A lot of people say that you can’t teach somebody to be good at business, you’ve either got it or you haven’t. That might be true to some extent because there are a lot of qualities that every good business owner needs to have. You need great leadership skills, good people skills, decisions making abilities and the courage to take risks. But the thing is, you can still learn those things even if you don’t possess those skills and qualities already. You might not necessarily learn those things through education, but you can definitely develop them through experience. Often, the best business people are the ones that have worked in a lot of different jobs in multiple industries before they head out on their own and start a business.
There are a lot of jobs which obviously prepare you for entrepreneurship, for example, if you’re an experienced accountant, you’ll be able to handle your finances properly. If you’ve managed a team before then you can use those skills to help you guide your employees. But there are some jobs that, on the face of it, don’t seem to have any relevance to running a business at all, but they do. These are some of the surprising jobs that prepare you for entrepreneurship.
Fast Food Restaurants
People that work in a fast food restaurant often get a lot of judgment. People think of it as a job that people take when they don’t have the work ethic to get an education and find a better career. But those people have clearly never worked in a fast food restaurant because it’s one of the hardest jobs there is. The nature of the restaurant means that customers have very high expectations in terms of speed and, when coupled with the lack of respect that a lot of people have for those kinds of customer service workers, it means you’re going to be dealing with a lot of very rude and angry customers on a daily basis. When you start your own company, dealing with customers will feel so much easier than it ever would if you were working at a fast food chain.
Speed and efficiency are also key to the job and you’ll be serving customers in a matter of minutes using a well thought out production line system. Having a good understanding of the role each person plays in that production line and how efficiency is achieved will stand you in good stead when you start managing a team of your own. So, if you’ve ever worked in a fast food restaurant before, you might just have what it takes to start your own business.
Natural Disaster Management
This might sound like an odd choice but it makes a lot of sense when you think about it. In order to work in this area, you need online disaster management degrees which teach you how to react to the biggest crisis there is; a natural disaster. Being able to react quickly in a crisis is such an important part of running a business so anybody that has worked in this field has some good experience. If your business starts running out of money, you’re working against the clock to start bringing in more revenue and slash spending. You don’t have the time to sit around for months coming up with a plan, you need to set out a series of steps and execute them as quickly as possible, much like you would if you were reacting to a natural disaster. Compared to dealing with the after effects of a huge earthquake or tsunami, dealing with a financial crisis in your business should be a breeze.
Parenting
Parenting is the hardest job that there is and anybody that has been a stay at home parent for a while should have pretty much all of the skills that a good boss needs. Organization is key in business as well as parenting. When you’re trying to juggle the schedules of all of your kids and get everybody ready and out of the house on time, you have to become an organizational master. Managing a team of adults is nothing compared to dealing with a bunch of young kids. Another important aspect of managing a team is conflict resolution. If two of your employees have an issue that they can’t resolve for themselves, it’s up to you to step in and deal with it. You’ll have to do this on a daily basis if you’re a parent and those disputes are going to be far more irrational than any dispute between two adults. Working long hours without too much rest is something that all new bosses experience when they’re getting a new business up and running but it’s nothing compared to what you’d experience as a full-time parent to a newborn baby. Anything that a business can throw at you will seem simple in comparison to the ups and downs of raising a family.
Real Estate
When your business is up and running and you’re starting to make a bit of money, you might think about reaching out and dealing with other companies in your industry. Partnerships are a great way to increase your marketing reach so they’re always worth looking at. You’ll also have to deal with manufacturing and shipping companies if you’re selling a product so your negotiation skills are key. There are a few different careers out there that involve negotiating on a regular basis but real estate is probably the most common. You’ll spend a large part of your working life negotiating prices with buyers and sellers and acting as an intermediary between the two. The other benefit of working in real estate is that you’re usually left to your own devices if you work for a company or you might even be self employed. That really helps with time management and self motivation when you come to start your own business.
You might think that your past job experience isn’t going to help you out when you start your own business but you’d be surprised just how relevant those skills could be.
