I am knee deep in academic advising this week. I have met with several potential new majors. I often get asked questions about an entrepreneurial career versus a corporate career. Tim Conway with Ignite Young Adults sent me a great article written by Kerrin Sheldon posted at FastCompany that gives eight reasons to choose the entrepreneurial career over the corporate career. It is a great article that I plan to share with potential students.
As I read through the list, several of his points reinforced my own thinking on why so many Millennials are drawn to entrepreneurship. They are overall a rather impatient generation. And with traditional corporate jobs, they do not seem to find fulfillment and enough new challenges quickly enough. Entrepreneurship, or at least working in very small firms, seems to be a better fit for many of them.
As a millennial I can relate to this post. We are impatient and the thought of getting a 9 to 5 office job in a cubicle sounds miserable. Yes the corporate jobs are important and admirable, but just seem so boring to a lot of us. Another reason we do not buy into the corporate idea is because we watched a dedicated, hard working, and loyal generation full our parents get laid off after several years of service. Times are changing and the thought of taking on our own ventures does indeed seem more challenging, exciting, and fulfilling than the corporate path.
I’ve had many people ask me what I’m going to be when I grow up after studying entrepreneurship, and my usual off the cuff answer is, “I have no idea, who said I have to grow up?” There is a little bit of truth to that statement but to more seriously answer that question, it doesn’t matter what I do with this degree. Even though I sought out the Entrepreneurship program at Belmont specifically, the beauty to a degree of this nature is that I’m qualified to do almost anything. Not to bash any other type business degree, but an entrepreneurship degree forces you to see the big picture and try on every hat at an organization. As rapidly as businesses and the marketplace is changing in this day and age I believe that this will be an essential skill to have regardless of whether or not you start your own venture or go to work in the corporate world. Either way, the entrepreneurship degree is a sampling of everything in the business school and truly sets you up to adapt to almost any situation and work anywhere. This is why I still don’t know what I’ll be when I grow up… there’s too much to choose from!
I have a degree in business management from a local university, and believe in the securities associated with working toward a well-rounded education. While having an education looks good on a resume and speaks of the individual who projects ‘stick-to-itiveness’ and follow-through, much positivity can be said for entrepreneurship. I am happy to see a university such as Belmont looking toward the reality of the future in the world of independently owned businesses. With technology advancing the ‘game’ we all have the opportunity to embrace Mobile-preneurship. Many university students may find themselves not fitting into-the-box that goes along with the 40-hour/week corporate scenerio. Or they may go that route and wake up someday wishing they had a Plan B in their back pocket. Someone once said a successful person needs 7 streams of income in order to achieve his/her goals. We all have goals whether they are large or small. And we all need to prepare for the unknown.