These days, going to university after school is the norm. This means that plenty of people study a subject that has no relevance to the career they end up in. If this sounds like you, don’t worry. Even if your academic pursuits weren’t relevant to your job, the university experience teaches you plenty of skills that you can transfer into your role as a business owner.
Communication skills
Communication skills are a necessary part of being an effective business owner. Regardless of what type of business you have, you will have to converse with people regularly. Even if you’re the only person in your business and don’t plan on hiring anyone, communication is still valuable. Communication skills can help you with everything, from customer service to creating engaging content for social media.
No matter what discipline you studied, you will have had to communicate effectively: whether written (through coursework and essays) or verbally (when working in a team to present). Without you knowing it, that group work prepared you to be an effective communicator.
Patience
Many people think that university is a place to learn to be a better entrepreneur. However, this might not be the case. You won’t necessarily gain entrepreneurial skills in university. What you do gain while in school, however, is patience.
University-level work takes time and patience to complete. You will often find yourself waiting for feedback or information from professors or other students before you can make your next move on a project or paper. University teaches you to focus on one thing at a time – concentrating on what needs to get done and then waiting for feedback before moving forward with the next step of your project or paper. This skill will serve you well as an entrepreneur as it can help you stay focused, handle delays more patiently, and stay motivated in the face of adversity.
Let’s also not forget the patience required to live in student accommodation!
Time management skills
Few people have a natural ability to manage their time effectively. If you’re one of these people, congratulations! You’re probably an efficient person, and that’s great. But for the majority of us, we need to learn how to manage our time better to be successful business owners. University can help.
Most courses will require you to work on projects over long periods, and this presents an opportunity for you to develop your time management skills. This will allow you to work smarter, not harder, and get more done in less time. Something as simple as breaking down your project into smaller tasks can make a big difference.
On the other hand, if you went to university, you’ve probably left a deadline right up to the last minute at least once. Working under pressure (as you had to then) is an essential skill for business owners. You can’t ever predict unexpected complications. So ensuring you can react quickly when things don’t go to plan is so important–and something you learnt how to do when you wrote an essay at lightning speed the night before the deadline!