people gravitate toward established jobs, mostly for prestige and advancement. This leaves entrepreneurial opportunities less explored and less celebrated, at least by German standards.
Yet, the country still sees decent rates of entrepreneurship, thanks to an immigrant population that brings more entrepreneurial values into the country. How Germany manages to be one of the best countries for entrepreneurship, despite its difficulty to start a business, is a question worth exploring, because we can learn a lot about entrepreneurial strategy.
Sweden
The World Bank has ranked Sweden in the top ten countries for entrepreneurship. The article continues to rate Sweden, along with entrepreneurship, as the most business-friendly country, most culturally influential, most modern, offering high quality of life, the ability to retire comfortably, transparency, and gender equality. It is also considered the best country to headquarter a corporation, raise kids, live green, and get a great education, and it is among the best countries overall. But this is a Socialist country, so how can all of that be? Interestingly, Sweden has a 90% privately owned business community. Although the ease of starting a business in Sweden is rated high, staying in business may be tough due to the very favorable labor laws, and the tax burden placed on business owners. Looking at how those who managed to both start and stay in business should offer us huge insights into innovation and entrepreneurial tactics.
China
For the past few decades, China has been the manufacturing hub of the world, but Chinese culture is shifting to focus on the merits of entrepreneurship, as China attempts to reposition itself as a growing tech innovator. They are making this shift through education, governmental assistance, and culture.
Statistics show that the number of Chinese students studying abroad at higher education institutions in the United States during the 2016-2017 academic year was almost 351,000 students. The Chinese government has also taken multiple initiatives to foster increased rates of entrepreneurship, including a $338 billion investment into government-backed, tech-centric, venture capital firms. The increased availability of cash for entrepreneurial ventures is fueling a renewed interest in innovation.
Chinese citizens are hungrier for success and are willing to make great sacrifices for the chances of success; accordingly, Chinese start-ups tend to grow more rapidly than their American counterparts. If Americans can understand how entrepreneurs in China do business and grow so quickly, they can apply it to their own American businesses.
Of course, there are similarities in each entrepreneurial culture. Some of the tactics and values offered by different cultures can be reflected in American culture, but the differences in other entrepreneurial cultures offer Americans the chance to learn significantly. The attitudes, strategies, and entrepreneurial mindsets of our peers across the world can provide us with great, applicable knowledge. Taking the time to understand the similarities and differences between American entrepreneurial culture and the different entrepreneurial cultures around the world can create beneficial change in the way we do business and think about innovation.
If you’d like more information, please feel to contact me directly at dmuir@muirandassociates.net or go to my academic web site for more white papers and research at https://douglasmuir.academia.edu/

Overcoming Obstacles Is Key for a Successful Entrepreneur

Posted on March 7, 2019 by Douglas Muir, MBA

Overcoming Obstacles Is Key for a Successful Entrepreneur

Entrepreneurship is not a sprint, it’s a marathon. Successful entrepreneurs don’t have the expectation of “finishing,” but they understand that it is all about overcoming the next obstacle that presents itself. If you do have the expectation of “finishing,” you won’t continue to push yourself to step outside of your comfort zone enough to grow. Entrepreneurship is like an escalator going down, and you are standing still, observing all the way, as opposed to sprinting right to the bottom. As an entrepreneur, you must keep seeking out the things that truly help your business achieve explosive results, and discovering all those things requires you to stretch yourself beyond your comfort zone.
Becoming a successful entrepreneur means understanding that hard times are when you need to push forward the most. You will have times of unbelievable joy, as well as more than a few setbacks. During the times of joy, you may feel like you can take over the world. It can give you the strength and motivation to continue to put in the long hours that are required to grow your business. During the hard times, negative feelings and emotions can easily take over, and before you know it, you’re feeling sorry for yourself, and things start getting dark very rapidly. This kind of funk is something you must snap out of quickly, or it will take you down. As an entrepreneur, you are at the top, so there are few people to turn to except other entrepreneurs and mentors. Even though it can be extremely difficult to pull through the hard times, it is possible. I want to share with you a few things that I’ve done to help myself during the down times.

1. Overcoming Problems – The only way to get through obstacles is to start by acknowledging that they exist. Your thoughts act as the gateway to your feelings and emotions. There is a very wise Buddhist notion about how what you think about and focus on is what you’ll attract more of into your life. If you believe you are failing, then you will, and it’s over. When you’re dealing with obstacles, your thoughts focus on what you can’t control and why that situation is happening to you. Instead of falling into that negative, cyclical thought process, give yourself a few minutes and take control of your thoughts. Focus on what brings you joy and what you’re grateful for in your life. It’s hard to be down when you’re expressing gratitude. It will amaze you how the right solutions come into fruition when you focus your mind on positive and creative solutions.

2. Embrace Change – Growing a business is not easy, or the world would consist of more than just 3% of entrepreneurs. Life is messy, and change can be uncomfortable, yet change is absolutely essential for entrepreneurs. There are always going to be things you can’t, and shouldn’t, try to control. There are, however, things that pop up that you can do something about, and situations that you can exercise some control over. For example, if your marketing plan no longer works, adjust it, and if sales are down, go back to what worked and make small adjustments. Or, if an employee is causing more trouble than he/she is worth, remove them immediately before they influence the others. Create a plan that will help you get on the path to recovery. There are things you can fix in your business no matter what is happening. First, identify what the problem is, then, do something about it. Focus on results.

3. Get a Mentor – Some obstacles feel like they are more than you can handle. Seeking counsel and support can be the difference between getting through crises or failing. Don’t try to be the super hero—seek help! One of the best things you can do is make decisions that help you recover, and seeking help is one of those decisions. Talking and planning with someone who understands your situation and has experience making it through a crisis is indispensable.

4. Make an Action Plan – Make decisions that are action-based. If you are contemplating a decision that will push you toward an action to help your business, make the decision! I’ve found that one of the best ways to recover from difficult situations is to take massive, laser-like action. Taking action regarding the things you can control will give you progress, confidence, and results. As you consistently take action, you’ll be closer to your goal before you know it.
I’ve found that obstacles always become my most productive learning moments, and they don’t have to be business breakers. I have learned from each failure, and have used them to make myself a stronger and wiser entrepreneur. I’ve seen how the most successful entrepreneurs understand that it’s not the crisis or failure, but the response to that crisis or failure, that determines how successful you’ll be. Stay strong, process your thoughts, create a plan, and then take action. It will get you through a crisis every time!