The College Entrepreneur
The College Entrepreneur
How to leverage your university to build a business, escape the rat race and live life on your terms.
By Kyle Gray
Copyright © Kyle Gray, 2016.
All Rights Reserved.
ISBN 13: 978-0692723388
ISBN 10: 0692723382
No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical or electronic, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Requests for permission for or further information on usage of this document should be addressed to: kyle@conversioncake.com
Legal Notice
The Purchaser or Reader of this publication assumes responsibility for the use of these materials and information. Adherence to all applicable laws and regulations, federal, state, and local, or any other jurisdiction is the sole responsibility of the Purchaser or Reader.
The Author and Publisher assume no responsibility or liability whatsoever on the behalf of any Purchaser or Reader of these materials
Any perceived slights of specific people or organizations are unintentional.
Cover and Interior design by Vanessa Mendozzi - www.vanessamendozzidesign.com
Images used under licence Shutterstock.com
Contents
PART 1 - Why start a business in school?
Chapter 1 - Your University, Your Business And You
Chapter 2 - 9 Myths about business
Chapter 3 - Don’t Do What Others Want
PART 2 - Discovering your business and telling your story
Chapter 4 - What are your basic skills?
Chapter 5 - Who do you want to be?
Chapter 6 - How and why to start a journal
Chapter 7 - The basics of a personal brand
Chapter 8 - Key skills for entrepreneurs
Chapter 9 - Easy online business models
PART 3 - How to make your university work for you
Chapter 10 - Simple ways to be memorable and build relationships
Chapter 11 - Your key to campus: academic advisors
Chapter 12 - Increase your options with a flexible or custom major
Chapter 13 - Custom coursework - How to get credit for working on your business
Chapter 14 - Fund your skill-development with undergraduate research
Chapter 15 - Create a tribe with a club or meetup
Chapter 16 - The foundry - The secret recipe for entrepreneurship
PART 4 - Expanding your influence off-campus
Chapter 17 - The secret weapon of students
Chapter 18 - How and why to invite someone to speak at your university
Chapter 19 - How to get a perfect letter of recommendation
Chapter 20 - Build real world skills in a custom internship
Chapter 21 - The apprenticeship renaissance
Chapter 22 - A guide to dropping out
Chapter 23 - The Crossroads
PART 1 - Why start a business in school?
Chapter 1 - Your University, Your Business And You
There it was… The symbol of years of investment, hard work and experience: my Master’s degree. It came in a large envelope, it was printed on thick, high quality paper, and was signed by people I didn’t know with fancy ink. This was my permission slip for success.
Or was it?
I knew better than to trust a piece of paper to give me what I wanted. I had gone through the motions to earn this paper, but it was not what I was seeking. I had different priorities.
I graduated with something far more valuable than a diploma. It had nothing to do with grades. It was not something that could be given to me. It was something I made myself.
Today, almost three years after graduating, that piece of paper is sitting in the same envelope it came in.
I spent eight years at a large public university. I started as a confused and misguided freshman. And, along with my classmates, I jumped through all the hoops to earn a Bachelor’s degree. I joined the ranks of hungry graduates hoping that this piece of paper would lead to a better life.
After a few rounds of applications and interviews, I was able to get a full-time job on campus as an advisor. The job was good: it was in my field of study, it had benefits and a decent salary.
It was at this job that I learned a great deal about how universities work behind the scenes. I found that many of my assumptions about how universities worked were totally wrong. I discovered many ways students could leverage the system to their advantage.
Though it was a good job in the classic sense, I found that only a small portion of what I was doing was fulfilling. I felt trapped behind my desk, working for a system that did not work for me. I wanted to do something that mattered. I wanted to do work that interested me, that made an impact, and that allowed me to live life on my terms.
I started again as a student, enrolling in a graduate program with the hopes of learning how to start my own business. But I was not going to wait until I graduated to start. It was time to take action. I took advantage of what I had learned as an advisor, using the university system as a resource. I built key skills, valuable relationships, and received guidance on how to start and grow my own business.
I graduated as one of the top students in my class, but I didn’t need to rely on my grades or my degree to attract opportunities. I had a business that was a consistent source of income. I had a valuable skillset that was sought-after by many businesses and startups. I had developed a personal brand and was recognized as an entrepreneur and marketer.
Instead of hunting for a job, job offers came to me and I could negotiate or turn them down if they didn’t meet my standards. Instead of compromising my values or my goals to earn a paycheck, my interests and values became the source of income.
