Becoming an entrepreneur and starting your own business is very exciting. The market is perfect for new businesses to thrive and existing ones to grow exponentially. Market growth isn’t the only thing you can exploit; there are more options when it comes to producing your products, bringing them to the right target customers, and generating revenue streams.
Making that initial decision to start a company, however, is not the end of the journey – far from it. There are a lot of challenges to face, particularly on the business side of things. 6 out of 10 new businesses stop operating within the first year, not because their products and services are not good enough, but because they fail to tackle business challenges.
Earning a business and management degree such as one in business and management can be a viable solution to consider if you are an entrepreneur and you want to strengthen your business skills. There are a lot of programs to choose from and even more benefits to gain. There are several reasons why every entrepreneur should consider a business and management degree. Read on to find out more.
It’s Online!
You don’t have to give up being an entrepreneur to return to school. Sure, you can be flexible with your time and run your business in between classes, but going to a brick and mortar university is no longer the only option.
Online courses from reputable universities like Aston University Online are far more appealing. They are conducted entirely online but under the same strict guidelines of their offline counterparts. You also get qualified lecturers and practitioners delivering courses.
With online programs, however, you can be even more flexible with your time. As long as you can allocate one or two hours a day for studying, you can acquire the skills you need to become a better entrepreneur and earn an MSc Business & Management degree in as little as 15 months.
There’s an added bonus: online courses are up to 40% more affordable than the equivalent offline programs. You can earn the same MSc degree and pick up the same set of skills – if not better, due to the updated curriculum of online programs – without spending a fortune.
Getting started with an online MSc program is easy. You just have to follow a few simple steps:
- Find a suitable course to take. Don’t hesitate to take your time and compare courses before deciding to enroll. Make sure the course is provided by reputable names and that the program is fully accredited.
- Read the curriculum. You want to know the classes you can take and the kind of skills you can pick up along the way before you choose to enroll in the program.
- Meet the requirements. Most MSc and MBA programs are not designed with complicated requirements. As long as you have a bachelor’s degree and you can keep up with the course, you should be able to enroll without a problem.
- Sign up for the program. The next part is actually signing up for the program, which involves submitting supporting documents and paying for the course.
- Start studying. That’s it! Once the semester starts, you can begin taking online classes. Make sure you familiarise yourself with the online learning platform before you start the course.
At this point, you are ready to pursue your MSc degree and pick up new skills to help you succeed as an entrepreneur.
Expanded Network
As mentioned before, even online courses have real interactions. You can communicate with lecturers, attend virtual classes, see streams of lectures, and communicate with fellow students. There will still be group assignments in some cases too.
Pursuing a business and management degree gives you the perfect opportunity to expand your network. Aside from students who are fresh out of undergraduate school, there are also a lot of professionals, entrepreneurs, and seniors with plenty of experience that you can meet.
Not expanding your network when pursuing an MSc in Business & Management is a huge mistake. You never know the kind of opportunity you can come across when you start communicating with fellow students. There have been a lot of stories about start-up founders who met their partners in classes.
Lecturers, on the other hand, are mostly industry experts and leaders. Connecting with them will open new doors of opportunities. You can work together with lecturers on projects, find mentors to guide you through the ups and downs of running a business, and even connect with potential investors.
New Skills to Master
Programs like an MSc Business & Management course are filled with classes that let you expand your business management horizon. You will not just learn about the basics of business management; Master’s degree programs from reputable universities are designed to help you master specific subjects.
Classes on social media marketing (or digital marketing as a whole) and supply chain management are just as easy to find. Most business and management programs let you choose your focus as you go along, offering classes on those majors for you to take.
New skills such as financial management and pricing, for example, will certainly help you organise your products and business operations better. Other skills like marketing and communications let you reach more potential customers over a shorter period of time.
Other skills to master include:
- Project management, which helps you organise tasks within the company’s projects, manage resource usage, and keep the business running optimally at all times
- Accounting, which allows you to see how the company is doing without having to wait for monthly reports or relying on employees to supply you with the information
- Environmental management, which is important if you want your business to remain friendly to the environment
- Human resource management, a crucial skill to have if you want to build a strong team or have a business with a positive corporate culture
- Digital marketing management, a skill that allows you to leverage digital marketing instruments to reach thousands of potential customers.
These skills are certainly worth mastering. They don’t just make you a better entrepreneur but are also crucial to the success of your business.
Gain Trust and Credibility
As an added bonus, earning an MSc degree gives you credibility as an entrepreneur. There two reasons for this. First of all, an MSc degree is still one of the most valuable degrees on the market. Professionals pursue MSc degrees to push their careers forward. For an entrepreneur to earn this degree is seen as a huge plus.
Next, the course allows you to have the skills to run a business and become successful, and that boosts confidence. Others will respect this fact too. Investors, for instance, are more confident when founders of a business – or at least one of them – holds an MSc degree. The degree itself gives you a boost in credibility.
There is also the personal branding side of earning a master’s degree in business and management. Adding the title MSc to your name is always good for your personal branding. You can position yourself as an expert in your industry. After all, you don’t just know the theories but have implemented them in your own business.
Different Perspectives
Speaking of theories, management is a fluid field and industries on the market are changing rapidly. Earning an MSc or an MBA is a fantastic way to gain new perspectives when it comes to how you should run your business. As mentioned before, there are countless theories on business management, and being able to learn more about them is a huge plus.
When you do run into issues with your business, you are not limited to the potential solution that you know. You have the knowledge and skills to view the issue from different angles and then decide on a solution that gives you the most win. The business benefits from this process and you are now in a position to really take it to success.
Different perspectives and reference to theories are also handy when you want to earn higher buy-ins from certain stakeholders. When talking to your engineering team, being able to present the logic behind a decision – and the theories you use to come up with that decision – is still seen as a positive way to communicate. You can only do that when you widen your horizon as you complete the course.
Better Decision-Making
Last but certainly not least, taking a business and management course sharpens your decision-making ability. You are training yourself not only to look at an issue from different perspectives but also to consider facts and data in the process. Data-driven decision-making is an approach that gets reinforced along with most MSc and MBA programs.
At the end of the course, you should be able to build a data framework for a more thorough analysis. Thanks to that data, all of your decisions are made based on a complete understanding of the situation. Even better, the decisions will be made quickly, since you already have the data and insights needed to make them.
These are some of the reasons why every entrepreneur should consider a business and management degree. Now that the best MSc Business & Management programs are available as a distance learning option, there is no reason why you shouldn’t enroll today.
