An MBA degree can provide a wide range of different benefits to those who hold this qualification. Along with the prestige that this qualification brings with it, MBA graduates also typically have a lot of theoretical and hands-on business knowledge and a strong professional network. An MBA graduate can use the degree in a wide variety of different fields and industries to further their career and meet their professional, academic, and social goals. While getting an MBA is certainly an investment of your time, money, and effort, it’s definitely worth the potential return on investment.
If you are a business owner or are seeking a career in entrepreneurship, earning a master’s of business administration degree can help you improve your future prospects and make it easier for you to meet both your personal and professional goals. Here are some of the top reasons why getting an MBA can be an extremely beneficial move for business owners and entrepreneurs.
Build Your Professional Network
Enrolling in an MBA degree program means that you have access to a wide range of business professionals who are now your peers. An MBA is not typically a degree that a person will take when they are fresh out of high school or even college; most MBA programs require applicants to have at least a few years of business experience before enrolling. Most of your peers are going to be current or future business leaders, experts in their field, excellent analysts, or budding entrepreneurs. Studying for an MBA gives you the chance to network with likeminded business professionals on a regular basis and make as many professional contacts as you can.
Many entrepreneurs with an MBA meet their business partners or key shareholders in their business while studying for the degree. The connections that you make while studying for an MBA could be very valuable to you in the future, whether they support your business through becoming customers, employees, business partners, or provide you with valuable referrals to their own contacts.
Develop an Understanding of Business Management
One of the key aspects of studying for an MBA is developing your understanding of business management theory, which involves learning about winning strategies and how they differ from losing strategies, underlying business planning, and many other concepts that are essential to your success. While it’s possible to get a good grasp on all of these concepts without embarking on an MBA degree, studying for an MBA is one of the best ways to really study these in-depth and develop a much more intense understanding. You may even have the chance to attend lectures and classes headed by world-class business leaders that you may never have had the chance to learn from otherwise.
Make Better Hiring Decisions
Often, business owners can fall short when it comes to hiring because they’re not sure about the type of person that they really need to help set their business up for success. At some point, your business is likely going to need to hire talented individuals in order to achieve the success and growth that you’re aiming for. An MBA provides you with the foundation and framework that you are going to need in order to really identify the type of people that you should hire to support your goals, why you need them, how much to pay them, and how to attract them towards your business. And, since studying for an MBA helps you significantly build your professional network, you have an added advantage of a strong network of experienced, skilled, and knowledgeable people to consider when you are hiring.
Learn Different Ways to Run Your Business
Many entrepreneurs who do not have a business background run their business based on trial and error, information that they’ve learned themselves, or with the guidance of a mentor. However, studying for an MBA can really open up your eyes to the various different ways in which you can run your business, allowing you to apply the methods that are likely to bring about the best results based on what you do and the people that you work with.
There are so many different ways of running a company – some more successful than others – and studying for an MBA gives you a deeper insight into the leadership strategies that are used at the most successful companies around the world, enabling you to learn from the success of others and implement these winning strategies in your own business while avoiding the mistakes of the ones that didn’t do so well.
Improve Your Chance of Business Growth
Without any prior qualifications, a business owner might not have the confidence and knowledge needed to grow their business further by taking it global. Studying for an MBA allows you to learn more about taking your business global and provides you with the guidance, resources, tools, and skills in order to do this successfully. Today, international expansion is becoming increasingly more important for businesses, particularly in those industries that are crowded domestically or where there is a clear gap in the market overseas. If you are interested in running a global company in the future, you might want to consider taking an MBA with a concentration in global business in order to further your knowledge of this field even more. Click here to learn more about the benefits of choosing an MBA concentration versus opting for a generic MBA.
Get Your Business the Best Funding
With online businesses on the rise, many entrepreneurs are no longer in need of the same amount of funding that was necessary years ago to get a business off the ground. But chances are that either at the start or later down the line as your company grows, you are going to need some external funding to support your growth. As an MBA student, one of the fundamental things that you will learn is how to write a business plan that is put together in a way that’s going to set you up for success, including attracting external funding. Whether you want to fund your business with a traditional bank loan, apply with a small business lender, or convince an angel investor to take an interest in your business, your MBA degree will provide you with the skills needed to write a substantiated, convincing business plan.
Develop Your Marketing Skills
Many business owners start their company because they love the products or services that they sell, and not because they want to spend a lot of time marketing the business. While there’s always the option of hiring a professional marketing company to do the work for you, entrepreneurs who possess an MBA can take a more hands-on approach to market their brand and being successful with it since they know what works and what doesn’t.
Your MBA studies will help you develop some key skills for getting the word out about your business including market research, digital marketing, customer engagement, analytics, search engine marketing, and more. As a business owner with an MBA, you can avoid all the trial and error mistakes that many inexperienced business owners make when getting started, and start seeing results from your marketing campaigns as quickly as possible.
Become an Authority
Getting an MBA sets you up for success in any business that you want to start in the future. And, successful business owners that possess an MBA are in a strong position to become an expert in their field. Perhaps you will reach a point where you decide to sell your business or move into consulting instead; an MBA provides you with the knowledge and skills to pursue this as a future career. The intense learning and intellectualism provided by an MBA program mean that many MBA holders go on to become the leaders in their fields, regardless of their career and business aspirations. This also gives you an additional avenue to go into if you want to diversify your revenue sources and have something else to fall back on if your initial business venture does not go as planned.
Protect Yourself Professionally
With nine out of ten small businesses failing at some point within their first year of operation, even MBA graduates know that their business idea might not end up being successful in the future. Having an MBA means that even if your business goals do not end up turning into realities, you have a professional safety net to fall back on. MBA holders are always in demand in the corporate world and there are several career options that you can get into if your entrepreneurship goals do not work out. In addition, an MBA also provides you with a qualification that opens up several career opportunities for you if you are looking for secure employment as you get your business started.
While an MBA is certainly not a prerequisite to starting your own business, it is a great choice for anybody who wants to seriously improve their knowledge and skills before pursuing a career path in entrepreneurship.
