Is there any life after death? Is there any professional development for a small business entrepreneur after becoming an entrepreneur?
For the first question, it depends. Buddhists say there is, but most of everybody else say there isn’t. And not sure at all about the second.
Let’s first assume that before being an entrepreneur you had a professional life, being a marketer, sales, engineer or anything else (I’m not talking about the young entrepreneurs that become millionaires without having a previous job on purpose, because I’m yet to understand how this works. Besides, it makes me to feel old.) So you had at least some sort of professional development and career – for sure you learned stuff that belongs to your job along the way.
Problem is that as soon as you become an entrepreneur, you get a completely new job, that of being an entrepreneur. And while there are schools that learn you how to run a business, and there is a job for this (being a CEO), there aren’t really any schools teaching you to be entrepreneurs, and entrepreneurship is not listed as a job in any country (as far as I know).
But as unlikely as it sounds, being an entrepreneur is a job. You are in the job of making things to work and turn a profit. And as the time goes by, you get better at it (although sometimes path to success goes through failure). It sounds like a job, and it is a job, just that is different from any other jobs.
Now, you used to be a marketer, an engineer or anything else, and your job was to promote, sell or manufacture products or services. It’s quite obvious that you can evolve on these fields. Trouble is with the “entrepreneurship job” that in most cases you are required to know a bit of everything. But can you have a professional development in a “bit of everything”? And is there a next better position in entrepreneurship? Not to mention, that by the time you are reading this post, if you are an entrepreneur you don’t really do your marketing, sales or engineer job that you previously had.
Ok, so you might say that there is nothing stopping an entrepreneur becoming better in their core abilities (marketing, sales or manufacturing). I have to agree that yes, you can still improve your skills, and do better what you already did good in these fields.
But there is one fundamental thing in professional development, that (being an entrepreneur) you should question yourself if it makes sense to work towards. Usually at least a part of the trainings and improvements of an employee have the goal to fill in empty spaces and make improvements in the weak spots.
But should you, as an entrepreneur work, spend money and time to improve your weak spots? Or the entrepreneurship essence itself is to find the most efficient way of dealing with the issue and simply outsource or hire someone while you focus on building the business? Of course, that if your weak spot is at business level (i.e. having problems communicating with the employees) you should work toward improving your skills. But if you come let’s say from marketing and your company does software, is there really a need to learn how to code? After all, a bit of coding and technical expertise will really help you market the products better.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t feel right about life after death. It might smell nasty and you might have some missing parts (yesterday I’ve watched about 10 minutes from an un-dead type of movie). But where is the line between knowing a bit of everything and professional development? Can I get to be a “professional entrepreneur”?