After graduation, I continued to build my skills in marketing and helped grow a startup to a million dollar business. I taught at an innovative startup accelerator at my university, helping other students become entrepreneurs. Best of all, I now have a business I can run from anywhere; I do work that is challenging and interesting and I do it on my own schedule. None of this would have been possible if I had just focused on getting good grades and hoped my degree would pay off.
You don’t need to spend eight years at your university to get the same results. This book highlights the important lessons I learned and gives you the key strategies to do it in a fraction of the time. It’s possible for you too, but only if you’re ready to do what it takes.
We live in strange times...
For nearly 100 years, getting a university education was an undoubtedly sound investment. Graduates were almost guaranteed brighter futures with steady jobs, comfortable salaries, and good benefits. While there are still many great advantages to a college education--some of which we will explore in this book--the decision to attend university has become more complicated in recent years.
The promises of a degree seem more and more tenuous with each year, especially as the cost of tuition rises while incomes remain stagnant. Many jobs that were once highly valued are being lost to technology and outsourcing, and this trend is likely to continue.
Furthermore, many leading businesses and organizations are openly stating that a degree has little impact on an applicant’s chances of being accepted.
“This week, international publishing house Penguin Random House decided to drop degrees as a requirement for job applicants, following in the footstep
s of major consulting firms Ernst and Young and Price Waterhouse Coopers.
The move comes as smaller employers are shifting away from hiring graduates or university students, believing kids are coming out of university with “no real skills” or simply being taught the wrong things.” - University degrees ‘irrelevant’ to big employers
The job market has shifted as well. With the rapid change brought by quickly advancing technology, people need to be ready to make fast transitions and adaptations to stay competitive in the modern job market.
“Ninety-one percent of Millennials (born between 1977-1997) expect to stay in a job for less than three years, according to the Future Workplace “Multiple Generations @ Work” survey of 1,189 employees and 150 managers. That means they would have 15 – 20 jobs over the course of their working lives!” - Job Hopping Is the ‘New Normal’ for Millennials.
It seems like universities have been slow to adapt to these changes. Universities are optimized to prepare graduates for long careers with only a few transitions between jobs. In the past, this model worked. It used to be that new graduates could count on job security. However, the recent recession proved that job security was an illusion. Both young and old lost their jobs and were unable to find new work.
Even tech giants that seem to be stable aren’t safe. This report from April 2016 covers Intel, one of the world’s biggest manufacturers of semiconductors, revealing a plan to cut a massive branch of it’s workforce after poor earnings:
“Intel Corp. will eliminate 12,000 jobs, or 11 percent of its workforce, embarking on the deepest cutbacks in a decade to gird for a fifth year of declines in the personal-computer market.” - Bloomberg - Intel to Cut 12,000 Jobs, Forecast Misses Amid PC Blight
The workforce has also changed. Where older generations were satisfied with security, young people seem more interested in finding meaning, inspiration and purpose.
“Most university students — 65 percent — expect to be able to make some positive social or environmental difference through their work…” - Net Impact Talent Report
This begs the question: is going to university still worth it?
Absolutely. I believe with a shift in your perspective and expectations, universities are still one of the best places to better yourself, and increase your opportunities. But if you’re just focused on earning a degree, you’ll miss the true value of the experience.
Imagine for a moment graduating with a source of income that can’t be taken away by a boss. Instead of sending your resume to dozens of employers without receiving a response, jobs are being offered to you and you get to be the one who filters through them. Instead of taking a low-paying job that bores you and wastes your talent, you are doing work that you love and are abundantly rewarded for it. Instead of taking orders from an angry boss you are the one who makes decisions. You set your own schedule.
That’s a great picture, right?
You might be thinking “Ok, I get it, it’s a good time to start a business. But why while I am in school? I am busy enough as it is.”
Starting a business is a process of self-discovery and self-development that can dramatically improve your experience at your university. Here are nine reasons why starting a business before you graduate could be the best thing you do for your academic career:
1. It’s a chance to discover and follow your passion:
You need time to practice with different interests, skills and relationships to figure out what it really is you want. You don’t have to wait until you graduate to do this. Starting a business will give you the chance to experiment with all of these things and test them in the real world.
Instead of just following the same script of “work hard, get good grades” and hoping for the best, a business will teach you what is truly valuable, and will reward you for it. Experimenting with your business while in university will help point you to the key skills that will make a difference in your business and your life.
