Expand Your Horizons As an entrepreneur, you need a range of skills to get the job done.
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There are a lot of things I still would like to do in this life,and a lot of things I wish I'd done while I was still incollege. Mostly, I wish I would have taken more time to exploreother areas of academia--science, for instance, and outdoorrecreation. There's still plenty I can do to explore thesethings, but I know I would have benefited from exposing myself tothem more while in college, where there are endless resources forany kind of academic and nonacademic pursuit a student wishes toinvestigate.
Whether you are in college already or preparing to attend, Iwould encourage you to think carefully about both your major andthe things you pursue while in college. If being an entrepreneur isyour ultimate goal, you would do well to expose yourself to as manydifferent activities--both academic and extracurricular--aspossible.
The reason I recommend this strategy is that entrepreneurshiprequires such a diverse range of skills that it can only help foryou to get involved with a diverse range of activities. When youare an entrepreneur, you're a salesperson, marketing expert,accountant, artist, writer, financial expert, tech guru and managerall at once. Of course you will be more of one thing than anotherbased on the type of business you want to start, but essentially ithelps to have skills in many different areas.
So while you are in college, remember that your major is not asimportant as the things you get out of your total collegeexperience. Get involved with campus clubs, offer to write anarticle for the school newspaper, learn some computer skills, get ajob in the campus bookstore to learn about managing money andkeeping records, take an art class--do whatever you can to get ataste of all different disciplines. At the same time, be sure tospecialize in something--you don't want to be a jack of alltrades and master of none.
When you start a business, you'll find yourself wearingdifferent hats day in and day out, depending on the circumstances.By taking the time while you're in college to expand yourhorizons--yes, your mother was right about that--you will know inan instant which hat is appropriate for which situation. Andyou'll wear that hat with confidence.
