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Question answered in Quora - Where and what course should I do for my post graduation to become an e


This is a very broad question, I will try my best to answer this question thoroughly and completely.

Entrepreneurship is a very broad area, you could do any of the following

1-You could start a technology startup

2-You could start a trading business, just buy and sell things

3-You could offer some service, where you get paid hourly like Accounting or Programming or Legal services

So whatever you do, here is how I would approach

i) - You need the technical skills to do the job, meaning you need to know whatever you are offering, it could be programming services or building a product or in the case buying and selling you need to know the technicalities of trading business, where to buy the product and where to sell the product etc. So I would spend some time and acquire those skills - Build enough technical skills domain expertise in the area you are going to offer the services/product in

ii) - You need sales skills - which is actually problem solving skills for your customer - meaning you need to clearly identify a problem that you are solving for your customer - that means you need to know what is the problem they have, in what area they have the problem, who has the problem - that is your ideal customer and tell them how you are solving that problem with your solution - it could be selling rice in a place where there are not a lot of stores that sell rice - let us say it turns out that there is no store in a specific area and the people that live in that area are traveling a lot to buy rice, then your solution is to open a store and sell rice in that area - that is the problem you are solving for them - then you need to articulate your solution's value prop with the right messaging - that is your marketing mantra to acquire customers

iii) - Then you have to have leadership skills - running an enterprise requires inspiring people to have them join you so they can help you in accomplishing your vision because you cannot do everything by yourself - so you need other people's help - that is where all the soft skills come into play - you need to build trust with these people, you need win their confidence, you need to help them have fun while they are doing it, you need to make them feel that they are in a worthy cause and whatever they are doing is fulfilling in their life - for some people it would be just making money, for some people it would be something else - that is where people reading skills, public speaking skills all that come into play

So acquire the technical skills, acquire the sales skills, acquire the leadership skills and start executing. This is a short answer, if there is a specific context, or in a specific field, will be happy to answer for that.

Assuming you already have some sort of Undergraduate degree, because you are asking about Post Graduate degree, assuming that you have some technical skill, I would join a course where I can acquire Sales Skills and Leadership skills, something like an MBA, but be careful don't spend too much money on it in doing it in a fancy place, I would rather "Begin with an end" in mind, for example set yourself a goal, here is what I need to get out of the program and work on accomplishing those goals while doing that program, don't do that program only for the grade. Grade does mean something, what it means is - How well you will do your job, given a job? But nothing beyond that, But if you set a clear context for yourself, Line up all the things you would need to start your business, then join the program and try to get your business up and running as soon as you start your program, so whatever problems you run into, for example whatever sales strategy you are pursuing is not working, then you can leverage the program and figure that out, talk to your Professor or talk to your fellow students that are in similar business or talk to the Alumni that is doing something similar, they may be able to help you figure out issues like that.

Above all you need to have humility as well, don't taste success and lose your head, always be grateful and thankful for your success, because if you lose humility, then people will not like you and how you come across and you will start losing opportunities and your business might go down.


ABOUT THE AUTHOR 

Puga Sankara is the co-founder of Smart Gladiator LLC. Smart Gladiator designs, builds, and delivers market-leading mobile technology consisting of Smart Gladiator Wearable Scanguns, Tablets, Mobile Tech & Apps for retailers, distributors, and 3PL service providers. So far, Smart Gladiator Wearables have been used to ship, receive, and scan more than 100 million boxes. Users love them for the lightweight, easy-to-use soft overlay keyboard, texting&video chatting ability, data collection ability etc. Puga is a supply chain technology professional with more than 17 years of experience in deploying capabilities in the logistics and supply chain domain. His prior roles involved managing complicated mission-critical programs driving revenue numbers, rolling out a multitude of capabilities involving more than a dozen systems, and managing a team of 30 to 50 personnel across multiple disciplines and departments in large corporations such as Hewlett Packard. He has deployed WMS for more than 30 distribution centers in his role as a senior manager with Manhattan Associates. He has also performed process analysis walk-throughs for more than 50 distribution centers for WMS process design and performance analysis review, optimizing processes for better productivity and visibility through the supply chain. Size of these DCs varied from 150,000 to 1.2 million SQFT. Puga Sankara has an MBA from Georgia Tech. He can be reached at puga@smartgladiator.com or visit the company at www.smartgladiator.com. Also follow him at www.pugasankara.com

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