How Entrepreneurship Should Be Taught to Younger Generations - By: ken sundheim

I took one of my interns out to lunch today and during, he preceded to tell me what types of businesses students proposed opening during college and which ones he was impressed by. As he proceeded to go down the list, the ideas just got wackier and remained as unrealistic as they did immature. It's not a huge deal and entrepreneurship is about thinking and weighing business options as well as being fun, but where failure lurks in a business plan, professors need to be more candid that these plans will, ultimately not work (or have significant odds against the business owners).

Who's fault is it?

It's about 50 /50, 1/2 falling on the professors and the other 1/2 the students.

How should entrepreneurship be taught?

Entrepreneurship needs to be taught in a realistic sense based on if the entrepreneur can sell the product, not invent something and hope it goes gangbuster, thus selling itself. Therefore, when choosing a business, the aspiring entrepreneurs need to be confident that they can sell the product or service as well as determine who they are going to approach and what they are going to say once in contact with these targets.

An entrepreneurial concept must not be based on getting VC backing b/c the odds of that are so astronomically low and, when the aspiring entrepreneur does get their backing, the business is pretty much taken away from them because venture capital firms turn young entrepreneurs into employees.

The following should be touched upon:

1. Who you are going to sell to (not companies, but specific people or divisions within those companies).

2. How you are going to get to them (remember, the product is not going to do it for the young entrepreneur; the person must).

3. What is your pitch going to be.

When I first formulated my pitch for my company, I wrote it down hundreds of times, adjusting it as I would say it to the prospect as well as mull it over in my head. Without verbal communication, an idea, by definition simply remains an idea or a tree that fell in the forest only to prove it does not make a sound.

4. What type of visuals are going to be given to the prospects?

I am convinced that you can not be an entrepreneur unless you know how to program and formulate a website based on persuasion factors. Here's the problem.

You can have someone else program your site for you, but they are going to charge you more than it's worth and every time you want to update that site, you're in the hole for about $120.

*When I say cannot, I mean that there are exceptions, but they are so few and far between that you can't teach an entire class based on what 1 person (probably less on average) can pull off.

5. What type of written material is the young entrepreneur complimenting the above with?

After the majority of clients speak with a business owner, they want something tangible that they could go back and give to the decision maker. If poorly written, forget about how good #1-4 is; it won't work.
This is just a beginning, but I would approach teaching an entrepreneurship class as described above.

For one thing, you'd see a dramatic drop in the number of inflatable beer pong table companies.

About the Author

Ken Sundheim runs KAS Placement, an executive staffing firm that Ken started in 2005. Headhunters New York City Recruitment Agency Staffing Agency DC Recruiters DC Headhunters Philadelphia Headhunters Philadelphia Executive Recruiters Ken's articles have appeared in, among many others Forbes

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