In schools and mostly colleges, you have noticed some of your classmates doing something differently than what others are doing. They are evolving as a young entrepreneur. You will also find their personality and way of talking different from others.
Further, you will find their topic different on which they casually speak with their friends and other students. Also, you will find these classmates very hardworking and less distracted. This is due to their entrepreneurial nature.
Good news is that you can also pick up their line. Just you have to do the following steps as student in college. Go ahead and do it!
1. Figure out whether you really want to become young entrepreneur or not?
Why? Because you are not a student entrepreneur at this stage and if you don’t want to do it seriously don’t waste your time in it. If you are not interested in it. It doesn’t matter whether you succeed or fail. The most important thing is that you are able to enjoy doing it.
Make sure your motivation is originated from inside and not from outside factors. It might happen that somebody else came to your life and motivated you to become entrepreneur. If this happens, do self analysis. Check whether you are motivated further even though that person goes away from your life.
You need to step out of your comfort zone and prepare for leadership and marketing of yourself. This is because ultimately that’s what entrepreneurship is all about. Look out for a problem in your surroundings and think on it.
Try analyzing the methods to solve it and if you get the idea for solving it, share with your friends and family and research on it. Student Entrepreneurs are completely confident about themselves.
2. Find a mentor
Your school and colleges are surrounded with some flexible and enthusiastic mentors of different fields and traits which you are having for free. If you look outside your college, then you have to pay a lot of money for having a professional mentor.
The college professors are the most underrated mentors having a vast practical experience in their respective fields. If you are not able to get a mentor of the field in which you are interested, then ask whether they can suggest some other mentors of your field of interest.
3. Utilize the resources
You have paid for your Engineering College fees and it provides many facilities to you which can be beneficial for your coming startup. Colleges have legal licenses of many online journals like IEEE Xplore, ASME, Springer and online portals which you can access easily without any restrictions.
You can get better research material from these journals. Some colleges provide free WiFi, copy print services, labs etc. You can save a lot of money from this.
They have paid software tools like Creo, CATIA, MATLAB and many more which you can access freely and you may not afford on your own outside the college campus.
4. Connect with other students
Colleges and universities are the best multidisciplinary hub in which you get the people of different fields, interest and talents. You can share your business ideas with them and can find out which person is right for you and can satisfy your business need.
Most of the startup gets their best founding team from their school and colleges because the time you spend with them is enough to gain trust and loyalty. There will be some people you may find not useful now but they can be beneficial for you in future.
Therefore, as networking is most important part of the entrepreneurship you should be master of it.
5. Socialize with People Strongly
This is important as socializing will help in various things in your journey towards entrepreneurship. People will observe your work approach and give feedback. Observe those feedback carefully as they are a very good reference for your improvement.
Share something with them which is indirectly related to your business goals. They will give their opinion. They also might connect you with right people. Further, if you want to do market survey, they will be the first one to respond.
6. Beware of Jealous people who are demotivating you
You will encounter various people which will demotivate you or show jealousy towards you. Carefully identify those people and just ignore and stay away from them. Because not doing this will allow them to put a bunch of doubts in your mind. If this continues, then at one stage you will be forced to quit.
Be careful while maintaining relationships with people. Have a neutral and healthy relationship with normal people. While build deep relations with other businessmen and successful entrepreneurs. Because they are the ones who will not be jealous at any cost.
7. Find funding opportunities
Now a days, colleges and government are also focusing on the entrepreneurship and spending large amount of money on it. Collect all the possible information on it. Keep in touch with your scholarship officers and incubation officers to get the grants, concessions and facilities from the institute.
You can also directly apply for other government schemes directly if you are not getting any suitable help from the institute.
Hence read, go to events, conferences, networking groups on LinkedIn, Meetup, special interest groups on social media platforms like Facebook, WhatsApp, etc. Going to these events will expose you to new people, new ideas, and will give you a feel for how your local entrepreneurial ecosystem works.
10 years later you’ll still be reaping the benefits.
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