But many students discount the more subtle advantages of attending and finishing college. These advantages are not widely heralded as the primary benefits of completing a formal education, but they are the exact skillsets you need to succeed as an entrepreneur. We are talking about the skillsets that are not taught in the classroom, but the skillsets you must develop and utilize just to survive in the classroom.

We are talking about personal discipline, delayed gratification, and good judgement. These behavioral skills are all required to complete your education and they are all required to increase your chances of success in business. Here’s some critical business skills you gain by completing your education:

1. How to Prioritize (Also known as strategic planning)

In school, you must develop the ability to Identify and organize a plan of action that gets the most important and time-sensitive jobs done first. Being able to judge the consequences of your various choices is critical to your scholastic survival.

In business, by focusing on your top priorities you are less likely to get blindsided by a fatal oversight. Recognizing the basics, focusing, and not getting easily distracted, are all essential skills necessary to succeed.

2. How to Extrapolate (Also known as conceptualization)

In order to pass college exams, you must develop the ability to extract concepts from examples and apply them to new situations. You don’t have time to memorize and regurgitate every example. Sooner or later you have to look for, discover, recognize, and apply the reoccurring principles behind those examples.

In business you must learn from your mistakes, and fast! You can’t be successful if you are asking, “Like what?” and, “Give me an example,” over and over again. Extrapolating the principles from the experiences of others as well as your own, and applying them, will save you precious time and dollars.

3. How to Juggle (Also known as cashflow management)

In college, you have to pay for books and tuition, food and housing, transportation and social life. You are likely undercapitalized and may have a job to support yourself. You have all these bills to pay, plus you have to spread your precious time between all these demands.

In business you will need those juggling skills. Especially starting up, you will be faced with colossal time and money shortages. You will have to juggle your bills with your income, and your time with your commitments.

4. How to Learn (Also known as analysis and documentation)

In order to pass multiple classes each semester, you must listen for, and not just to, what is being said. You must listen actively, ask questions often, and take notes. You must develop a hypothesis about what is being taught. You simply don’t have the time to take down everything that is said. Outlining helps you learn, retain, and access the important parts of what is being taught.

In business, you must remain objective, take notes, outline, and develop policies and procedures. Because you learned how to learn in college, you are more likely to be a quick study, sift through mountains of information quickly, and understand and apply the essence of what you are learning. You will be more likely to learn from your mistakes. You will be able to create, change, and improve the documents that will make those mistakes less likely to reoccur.

5. How to Honor Your Commitments (Also known as integrity)

When you see your education through to your degree, you are experiencing the fruits of your labor. You are validating the long nights and personal sacrifices. You completed your goal. You honored your commitment. You did not give up.

In business, your reputation, payment terms and credit limits are on the line! Vendors, lenders, banks and buyers are holding you accountable to do what you say you’re going to do. Seeing project’s through, no matter what the obstacles, is the basis of credibility.  Success always takes longer and costs more than you thought. It will require tenacity, patience, and commitment.

Bottom Line: Stay in school and learn what they’re teaching that is not in the curriculum. You’ll be glad you did when you get out there in the world of business!

Who We Are

Michael Houlihan and Bonnie Harvey co-authored the New York Times bestselling business book, The Barefoot Spirit: How Hardship, Hustle, and Heart Built America’s #1 Wine Brand. The book has been selected as recommended reading in the CEO Library for CEO Forum, the C-Suite Book Club, and numerous university classes on business and entrepreneurship. It chronicles their humble beginnings from the laundry room of a rented Sonoma County farmhouse to the board room of E&J Gallo, who ultimately acquired their brand and engaged them as brand consultants. Barefoot is now the world’s largest wine brand.

Beginning with virtually no money and no wine industry experience, they employed innovative ideas to overcome obstacles, create new markets and forge strategic alliances. They pioneered Worthy Cause Marketing and performance-based compensation. They built an internationally bestselling brand and received their industry’s “Hot Brand” award for several consecutive years.

They offer their Guiding Principles for Success (GPS) to help entrepreneurs become successful. Their book, The Entrepreneurial Culture: 23 Ways To Engage and Empower Your People, helps corporations maximize the value of their human resources.

