Business Education - Start your Career Planning Early

Starting out in a business career is easy. Start early, and keep your eyes and ears open. How about the lemonade stand when you were 11? Or cutting lawns when you were 14? Or the baby sitting jobs? All are basic training for a career in business.

How about that first "real" job when 16 or 17? What did you learn about business? How about customer service? Did you show an initiative? What did you do with your earnings? Was some saved and invested in your future? Did you read the business section in the newspaper? How about the Wall Street Journal when you went to the library?

Business career training comes in many sizes and packages. All help you prepare in becoming a business entrepreneur someday. It outlines different subjects and training involving corporate finance, marketing and business law. In the course of training, you begin to get a more detailed idea of what you want to do in considering a business career.

There are a number of specialized fields in almost every business. Finance, marketing, operations, technology, and sales all lead to different career paths. This is the main decision you need to make before your business career training starts. Another decision you need to consider is the aspect of business that you want to get specialized in. Let's go over the benefits and tips of taking up a program in business career training.

1) Business Concepts are life concepts as well: The business concept is reflected around you to include the very basic ideas. It is being applied to almost any aspects of our life and work. General problem solving skills and working well with others is the most useful learning you can acquire from business career training.

2) Having better credentials mean more money and other options: If you have an advanced business career training degree, you are allowed more freedom in selecting your career path. Most of the top companies in the world prefer to interview and hire graduates of business-related courses and degrees. And offered salaries are definitely higher. With a degree in business career training, many job opportunities are open for you.

3) Find the ideal advanced education: Finding for the ideal business career training is a necessity. A good school that will fit your personality and possess the things that gets you interested aside from the business career training programs they offer. One reason for this is for you to balance career development with your lifestyle and exterior interests.

4) Interaction with different kinds of people: In a business career training program, you are most likely to experience interacting with different kinds of people related to your program's activities. With this interaction, you need to understand the interpersonal and individual motives and behaviors of every person performing in business activity. You need to have the ability to read the personality of a person as well as the dynamics of the group.

5) Expand your business rolodex: In taking up your business career training program, you need to learn the art of expanding your business network. Through your business network, you'll have a precise introduction and established system that is essential in setting up your business career.

The above listed benefits and ideas are just the beginning. Plan on a life long learning program. You'll find as your career develops additional options will appear, keep and open mind and you may be surprised and delighted to where it may lead.

The Best Business Education You Can Get - And It's Free

I'm not talking about SCORE (Service Corps of Retired Executives). While you can get good business information from these retired executives there is a much better way. This article will teach you how to get current business owners to spill their guts to you about the most intimate secrets of their business.

Normally small business owners are pretty closed mouthed about their business and won't make the time to talk about their business to a stranger but there is one time when the exact opposite is true.

That time is when the owner is selling his or her business.

And that is a great way to learn about various businesses and explore what you might like in the way of a business for yourself.

But is does take practice and time to sift the truth out of the sales pitch the owner is making. Here is a plan you can follow to accomplish this educational goal without getting sidetracked by bad information. Expect to invest a few weeks at this process before you get good enough at it to really get an accurate picture of the businesses you are "interviewing."

Step 1: Get the classified section of you Sunday newspaper. The section you are interesed in is "Business Opportunities" or "Businesses for Sale."

Step 2: Read all the ads and circle the ones that do not look they were put in by a broker. At this point, it is much better to talk with the owners directly rather than have the complexity of a business broker in the middle of it. (Once you get educated, you can use a business broker if you are truly shopping for a specific type of business to buy.)

Step 3: Call every business owner and express interest in learning more about the business for potential puchase. Take notes as to what the person says and when the initial pitch is done, set up an appointment to talk more and to look over the business.

Step 4: Go to your appointments, examine the business, look at the books, ask to see the tax records, see what kind of terms the business owner is willing to offer, ask about day to day operations, employees, etc. In other words ask the owner every question you can think of to both prove the earning claims and to give you a good feel for how the business actually works. (And if you really are interested in a particular business, ask if you can work in the store for a day or two to get a good feel for things before making a purchase decision.) Build a checklist of questions you want to ask and bring it with you so you don't forget to ask anything. And revise the checklist as many times as necessary to add/modify questions. You will eventually end up with your very own business evaluation worksheet.

Step 5: Repeat every week until you develop a sense for what the sellers are saying and not saying about their businesses.

After talking with a few business owners, you will find that most of what they tell you is a stretch of the truth or it is pretty accurate but the numbers just do not make sense for the person purchasing a business. You will also learn a lot about how real people run real businesses. But most of all, you will get an amazing education you just can't get in any other way and after this exercise, you should be able to size up any business and its true value in minutes.