Black Friday Sale! 50% Off All Access

6 Things Business School Won't Teach You About Entrepreneurship For MBAs, starting a business can become the scene of the accident, where theory and education collide with facts and reality.

By Corey Ferreira Edited by Dan Bova

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

JulieanneBirch | Getty Images

Business school won't teach you everything you need to know about starting and running a successful business. I learned that the hard way.

While business school taught me how to negotiate, communicate effectively and understand the foundations of finance, economics and law, it wasn't until I started a business that I realized there were significant gaps in my knowledge.

The relationships and network I built in business school are worth more than the cost of tuition. However, I wound up learning a lot more about business by being an entrepreneur for four months than I did sitting in a lecture hall for four years.

Here's what I learned as an entrepreneur that business school didn't teach me, and that it won't teach you about building a successful business.

1. A business can be scrappy.

Starting a new business will require you to "figure things out as you go." While business school will emphasize the importance of funding, hiring and scaling, starting a business means making the most of the few resources you have.

The reality is most successful companies today started out very scrappy, and from zero. They didn't really have a plan, they didn't lease a space, nor did they stick with their original idea in some cases.

Related: Pivot or Die: How One Travel Company Finally Hit Its Stride

Your success will depend a lot on how scrappy you can be and how you can make the most out of the resources and tools available to you right now. Even if this means launching with a minimum viable product to test the market before trying to get the funding, staff or resources you think you need.

2. Plans aren't the most important thing.

It's counterintuitive, but overplanning can kill your business, especially when you'll be pivoting and adjusting based on how your customer uses, perceives and buys your product or service.

Business schools like to treat every new business idea like a massive venture that can be completely planned for. "Want to start a business? Create a business plan, determine your product-market fit, calculate breakeven, etc."

The truth is a lot of this will become more clear as you test and first bring your product or service to market. It's much more important to execute on your idea and get proof of concept, instead of trying to plan every single aspect of your business to perfection. Excessive planning before execution is usually just procrastination.

3. How to set goals.

With so much emphasis on planning and strategic decision-making, it's kind of ironic how little business schools go into setting goals and reverse engineering what you want.

So many entrepreneurs know what they want to do, but they don't really know how to do it. Setting goals makes it easier to determine the path since you can reverse-engineer from where you want to be.

Goals keep you accountable, as well as align everyone on your team. The last thing you want as a business owner is for your team to have different motivations that contradict (or compete with) one another.

What's that one goal you want your whole team focused on? Zero in on it to drive a bigger impact.

4. Marketing in the 21st century.

Many schools are finally starting to improve their marketing classes to fit in with the digital age, but you'd be surprised how far behind a lot of the marketing education still is. To be fair, it's because this information changes a lot faster than most business schools can keep up.

As an entrepreneur, it's your responsibility to stay in the loop on the current trends in digital marketing, as well as the tactics that work right now.

Related: Here's How to Build Your Own DIY MBA in Digital Marketing

A lot of the fundamental marketing principles business schools teach are still useful and relevant. However, it's crucial to your success that you have a deep understanding of things like pay per click advertising, search engine optimization, and email marketing, just to name a few.

If you want to learn how to create a successful Facebook ad, for example, you're not going to find the answer in a classroom. You'll have to create one and tweak it as you go.

5. How to be creative.

Entrepreneurs need to channel their creativity often, whether you need to come up with unique solutions to your customer's problems or find that great business idea.

Creativity is very hard to teach, so it's no wonder this is something lacking in business schools. Business schools teach systems and rules. They show you the parameters you'll work within as an entrepreneur and how to make the most of them.

Creativity is about working outside those parameters, thinking outside the box. As an entrepreneur, sometimes the best solution isn't the most obvious one. Sometimes it requires an inspired solution.

When you think about some of the most famous cases of companies succeeding despite the odds, or the most well-received marketing campaigns, there's usually a lot of creativity behind it, not a cookie-cutter formula taught in a business school.

But that inspiration often comes from trying new things, making mistakes and learning from others. And that kind of experience gets fast-tracked when you're an entrepreneur.

6. Risk-taking.

Schools are designed to teach students not to fail. They teach students to be more risk-averse than risk-taking. They are designed to have students work within a set of rules. This is the antithesis of being an entrepreneur and running a business.

Running a business means failing, a lot. Entrepreneurship is about taking risk. It involves thinking outside the box and creating an unconventional path.

Related: 5 Things Every Entrepreneur Should Know About Risk-Taking

Failure should be seen as part of the learning process. Because students are discouraged from failing, they never see the value of failure as a way of learning. Thus, B-school students that go into entrepreneurship may become more risk-averse.

The problem with this of course is that entrepreneurs give themselves an excuse to give up too early, and they avoid taking the risks that could help their business take off.

Any roadblock or challenge you encounter as a business owner shouldn't be perceived as a stop sign. Instead, it may simply mean you need to push forward in a different direction.

Corey Ferreira is a business school graduate and a passionate, ambitious entrepreneur. Since 2008, Corey has launched, grown, and sold several businesses including an emerging advertising media company and a web design agency. Corey is currently a part of Shopify's marketing team, helping make commerce better for everyone.

Want to be an Entrepreneur Leadership Network contributor? Apply now to join.

Living

These Are the 'Wealthiest and Safest' Places to Retire in the U.S. None of Them Are in Florida — and 2 States Swept the List.

More than 338,000 U.S. residents retired to a new home in 2023 — a 44% increase year over year.

Starting a Business

This Sommelier's 'Laughable' Idea Is Disrupting the $385 Billion Wine Industry

Kristin Olszewski, founder of Nomadica, is bringing premium wine to aluminum cans, and major retailers are taking note.

Business News

These Are the Highest Paying Jobs Available Without a College Degree, According to a New Report

The median salaries for these positions go up to $102,420 per year.

Starting a Business

He Started a Business That Surpassed $100 Million in Under 3 Years: 'Consistent Revenue Right Out of the Gate'

Ryan Close, founder and CEO of Bartesian, had run a few small businesses on the side — but none of them excited him as much as the idea for a home cocktail machine.

Business News

DOGE Leaders Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy Say Mandating In-Person Work Would Make 'a Wave' of Federal Employees Quit

The two published an op-ed outlining their goals for their new department, including workforce reductions.

Side Hustle

20 Ways to Make Money from Home in 2023

Making money from home doesn't have to be complicated. Check out these 20 smart ways to make cash from the comfort of your computer desk.