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CollegeEntrepreneur #StartingABusiness #Challenges #Inspiration
Hey there! ๐ Thinking of dipping your toes into the world of entrepreneurship while in college? I feel you! It can be quite intimidating but also incredibly rewarding. If you’re looking for some insights and inspiration from those who have been there, here are a few tips based on my own experience and observations:
- Identify your passion: What are you good at? What do you enjoy doing? Finding something you’re passionate about will make the journey more fulfilling.
- Start small: You don’t need to launch a big, complex business right off the bat. Start with something manageable and scale up as you gain experience.
- Utilize campus resources: Many colleges offer resources and support for budding entrepreneurs. Make use of them to your advantage.
- Network: Connect with fellow students, professors, and professionals in your field. You never know who might offer valuable advice or support.
- Learn from failure: Entrepreneurship is all about taking risks. Don’t be discouraged by setbacks; use them as learning opportunities.
So, how did you become an #entrepreneur in college? Share your story and let’s inspire each other! ๐โจ
It’s will of fire inside you
I just found a needed and started providing.
Selling drugs in college was fun
I started a woodworking biz in college. I worked for a cabinet maker and any money I made I bought my own tools. After saving up and buying a big new saw, I used my spring break to do a large project that made all my money back (and more). I rented a house with a garage and just did word of mouth marketing so I had no overhead. Bought more tools with profits. Etc.ย
Pressure Washing is easy to get into. I net like $1500-$3000 a month. PM me if u need help getting started
Oh that’s easy, I didn’t go to college
When you have a good idea and enough passion. You will just get it going. Baby steps. Selling 1 product at a time and the investors and the rest will follow.
Depending on what your skillsets are, freelancing on upwork or fiverr. Set your prices low though. It’s hard to compete on there, especially if you’re new.
I started programming way before I was studying for it and by the time I was, it had already turned itself into a fully-fledged business. Never looked back ๐
I graduated last month and I can only speak for myself and my situation.
I was privileged to have all of my college paid off by my parents. They had been saving since I was born and were ready to pay off tuition and expenses. My cost of college was 24k/year at around 100k total.
In the beginning you might feel like you have a mental safety net. After all, you got the next 4 years ahead of you to switch majors if you don’t like your current one, and go to clubs, make friends, muck around! But soon something happens and you start to value your time more. It might be the fear of what happens after college, it might be a breakup with your long distance girlfriend, it might be that you’ve acknowledged that hundreds of dollars are being spent every day for you to be there.
My friends and I pursued the development of our products out of passion for the problems we hoped to solve, but only few were willing to take the mental step to consider what we were doing as entrepreneurial endeavors.
Once you do that, you have to be really serious; work hard, fail fast, persevere even when you’re wrong 30 times in a row; work all the time because this is THE BEST time to try. You have to love the process. It gets magnitudes harder after college.
So…find people around you who are serious about entrepreneurship. Get in contact with your university’s entrepreneurship/business departments and show up regularly. Don’t be stubborn staying as a non-tech founder in college just because computer science isn’t your major. Reach out to people for help. Leverage your university email to email ANYONE – your university is a recognizable brand… your name isn’t yet. Are you an introvert? Business doesn’t care, you better learn how to sell and talk to users.
If you’re really passionate, you’re going to be obsessed and people are going to tell you to find balance.
This is the time you have the least responsibilities, so give them to yourself!
Don’t go to college. Profit >>>>
College is and was the best time to start a business.ย
No kids, marriage, or mortgage.ย
I did a coaching business and then transitioned to a content creation business.ย
I will say college is a weird place because most people your age will not relate to you. And all the entrepreneurship clubs usually are creating startups that end up focusing way too much on creating a perfect pitch to get funding from a VC rather than building a business.ย
My advice?ย
Solve problems and ship them out as fast as possible.ย
You donโt need a website or an app that people will not look to.ย
It could be as simple as a form, email list, or straight up DM conversations. I remember having a 17k cash month and all the leads came from DMing and cold outreach.ย
Donโt get to hang up on creating the best idea. Even if itโs a shitty idea, but it solves a problem, still go for it.ย
Readย
Fastlane millionaireย
Copywriting secretsย
Dot com secretsย
100M offersย
And youโll be more ahead than people whoโve been in business for years.ย
Donโt be afraid to experiment, fail, and pivot. College is the best time to do it.ย
p.s. if you found this advice helpful you might like my newsletter in bio.ย
I never went to college. In fact, I was a high school dropout that was earning more than my mother in my first year of business as a walk-in employee. And she was in a junior executive program with Ross Perot. Not him, his company.
It didnโt take me long to screw that one up. And at her suggestion, I returned and finished high school because I lacked half a credit of extra curricular activity when I dropped out.
The sad part is high school only had me going half days for two years while I was in high school and I managed to not complete half a credit of extracurricular activity .
Doing people’s assignments was fun always.
I was doing car detailing until COVID hit. Got good and quick. Decent buck. People are willing to pay extra for good work.
I ended up quitting once COVID hit because everyone and their mommas was scared of people in their cars lol.
Still do it sometimes but only as a gift lol. My cousin doesnโt want anything on his birthday except for a good car detailing. Changes lives no lie.
For me I started a little design-animation studio. After 2 years I invested my savings on equipment and one 1 year before graduating I started a small agency for content creators by mistake. Sometimes I had to skipped classes and my grades went down, but in the end it all payed off.
I think it was a combination of grit, stubbornness and wanting to make money for myself so I could enjoy my 20s. Iโm currently 30 and still learning a lot. It just never ends and the path always changes.
Cutting hair, $10 per person x ~8 a week (4 Fri and 4 Sat) gave me an extra $320 a month
If you know how to make basic web apps, which is very easy to learn with Chatgpt these days, I say just make something (anything) that can be useful to any student at all. Then, do as much manual marketing in your school as possible. Normal people outside of college don’t have the same access you have to college students. Such as putting posters/flyers in bathrooms (this actually works), and just telling people to try out your product. Whether it’s software or not, I think it’s best to just work on cool things with like-minded friends, and forgo any of the “entrepreneurship programs” or “entrepreneurship classes” that are often useless. The challenges are honestly not getting distracted, and just commitment to your project for a sustained period of time.
same here. I want to start selling what i learnt from classes but i donโt know if i am authentic enough to do so as i am just a student.
I know there are some people lying about they helped growing XX figure business, trying to be more authentic and trustworthy. But if i do the same, how should i proof myself when someone ask for evidence?