Start a business: Make 10s -> 100s of millions, possibly billions.

[Rawtid]

Okay, now we are heading in the right direction.

There's a group of people on here actually saying "don't go to college, start your own business", which is bad advice. I don't advocate going to college one way or the other, college is not for everyone. But it is foolish to try to start a business without a solid foundation.

I don't think you "need" college in order to be a business person but some sort of education is necessary whether its formal or informal.

 

[Habit]

I don't think you "need" college in order to be a business person but some sort of education is necessary whether its formal or informal.

There are people who run a successful business and never went to college.

College is not for everyone, and it could be a waste of time for some people who can learn their craft and trade elsewhere, like a chef, IT/computer technician, singer/dancer, graphic designer, auto mechanic, etc...all these guys can open their own business and be very successful.

But I shake my head when someone says, "college is for suckas, start your own business so you can work for yourself." Because it makes starting your business seem like something you can do on a whim with no planning or preparation.

 

[Rawtid]

There are people who run a successful business and never went to college.

College is not for everyone, and it could be a waste of time for some people who can learn their craft and trade elsewhere, like a chef, IT/computer technician, singer/dancer, graphic designer, auto mechanic, etc...all these guys can open their own business and be very successful.

But I shake my head when someone says, "college is for suckas, start your own business so you can work for yourself." Because it makes starting your business seem like something you can do on a whim with no planning or preparation.

You need a plan in college as well, its just that college maps shyt out for you in the form of a curriculum sequence. Both starting a business and education require a great deal of money. Doing either without having direction isn't smart.

 

[J_rock]

This is a good scholarly article I read recently about the black/white gap in entrepreneurship. I'll drop some of the best parts and bold them. It's a long read and it's kind of technical, but it has some good info. I'll summarize the sections I quoted. Maybe it can add to the discussion a little bit.



This part basically goes over some of the conventional wisdom for why blacks and whites have different self-employment rates. The primary causes given are: educational attainment, lack of capital, discrimination in lending, and differences in having parents or family members that are self-employed (this is huge by the way).

Black-White Gap in Self-Employment in the U.S.: Do Cohort and Within Race Differences Exist?


It has been well documented in the literature that ethnicity matters in the determination of self-employment rates.1 In particular, African-American self-employment rates lag far behind those of White-Americans who are three times more likely to be self-employed. The documented causes of
low African-American self-employment include significant differences in demographic factors such as education, discrimination in lending, differences in financial capital, and disparities in generational transfers of human capital (i.e., having parents who were self-employed). However, after controlling
for all these factors in a regression analysis, the gap in self-employment remains.

For all the college haters out there, turns out you might have a point. College seems to play a weak role in whether or not you decide to become an entrepreneur. It probably plays a huge role in whether or not you're successful though. Don't believe the hype. Most business owners have some form of higher eduction.

In examining self-employment entry decision, Fairlie (1999) finds that graduation from college relative to dropping out of high school does increase the probability of self-employment more for Whites than for Blacks. However, the small size of the education coefficient in the logit regression indicates that education has a weak relationship with the self-employment entry decision.

Financial capital or asset levels and access to credit from financial institutions are probably the two major roadblocks you have to overcome as a black person. It helps if your family leaves you with some kind of inheritance as well. Whites have a big advantage in this area.

Bates (1987) shows that racial difference in financial capital has a significant impact on the racial patterns of business failure. In complementary research examining self-employment entry rates, Blau and Graham (1990) and Fairlie (1999) demonstrate that racial differences in financial asset levels provide an important contribution to the Black-White gap in self-employment entry rates. More recently, Blanchflower, Levine and Zimmerman (2003) show that lending practices by financial institutions appear to exacerbate Black-White differences in access to financial capital. They argue that in the case of start-ups, as well as existing small businesses, banks are the primary source of debt capital and this capital is more readily available to White entrepreneurs than to similarly situated Blacks. Evans and Leighton (1989) show that all else remaining equal, people with greater family assets are more likely to switch to self-employment. Blanchflower and Oswald (1998) also provide evidence of the impact of probability of self-employment depends positively upon whether the individual ever received an inheritance or gift.