Currently they travel the world leading workshops, trainings, & keynoting at business schools, corporations, conferences. They are regular media guests and contributors to international publications and professional journals. They are C-Suite Network Advisors & Contributing Editors. Visit their popular brand building site at www.consumerbrandbuilders.com.

To make inquiries for keynote speaking, trainings or consulting, please contact sales@thebarefootspirit.com.

The post 5 Entrepreneurial Skillsets You Learn in College appeared first on The Barefoot Spirit.

During the interview process, we often ask, “In your previous job, can you give us an example of a problem you solved by applying a principle you discovered in another situation?” Most folks answer with a question, “Like what?” or, “Can you give me an example?” And therein lies the problem.

When people in the boomer generation were growing up, our parents would inevitably say, “Why don’t you kids go outside and play?” We had no video games, no computers, and no electronic toys. Except for bikes, we had very few manufactured toys. We made our own toys, and, in most cases, we made up our own games.

We had to extrapolate. We were forced to be imaginative. We were forced to be resourceful. We were hands on and creative. If anything, our parents were worried that we were watching too much T.V.

We were forced to learn principles first, then apply them to examples. You couldn’t build a toy or make up a game without knowing, or looking for, the principles that made the toy work or the game possible.

But then, the electronic babysitter came along with games and cookie-cutter challenges which the kids quickly mastered.  Multiple choice and cut and paste quickly replaced start from scratch, build your own toy, and create your own games. But in the process, something very important was lost: critical thinking.

With the information age came a fixation on all things digital. Basically, imagination took a big hit, resourcefulness took a big hit, and so did extrapolation. Suddenly all your options were clearly described and laid out in front of you. You just had to choose between them.

Kids raised with this multiple choice, copy-and-paste approach could now learn examples without having to know, or even look for, the principles behind them. The problem is that later on in life, they turned into the “like what?” bird, saying “like what” to every request, even when the same principle was at work in two seemingly unrelated situations. Like what became the lazy, knee-jerk, and go-to response that required the least amount of thinking and responsibility.

Too bad business isn’t all prescribed choices. If it was, this dumbed down way of looking at things would work. But situations occur daily that require the application of previously learned principles in totally new situations. Extrapolation is essential for the type of imaginative problem solving that gives you the advantage in the market place.

Why hire a person who can only copy and paste? Why spend unending hours providing examples until they get it? And even then, they only get the example you described.

This is why so many employers are looking for people who will make the training process a breeze and quickly prove that they can create imaginative solutions on the fly – people who willingly and competently take responsibility for jobs where all the answers are not clearly spelled out.

So, if you are a parent, consider what that screen is doing to your kids’ future. If you are one of those kids, take a break and go out and play! If you were raised by computers, look for the principle behind the scenes. Seek it out before you just copy and paste!

Who We Are

Michael Houlihan and Bonnie Harvey co-authored the New York Times bestselling business book, The Barefoot Spirit: How Hardship, Hustle, and Heart Built America’s #1 Wine Brand. The book has been selected as recommended reading in the CEO Library for CEO Forum, the C-Suite Book Club, and numerous university classes on business and entrepreneurship. It chronicles their humble beginnings from the laundry room of a rented Sonoma County farmhouse to the board room of E&J Gallo, who ultimately acquired their brand and engaged them as brand consultants. Barefoot is now the world’s largest wine brand.

Beginning with virtually no money and no wine industry experience, they employed innovative ideas to overcome obstacles, create new markets and forge strategic alliances. They pioneered Worthy Cause Marketing and performance-based compensation. They built an internationally bestselling brand and received their industry’s “Hot Brand” award for several consecutive years.

They offer their Guiding Principles for Success (GPS) to help entrepreneurs become successful. Their book, The Entrepreneurial Culture: 23 Ways To Engage and Empower Your People, helps corporations maximize the value of their human resources.

Currently they travel the world leading workshops, trainings, & keynoting at business schools, corporations, conferences. They are regular media guests and contributors to international publications and professional journals. They are C-Suite Network Advisors & Contributing Editors. Visit their popular brand building site at www.consumerbrandbuilders.com.

To make inquiries for keynote speaking, trainings or consulting, please contact sales@thebarefootspirit.com.

The post Is Extrapolation an Endangered Talent? appeared first on The Barefoot Spirit.