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From a business perspective, school will help you learn a variety of skills that will prepare you for easy assimilation into the workplace. Computer skills, the ability to effectively network yourself, and a background with some technical work will all prove to be invaluable skills down the road.
However, there is a great amount of business knowledge that you simply cannot learn in an educational institution. Some lessons are simply learned the hard way, through trial and error.
Below, there are several tips that you will never learn in school. These tips are important for success in any business venture.
Creating Your Own Deadlines
School is certainly effective at teaching discipline. Students learn how to use their time effectively to meet the assignment deadlines that are imposed by professors. Unfortunately, as you move up in the business world, you may come to find that there is no one breathing deadlines down your neck.
Learning how to set and meet your own deadlines is essential to your success in the business world. In the real world, you might not always have a boss or a professor looking over your shoulder to make sure you meet specific deadlines.
As you move forward with your career, you will learn that the most effective deadlines are actually those that are self-imposed. Being aware of how you work and your ability to follow through on deadlines will help you set deadlines that are realistic and attainable.
This one was hard for me. I personally have always been a procrastinator. I use my intellect or mouth to get me out of jams and tight situations. All my life I have waited till the last minute. But in business this doesnt work. When you are late or miss things it hurts your credibility. It also sets a terrible example for those that depend on you as they will follow your lead. We had this problem at bullsonwallstreet for long time as my team took on my wild “everything will work itself out” personality and we took forever too do anything. For years I thought about putting together education, and a hedgefund all the things we have. Yet till 2 years ago our revenues were in the thousands not millions as I just could not stick to a schedule or properly delegate what I needed done. Once I put it on myself and took responsibility for my own output and in a timely manner as I promise our business took off and grew 10 fold in 1 year.
Effective Delegation
As you move into more dynamic roles in the workplace, or take on your own entrepreneurial venture, you may find yourself dealing with the expansion of your business. At some point, you are going to have to hire help.
Unfortunately, school often has a way of forcing us into mostly individual work. Even group projects are usually poorly facilitated and certain members tend to take a back seat to the more motivated individuals in the group. Individual work hurts our ability to quickly identify people and/or coworkers that we know we can work with. Being able to read into whom you can trust is essential to your eventual success in the business world.
Hiring individuals that you can trust goes a long way towards making you, as a manager, more comfortable delegating various tasks and assignments to your new hires. Paying attention to the skillsets, and fostering the learning of your employees will help you find an efficient and effective way to delegate tasks. This is huge. The first version of bullsonwallstreet I had a whole team of people and it just didnt work we were stagnant as our resources and people were scattered without proper direction. Once we were stagnant I took a step back and went solo doing everything myself building back up this company. I was the marketer, customer service, chatroom trader, salesman, educator everything. At this point I could only grow so much. Thats when I found maribeth in my chatroom. Coaching her up and teaching her everything I knew opened us up to so many possibilities as I just had duplicated myself. Not only did I teach her how to trade but also how to sell, how to teach, and how to run a business. Once I saw the potential of this duplication I literally carried a notebook everywhere I went and would write down all the people that impressed me. Peter who runs our hedgefund was my intern and then went on to run @sanglucci ‘s hedgefund and came up with the idea of Cliquefund. Spotting talent and then coaching them up and giving them the freedom to run their units allows us to scale this business into my vision. They each operate their own units with very little input from me. I spend my team coaching and mentoring them but rarely managing.
Work on Your Flexibility
With its rigid deadlines and often-immovable professors, school can actually make us extremely inflexible. We are cultured in a world where missing deadlines or turning in an unsatisfactory first draft of your work is severely scrutinized and punished.
This, in turn, tends to create individuals who find it hard to be flexible when they enter the business world. However, the business world does not operate under the same set of unflappable, inflexible rules that are so often enforced in schools.
Flexibility is actually crucial in the business world. Decisions are not made overnight. Often, it takes a good deal of time, even on your end, to effectively research your decisions in order to maximize your efforts. Remaining flexible will help you keep the door open to potential partnerships, explorations in diversifying your products and services, or any other circumstances that may arise in your career.
The ability to think on the run and change gears when the pressure is on is huge. I always tell my guys its not about talent as they are all talented folks. Its about being able to summon that talent at will. When you need to can you pivot and take things a new direction.
Overall, there are many small nuances about the business world that you will be able to pick up in school. However, until you really get your feet wet, there are many lessons that you will simply be unable to learn. Deadline management, effective delegation, and the ability to remain flexible are just a few lessons for success that you won’t learn in the classroom.
if you guys ever have any questions on anyting feel free to email myself kunal@bullson.ws or maribeth at maribeth@bullson.ws