Your industry matters too. Blacks tend to congregate in industries that have lower profit margins and thus less chance of success. But these industries require less startup capital and that's why they might be attractive to black entrepreneurs.

They argue that industry context heavily shapes the impact of owner resource endowments on small firm entry and exit (i.e., differences
in entry barriers typify different industry subgroups). They find that Blacks are more likely to exit low-barrier lines of business than similarly situated Whites. However, among highly educated Blacks the link between exit rates and race is weak for high barrier lines of small business. Fairlie and Myer
(2007) find that Black firms and White firms concentrate in different industries. Black firms tend to be under represented in construction, manufacturing, whole sale trade, agricultural services, finance, insurance, and real estate but, are more concentrated in transportation, communications, public utilities, and personal services. These industry differences are associated with worse outcomes among Black-owned firms.

Having a parent that's self-employed gives you a huge advantage, because you learn the skills necessary to run a business first hand. Plus you gain all the connections they have without having to build a network on your own. And a lot of times, you can inherit the business once your parents are gone or retired.

Generational transfer of human capital is another factor highlighted in the literature. Theoretically, one would expect a strong intergenerational link in self-employment given the transmission of informal business and/or managerial knowledge as well as the transfer of financial and real capital assets from one generation to the next. Lentz and Laband (1990) finds that 53% of a sample of self-employed proprietors from the National Federation of Independent Business had a self-employed parent. Fairlie and Robb (2007) finds that Black business owners are much less likely to have a self-employed family member than are White business owner. This
difference however, is important in explaining disparities in Black-White self-employment rates, but is unimportant in explaining racial disparities in profits, sales, and employment between Black- and White-owned businesses.

Interestingly, foreign born black immigrants are much more likely to try and become entrepreneurs than U.S born blacks even though they still face many of the same challenges when it comes to accessing resources and capital.

The results of the previous section confirm those found in the literature highlighting the Black-White self-employment gap. However, the literature suggests that immigrants pursue self-employment at a much higher rate than do Americans and in particular, have a much higher probability of self- employment than do African-Americans. Bogan and Darity (2008) using census data from 1910 to2000 are the first to document statistically that foreigners whether White, Asian, or Black have a higher probability of self-employment than do African-Americans. They also argue that foreigners generally have more access to resources than do African-Americans. While this may be true for immigrants from developed and newly developed countries such as South Korea and Taiwan, it is difficult to make such a claim for foreign Blacks, who generally immigrated from Africa and/or the Caribbean. There is little evidence pointing to significant resource accessibility for these groups.

To explain part of the reason why U.S born blacks don't try to become entrepreneurs as much as foreign born blacks, the authors propose that because of the psychological and emotional scars of slavery and years of discrimination and institutional bias, U.S born blacks might have ingrained in their minds that entrepreneurship is a losing effort. Also, the memory of past failures might also deter entrepreneurial drive as well as the fact that there are few examples of black commercial success in many communities.

These results raise important questions. Why would some African-Americans have a gap in self-employment and other do not? Second among those who have the gap why would the gap shrink significantly for younger cohorts? These questions are beyond the scope of this paper but Oyelere and Belton (2008) offers an institutional interpretation of these results. They argue that institutional history of African-Americans as it relates to self-employment as well as the information set derived from institutional experiences, interact in building an information stock which provides the foundation for African-American self-employment decisions. African-Americans with U.S. born parents have experienced several shocks that have impeded Black entrepreneurship and led to the failure of Black businesses. Hence, they share a unique information set unlike any other U.S. ethnic/racial group. When societal groups experience many negative shocks from institutional failures that seem to lead to more difficult entry into self-employment and/or a higher probability of failure upon entry, then over time this information becomes embedded in the information stock that is transmitted from one generation to the next. Even when the actual institutions that lead to self-employment failure and low success probabilities have disappeared, the stock of information remains and tends to impact perception, expectation of success, and self-employment entry decisions over the long-run.

