5 Must-Take University Courses for Entrepreneurs!

What should entrepreneurs study in university? So I got a great question from my YouTube viewers, love you guys, Tassimo, who wrote in to say, hi Evan, I watch your videos on a daily basis. As a matter of fact, I have 2 of your videos as my morning routine. Thank you, Tassimo. Thanks a lot for your work, is life-changing. I would like to ask your help. I'm applying for college these days, but I'm really suffering to decide what to study in college as an entrepreneur. I don't want to end up as a professional after graduation? In other words, what do you think entrepreneurs ought to study in universities that would be helpful on the entrepreneurial process? Thanks, Tassimo. This is a fantastic question and one that I feel personally connected to because I had my first real success out of a business that I started when I was in university. So I usually give 3 steps, but today I'm giving you 5 steps on what to do, and I hope that it helps you on your journey. Number 1 is small business classes. You want to take whatever small business classes they have at your university, and there may be a whole program around it, or may just be one class. I remember at my university, I went to University of Toronto, which is one of the— probably the most well-known university in Canada and, and pretty well known around the world, and they had one class in entrepreneurship. That's all they had. So I took that and And it was honestly a little too simple. I'd already started my business and I was learning way more from doing and being in my business than that class. But it's still helpful to have the basics, right? If you have no background, you've never done anything around entrepreneurship before, it's helpful to have some of the basics and whatever classes they have there can help teach you. The side benefit of it is you're also in a group, right? The people who you're in that class with of others who wanna be entrepreneurs too or who have inclines to become entrepreneurs. And so you may make some great contacts, great connections, great business partners by going to the classes that are around entrepreneurship. And my first business was at a university. I was 19 years old, and it was with two other students who are at the same university as I was. And that's how we created the company that eventually I built up and sold. So take whatever classes they have around entrepreneurship. Number 2: Classes you're passionate about. Like anything else, if you want to have success, you have to be passionate about it. If you want to be a successful entrepreneur, then you need to be passionate about what you're doing. And so use your opportunity in university to learn about other subjects that have nothing to do with business, but that you're excited about, because you'll find some way to infuse business into it, and that could be your first mega success. One of my favorite examples here is Steve Jobs, who was the founder of Apple, and he dropped out of university so he could drop in on classes that dealt with typography and he was learning about fonts and how to, how to create characters that look beautiful because he was frustrated with the current fonts on computer systems. And when Apple first came out with its first computers, they had beautiful typography and fonts built in, and that was one of the differentiators, one of the reasons that people went to go use a Mac. And so he took this knowledge, you know, went to sit in on a typography class, and people would look at that from the outside and say, "What are you doing? Typography class? What does it have to do with entrepreneurship or starting your own business?" And he may not have even known at the time either, but he found a way to incorporate that passion of his into his business to help make him successful. So look at the roster of classes that are available. And see what speaks to you. It's okay if it has nothing to do with business. Maybe you're taking a history class or computer class or, or sports or whatever it is you're taking, something that you feel passionate about, you have an interest in, because believe me, that will come back to pay really strong dividends for you. You will find a way to incorporate that into your future business. Number 3: Entrepreneur groups. Most universities and colleges have an entrepreneur small business group It may be a consulting group, it may be, uh, helping entrepreneurs get started and giving them advice. Whatever it is, you wanna join it. And it does a couple things. One, it'll start giving you a little bit of experience. So if it's an entrepreneur consulting group, you can start working with entrepreneurs and it'll give you a little bit of a taste for what it's like, real-world experience instead of just out of a textbook. And it also, again, introduces you to more of the hardcore entrepreneurs because The people who are running and involved in those groups are more likely gonna be the people who don't wanna get a job afterwards and wanna go and launch their own business, and they're using this as testing ground. And so knowing those people will be really helpful because when you're out there in the world doing your own company and you're struggling, it's great to have a network of other entrepreneurs to talk to, connect with, share ideas, share resources, share connections to help each other grow. So look for whatever entrepreneur group is available and join it and get involved. Number 4: Start your own business. Start on the side. Do something right now. You don't have to wait for when you graduate to start something. Even if it's not the business you end up with, just start something now because you're going to learn so much more from doing, from the practical knowledge of running a business, than you're going to learn from a textbook or learning from a teacher who isn't really an entrepreneur. Right? They may have guest lecturers come in who are entrepreneurs and give advice, but your best learning is going to be from doing. So start something small now on the side, part-time, to start building up your knowledge base. And number 5 is create your own class. This isn't really well known, but in a lot of universities and colleges you can create your own class. You can create your own credit by working with one of the professors. And so what I did was I had my business And I wanted to work with a professor to create my own class, and I went to somebody in the marketing department, and we created a class about pricing. And basically what they do is they mentor you. You meet as often as you want to meet, as, as you set up with your professor. And at the end, you have to create a paper that you submit to them, and they grade it and give you a final mark. So you have no final exam. The coursework is a lot lighter because there is no coursework. It's whatever you decide, as long as you get the backing from one of the professors. So I created this course on pricing and I used it to support the business that I had, right? Look at— look back to step 4, start on the side. I had a business that was selling scientific software and some of our customers could be university labs. And so I was able to go into the labs at my university and ask them questions about pricing and learn about what they were doing, learn about their, their lab and their setup. And actually make a few sales, but I would never be allowed to go in and sell, but I could go in under a university-sponsored project to collect data and research because that's what I was doing for my coursework. So it teaches you how to run your own project, it gives you a little bit more project management skills, it allows you to pick a topic that you're passionate about, that you want to learn about. At that time, I wanted to really learn about pricing, and it may help the business that you've started as well by giving you some contacts and potentially some of your own new customers. So find a professor who you can connect with and create your own class with them. So to summarize the 5 steps: take small business classes, take classes that you're passionate about, join entrepreneur groups, start your own business, and create your own class. Believe. For those of you watching like the video, you can support me please by clicking on the link in the description below Leave a comment, let me know what you think, and click on my face to subscribe to the channel. Thank you so much. I'll see you soon.