My Entrepreneurial Journey, By Arian Magyar
Risk and How to Deal with It
Every Entrepreneur is taking a big leap of faith when opening their own business. Ultimately, you never know how your product/service will be received by its target audience. However, you can minimize the risk you are taking by putting your business model on a “road-test”. By researching your competitors; interviewing members of your target audience, and evaluating current and possibly future market trends, you can get valuable insight into not only the minds of your customers but also the market/industry you are dealing with. Careful preparation truly is the key to success and can prevent you from making unnecessary, costly, and nerve wracking mistakes. Being the passionate person that I am, it is hard for me not to get excited and fall in love with a business idea and consequently become a victim of building a business purely of assumptions. IF you are anything like me, take a deep breath, get objective feedback from a third party, and do whatever you can to minimize the risk involved. Other than that, I can only recommend accepting and embrace uncertainty – simply because there is no way around it.
Mentors, Advisors and You
As a student, you are lacking a lot of real-world experience that you simply can’t compensate with education. Whether you are planning to start a business or climbing the ladder as an employee, it is always great to have someone whom you can turn to when a problem arises that seems unsolvable with your capabilities or knowledge. Throughout my entrepreneurial journey here at CSUSB, I have had the pleasure of meeting a dozen of highly educated, experienced, and easy to talk to professionals who have offered to help guide me in hardships or who I could hit up with questions. Many of you are probably going to be thinking “Sounds great to me but where am I supposed to find them?” For starters, there are plenty of successful Entrepreneurs out there like Richard Branson who blogs almost daily and are thus really accessible through the click of a button. Looking for more of a one-on-one kind of relationship? Go online and look for networking events in your industry and you’ll be surprised by how open some folks are to the idea of mentoring you!
By Arian Magyar, CSUSB Entrepreneurship MBA Graduate