One of the greatest benefits of finishing university or college is that you walk away proud and armed with a new skill set, newly qualified and capable of filling a particular role in that field, but what you’ll come to find is that you are limited in your ability to actually turn that skill into starting a business.
With that new qualification, whether it’s in law, design, coding or whatever you spent the time, effort and resources on, starting a business around that skill will bring about a whole new set of learning that needs to be undertaken in order to succeed in it.
When I talk about this to clients, I use the imagery of the letter ‘T’, where you’re given a horizontal and vertical line that represents your current capability (the vertical line) and the new skills required to become a great entrepreneur (the horizontal line).
Thicken Your Horizontal Line To Become The Best Entrepreneur, Possible
By taking a look at that ‘T’ shape, you’ll come to find that the vertical line starts out longer and more prominent than the horizontal; this represents the expertise that you’ve acquired in your studies and it’s up to you to either thicken or lengthen it, or begin working on the knowledge required to actually start and successfully run a business.
If your plan is to strengthen the vertical line, then you will end up paying more attention and giving more time to developing the profession that you chose to study. As you strengthen this line, your experience and ability in providing that service or skill will be of better use to those that need that role filled.
This motivation to keep developing that skill is indicative of a great employee and when searching for people to fill a particular role in your business, that’s exactly a trait that you would want in an ideal candidate.
As that vertical line gets thicker and longer, your horizontal line remains small and diminishes in size. This is perfectly fine if you want to be a great addition to a company and become an expert and achieve mastery in that field, but doesn’t work very well if your goal or plan is to become an entrepreneur and start a business.
If your quest or objective is to start and run a successful business, then you need to pay far more attention to the horizontal line and start developing knowledge in other fields.
As I’ve mentioned, you walk away from your studies qualified to fill a role and without the knowledge required to turn that qualification into an actual business. Running a business requires far more knowledge in a variety of fields, such as accounting, HR, sales, marketing, business strategy and far more than what you gained in your studies.
By taking the time and effort to thicken the horizontal line, you begin to focus on the peripheral skills needed to operate a business – which is necessary to achieve success.
Spend Less Time On Your Vertical Line
If your aim is to start a business around your skill, or any other skill for that matter, you need to learn to focus on the other aspects that a business requires to be successful.
To achieve more, you need to begin educating yourself on the other fundamental pieces that make up a business and become multi-faceted in your abilities and expertise to understand the symbiotic relationships and processes that are present in the operation of one.
Even though you’ll have to come to terms with neglecting your vertical line, you produce the effort required to develop new areas that will ultimately enhance your identity and character – leaving you far more aware and knowledgeable around company operations and culture.
It will be far more difficult to run a company on just the basic skill that you’ve acquired, so exercising your ability to thicken out and lengthen your horizontal line is of the utmost importance in building, managing and structuring the business that you aim to create.
I recommend focusing on these other necessary requirements to make your horizontal line stand out and that doesn’t exactly mean that you should neglect your current skill or profession; you just spend less energy on enhancing that which you know and more on that which you don’t.
Being an entrepreneur isn’t the easiest thing to do, but by focusing on the right things you’ll take yourself much further than attempting to do it with just that qualification in your field.
So thicken up that horizontal line, get to learning and improve your knowledge on the many factors that will come with understanding the business you want to run. Your journey only begins once you acquire the skill and although it’s challenging, you’ll thank me later.
Or! You can thank me now and begin thickening out that horizontal line with a business coach which has the experience, knowledge, shortcuts and expertise to get you on track faster than going at it alone.
If you’re planning on starting a business and don’t quite know where to begin or have a vague idea of what needs to be done; I can be of great assistance to you.
Let me in and let me advise you on the steps to take to speed up that process. You can call me, text me or email me – I’m always happy to help.
+2783 253 3339