2. You have advantages as a student that will disappear once you graduate
Students have certain resources and advantages both on and off campus that make starting a business and growing your network easier. People are open to students with a desire to learn and will be more likely to help you. You have resources to bring interesting people to your university to speak.
A university is also one of the easiest places to meet like-minds. Whatever you’re passionate about, it’s almost a certainty that there are many more students on campus who resonate with your passion. You can build teams, collaborate and experiment together.
3. Time is your most valuable resource
You’ll never be younger than you are now, and you’ll never have more time than you do today. Starting early while the risks are lower will allow you to build a foundation of skills and relationships that will pay off in the long run.
4. You will learn to become a leader
Leadership is hard to find and harder to teach. Leadership is not simply bossing others around and delegating tasks. Leadership is inspiring others to be better; it is being vulnerable and sharing your ideas and perspectives even when unpopular. It is being an example who others can look up to and model themselves after. Leadership is being able to see the best in others and to find ways to bring it out.
Starting a business forces you into a role where you are actively cultivating leadership with everything you do. Even if you do not have any other team members, you practice leadership with your customers and the people you interact with. You experiment with projects and whether you succeed or fail, you learn from the results. You take responsibility for helping a group of people, and take pride in the value you can add to their lives.
5. You will learn and adapt quickly
Starting a business will force you to take many risks and chances. Whether or not you fail or succeed in these risks is less important than your attitude towards them. Learning from whatever results you get and applying those learnings in a helpful way will lead to success.
Growing a business requires a broad set of skills; many of these skills are evolving and changing constantly. As you constantly challenge yourself to develop new skills, you will discover your own learning process and find ways to pick up new information quickly.
6. You will learn how to build trust and gain attention
As an entrepreneur, your competitive advantage will be the trust and attention you build and cultivate with your audience and customers. It will be the story you tell that inspires and engages people. As you learn what interests them and what their problems are, you’ll be able to find more ways to help them and connect with the people around you. Learning to capture the attention of the people you want to help and build trust with them will be one of the most influential and powerful skills you will ever learn.
7. It is a source of freedom
I have seen too many brilliant graduates settle for uninspiring jobs after they graduate. They give up more than they realize. They trade away precious time, energy, and some of the most valuable years of their life to a job that makes them feel sick inside. Settling for that job closes the door to other opportunities, because they stop looking for them.
With a business up-and-running before you graduate, you won’t need to settle for a job you dislike. If your business is providing you with a steady income, you may decide that working for someone else is not something you want. With the entrepreneurial skillset you develop while building your business you may never have to rely on others for a steady income ever again.
8. It leads to better job opportunities
If you decide you do want to work for someone else, having a business is one of the greatest resume builders out there. It proves you can take initiative, get results and solve problems.
Starting a business gives you something solid and tangible to show employers when you graduate. They will consider you for more competitive posi
tions in leadership and management. This means better pay, more respect, and more interesting work.
On his blog post called “No Direction Home” Seth Godin discusses the key to success in job market:
“The thing is, whether you’re a newly graduating senior (in hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt) or a middle-aged, experienced knowledge worker looking for a new job, what the best gigs want to know is:
Can you show me a history of generous, talented, extraordinary side projects?
Have you ever been so passionate about your work that you’ve gone in through the side door?
Are you an expert at something that actually generates value?
Have you connected with leaders in the field in moments when you weren’t actually looking for a job?
Does your reputation speak for itself?
Where online can I see the trail of magic you regularly create?“
Your business can be all of the things that Seth listed above. It will make you interesting. It will be the source of your stellar recommendation letters; it will be hard evidence that you can get results. This will not only lead to more job opportunities, but high quality opportunities and a higher starting salary.
9. You’ll build a powerful network
For better or worse, the common saying “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know” is very true, and much of your success in life will be based on building meaningful connections and relationships. Every big leap forward or big opportunity in my life has come with help from someone who has known and trusted me.
You want to start as soon as possible, because a good network takes time to build. You need to grow valuable relationships over a span of months and years. Starting early will help ensure that you have the connections and relationships developed that will be key in helping you land the next big opportunity.
Starting a business before you graduate will also build your network in places that most students don’t get exposure. You’ll start interacting with influencers in industry, local business owners in your city, and thought leaders around the world. These are the kind of connections that will lead to better results when you graduate.