I was recently talking to a very successful executive that is nearing the end of her career. Throughout this conversation, she really brought up a lot of interesting points and topics I will try to relay to you. I told her how I was a junior entrepreneurship major and currently have 22 credits. She asked me what classes I currently was taking, have took, and what classes I was looking at to round-out my senior year. I told her how I was set to finish my four years at Grove City College with being able to take every entrepreneurship class offered and a host of other good classes that I think will be beneficial to me in my career like in accounting, finance, business management, and marketing. She instantly interrogated me about the marketing classes I was taking and what marketing classes are offered here. She told me that as it is crucial for an entrepreneur to know his finances, it is becoming equally important to be just as well-versed in marketing. If you want to start a business in today’s world – you need to know how to market to survive.
Generation X and, especially, the millennial generation both have massive leanings towards wanting to start their own business. An article from Forbes states that 62% of millennials have considered starting their own business. Over 72% of millennials feel that startups and entrepreneurs are necessary economic force for creating jobs and innovation. She went on to say and what businesses is your generation starting? It isn’t brick-and-mortar. It’s businesses based off the internet. In order for you to succeed today in the growing landscape of competitors and growing competition for eyeballs – you need to master social media to succeed. Marketing is so important today as you need to be able to understand your customer, how to reach them, and create a social media following on whatever platform that best connects you with your target market to be sustainable and survive today.
She went on to tell me about how their is conference after conference in New York City about the economic trends and movements going on today. She was recently at a conference that just focused on Amazon and the powerhouse of their model and how they are constantly staying ahead of the market. She could not emphasize enough about how all the data is pointing in the internet entrepreneurship direction and how social media will be crucial to whether or not you make it. The millennial generation is a very unique generation that will greatly reshape the landscape of business and how we operate.
This blog post is completely based off of studies I have read in the past, certain ones mentioned in the blog, conversations with business people in the past, and mainly the conversation I recently had with a high-level executive in the real estate and retail industry.