Becoming your own boss and not having to answer to anyone else is a dream for many, yet not all of us achieve this dream. The reasons behind this can vary. You may not have the knowledge or funds to start your own company, or perhaps the risks outweigh the benefits, and you have other responsibilities to consider such as the wellbeing of your family. Entrepreneurship is not for everyone, but if you have the chance to start your own business, it should not be an opportunity you pass up.
One way to improve your entrepreneurship skills and increase the success rate of your own business is to study and earn an MBA. Not only can an MBA help students and business professionals expand their skill set, but it can also help you advance your career. With the extra knowledge of an MBA, you can gain an extra understanding of business finances, best business practices, and how to create a detailed business plan that impresses and brings in investors, and increases your business’s success rate.
There are many benefits of studying for an MBA. However, you will also need to consider how you will study for your MBA as well as the subject of your MBA. Need help deciding whether an MBA is worth your time and money and which MBA is best suited for you? Here’s our useful guide that will point you in the right direction.
The Benefits of an MBA
Not only does studying for and attaining an MBA show a commitment to learn and improve your skills, but you will gain a broader understanding of the world of business and the world as a whole. You may also benefit from improved confidence due to the knowledge and extra wealth of information you have learned from your studies.
Awareness of Global Market
An MBA will typically use multiple real life case studies to explain the best business practices as well as why you should avoid certain methods. These case studies will come from various places, giving you a global scope of the business world. You may study the rise and downfall of a car company in Japan or how a restaurant beat the odds in Italy because of the specific business model they chose.
Furthermore, MBAs will bring in students from across the globe, allowing you to have close contact with exchange and international students. Striking a friendship with one another and passing knowledge on to one another can make you a more well-rounded business professional. You may also have the luxury of learning from a seasoned business professional and entrepreneur who wishes to pass on their wisdom.
Communication Skills
Business professionals will need to have impeccable communication skills if they wish to succeed. This soft skill can help entrepreneurs throughout their professional lives, assisting them in presenting their business model and plan to potential investors and business partners and securing the investment needed for their business to open their physical or virtual doors. Luckily, an MBA can help you develop such a valuable soft skill.
Good communication will make you more confident when presenting your business idea and plan. It can assist you in securing funding (which we have already mentioned), but it can also aid you in managing your teams and leading employees to success. Poor communication skills leave room for mistakes to be made and frustrations to appear through miscommunication.
As an entrepreneur, you will want to:
- Learn to listen
- Be concise
- Be confident
- Raise morale
- Defuse stress amongst employees
- Recognize non-verbal cues such as body language
Mastering the art of communication can help secure investment, but it’ll also help you to manage your business once it is up and running. As a business owner, employees and team leaders will be looking to you for direction. Be sure you know how to direct them and offer support properly.
Time Management Skills
Entrepreneurs will have a lot on their plate. They will be juggling multiple tasks in their efforts of putting together a feasible and attractive business plan, but once they have their business up and running, they will also need to know how to manage their time as well as the time of their employees.
Not only does an MBA help you improve your time management skills because of the course’s nature (you will have many courses, modules and extracurricular activities to complete), but professors will also provide you with coping mechanisms and how you can create an accurate to-do list and stick to it.
Networking
You will not be the only aspiring entrepreneur or business professional studying for an MBA. In fact, you will be surrounded by many like minded individuals who have the same aspirations as you. Rather than consider them as arch-rivals, consider them as potential partnerships or friendly competition. You never know, you could form a partnership with a like minded business professional and become co-founders of the next up-and-coming startup that is about to take the world by storm. What’s more, professors may also be able to offer you contact information with a potential mentor or investor if they believe in your business plan. This could be the big break your startup needs.
Choosing the Right MBA for You
With so many MBAs available, deciding which one is right for you can be a challenge in itself. Not only do you have to decide on the school, or whether you are going to study a general MBA or specialize in a certain subject, but you may also need to consider whether you would benefit from online study or a more traditional setting.
Online or Offline Study
Both have benefits, but online study offers aspiring entrepreneurs flexibility and cheaper tuition fees. It also eliminates the need to travel to and from classes as you can login at home and access course materials and watch webinars and lectures from the comfort of your home. Online study is also ideal for business professionals who already have a job but wish to return to school, but also those who may have a family to look after too. While you will need to have impeccable time management skills and hold yourself accountable, if you can remain organized, online study can be an enjoyable and knowledgeable experience for anyone wanting to brush up on their business skills.
General MBA or Concentrated MBA?
When deciding to study an MBA, you will want to determine whether you should go for a general MBA or a concentrated MBA that has one main area of focus. The benefits of studying a concentrated MBA program are that you will gain a deeper understanding of one specific area of business. This can be effective if you want to improve one specific skill, such as business intelligence or finance. There are also numerous entrepreneurship MBAs for ambitious entrepreneurs who want a more focused education experience.
Common Concentrated MBAs
Here are a few of the most common concentrated MBAs business professionals choose to study:
Accounting
MBAs with a focus on accounting will teach students how to prepare, read and utilize financial statements, how to create budgets and, most importantly, how to stick to them. This is ideal for business professionals who need to improve their financial skills.
Strategy
Do you need to have a greater knowledge on how to understand and manage shifting global markets? If your business idea has an emphasis on going global, then learning how the global markets could impact your business and how you can stop dilemmas or utilize global opportunities can be advantageous.
Entrepreneurship
As an entrepreneur, your goal is to have a successful business. Therefore, an MBA that focuses on entrepreneurship sounds ideal. Most curriculums will see you studying successful and unsuccessful case studies and gaining experience from their mistakes and good business decisions. You will also learn how to write business proposals, create a detailed business plan, build a team of talented individuals, lead a team and secure the funding you need. You will also learn how to continue running a successful business.
Operations
Learning the operations of a successful business can give you valuable insight when it comes to learning how to start your own lucrative business. An MBA in operations will teach you how to turn inputs into outputs that are beneficial for the company. You will learn how to streamline operations as well as manage teams and ensure they are all working to the best of their ability.
There are numerous concentrated MBAs for you to choose from, all of which would benefit you in your road to building your own successful startup. For more information on which MBA is right for you, click here.
An MBA can help you become a better business professional. You can improve both hard and soft skills and focus on a specific area to improve that is beneficial to starting your own business. Learn from professors and professionals who have first-hand experience and return to education to build on your existing skill set for greater business success.