Link to paper: ftp://repec.iza.org/dps/dp5071.pdf

 

[Swirv]

That's why I'm majoring in economics. fukk working for someone else for the rest of your life. I'm gonna work for a few years, get some experience and stack a little $ and after that I'm working for myself.

Skip school and use the $ as start up capital.

 

[Habit]

Skip school and use the $ as start up capital.

 

[feelosofer]

Skip school and use the $ as start up capital.

School and business ownership are not that far apart. School will give you not only a degree from which you can state your credentials but it will give you the opportunity to network and make some serious connections. I can assure you that I would not be 1/3 as successful I could be if it weren't for the connections I made in college, be it professors who pointed me in a certain direction or my fellow classmates who went on to their own successes and became a source of future clients or potential business partners. Even in these uncertain economic times higher education is as necessary, if not more so than it ever was, because even with certain certs, without that sheepskin, you are a tech at best in most cases.

 

[Swirv]

School and business ownership are not that far apart. School will give you not only a degree from which you can state your credentials but it will give you the opportunity to network and make some serious connections. I can assure you that I would not be 1/3 as successful I could be if it weren't for the connections I made in college, be it professors who pointed me in a certain direction or my fellow classmates who went on to their own successes and became a source of future clients or potential business partners. Even in these uncertain economic times higher education is as necessary, if not more so than it ever was, because even with certain certs, without that sheepskin, you are a tech at best in most cases.

If your not in school for one of the technical fields, then business & school are different. Valuable experience can only be obtained in the field. Besides networking what good is school for someone who will start a finance, transportation, real estate, or e-commerce endeavor? Having a degree looks great to banks but if you have some charisma and have an idea people can understand investors will beg you to take their $. Dont believe me ask Bernie Madoff.

School is just another investments that is slow to be profitable and its not airtight. You just dont need it in all cases.

 

[Mr Uncle Leroy]

history is past
future is tomorrow
success is now.

dont let old guard norms, mold what you can or can do...sure there is some disparity...as long as you overcome and use technology and are committed to a passionate and successful idea/business, anyone can have a thriving business...

 

[Enzo]

history is past
future is tomorrow
success is now.

dont let old guard norms, mold what you can or can do...sure there is some disparity...as long as you overcome and use technology and are committed to a passionate and successful idea/business, anyone can have a thriving business...

This is very true.

Fear of failure is probably everyone's biggest setback.

Have an airtight business plan and prepare to reevaluate and recalibrate your business continuously and you will likely succeed.

 

[Akata Man Bromo]

started my own business this year...It has its ups and downs

 

[ComputersPutin]

In the works.........

 

[LauderdaleBoss]

This is a pretty good thread brehs. Props

I'm one of those nikkas who been running his own businesses and independent side hustles and real shyt man you go through a lot of trial and error periods and I believe that sorta weens out who are serious about it and who isn't. Most people give up after they fail the first time so nothing is really learned from that experience. Most of these cats become bitter and shyt on that independent grind only to become a low paid employee themselves.

I think the most underrated trait in being independent/self employed is discipline. A lot cats can only learn or read shyt because they have to do it for school or past a test. Everything they do has to be assigned to them some how. If you're truly disciplined you read investment books and other progressive shyt because you actually want to learn that material. The internet got mad shyt that nikkas can read and learn from for free but dudes lack the discipline to do it on their own. This is why school/college comes into play for a lot of people. They need the structure of a classroom to learn. People talk about networking and shyt, but nikkas network on the internet everyday without leaving home. so it's not like college is really giving out advantages like nikkas is saying.
Technology made the game more of a level playing field now

 

[TBD]

Good thread. Subs.

 

[714562]

If you live near one of these, go get 'em.

20 Cool Business Incubators | Inc.com

A buddy of mine got our mutual university to buy equity in his start-up, which is pretty commonplace. It's a good way to go if you want some stringless money.

I'm going the law track but, one day down the line, do intend to start my own law-based business. Once you get off the ground, law firms are actually one of the best small businesses to own. There's next to no overhead, you a charge a huge premium for your services, and work as necessary (though oftentimes it is necessary to work quite a bit).