What are additional courses that budding entrepreneurs should take?

1. Psychology
2. Art and Design
3. Data Privacy

Budding business owners studying at an entrepreneurship school in the Philippines take management courses and assume that it is enough. But, the world demands entrepreneurs to be skilled in more than just business management. There are important skills to be learned from courses outside of your field which can be helpful in running a startup. If you are a budding entrepreneur, these are some of the additional courses you should take:

Psychology

Psychology is the study of human behavior. In entrepreneurship schools of the Philippines, you already study basic psychology thanks to the subject of marketing. Marketing makes you analyze the behavior of customers and how business appeal to their needs so they can buy what they sell.

When you decide to study a psychology course, you learn more than just the behavior of consumers. It also gives an overview of how employees are when they work. As an entrepreneur, you also want to know how to manage your present and future employees in the most effective way possible for the sake of profit and overall growth.

This course usually covers 3 areas of business:

• Sales and Marketing
  • Sales and marketing provide the personal aspect of every brand.
  • Psychology provides you with relationship tactics that make it easier to communicate to customers in a personal manner.
  • Good sales and marketing can convince a customer to trust you enough to buy your products and services. Therefore, it is absolutely vital in making you build a loyal customer base that will provide you revenue.

• Innovation
  • Innovation in products and services matter because customers will be willing to spend more money on businesses that provide unknown and brand new offerings.
  • For example, when a new smartphone comes out, people willingly line up to buy because it has features that are new and exciting.
  • Psychology shows that people are driven by exciting and new experiences because it activates their dopamine. When dopamine gets released, they feel rewarded.
  • How can you make your employees more creative?

• Leadership
  • You should also study psychology to improve your character as an entrepreneur.
  • To be a good entrepreneur, you need to be a good leader.
  • What personal and mental motivations, according to psychology, will push you to enter a leader-like mindset?

Art and Design

Steve Jobs never graduated from college, but the calligraphy course he took inspired him to add unique typography to his Apple products. Steve’s laptop, unlike his competitor Microsoft, had a lot of unique and beautiful fonts which was just as exquisite looking as the calligraphy writing he learned.  His calligraphy monk professor taught him how to explore art and perfect your craft with all you got.  He would carry these artistic values until he died.

Why should you study art and design if you want to start a business? You may be thinking that it would be so unnecessary to study this course unless you plan on selling paintings or art commissions for a living.

Art and design courses are essential whether you are still studying or have already finished a management course because they give you universal principles that will guide your entrepreneurship. These universal principles are:

• Being unafraid of experimentation
• Looking at unusual perspectives to a certain issue or problem and reflecting on those to come up with creative solutions
• Knowing how to stay positive with uncertainty
• Being a perfectionist with the designs of the products you offer

Steve Jobs wasn’t afraid to push what electronics had to offer. The way your products look is just as important as what they can do.

Data Privacy

Since we live in an age of technology, companies mostly store their data in computers. This has eased the way companies run their operations, but it has also put them at risk of having important information hacked and stolen. Being hacked can make your business reputation stained in the eyes of the public, especially if you are just a small startup.

Thus, data privacy has become the answer to solve this. Data privacy in any company refers to security dealing with the sharing and keeping of important company data. It is mostly thought of as something only information technology people learn, which is untrue. This course will help you as an entrepreneur because it will give you more control.

When you study a data privacy course, these are the questions you will most likely want to be answered:

• What data from our customers should be utilized?
• How can customers trust my business again in the case a data breach happens?
• How can we maintain data privacy standards?

Key Takeaway

Aspiring entrepreneurs assume that acquiring management credits thanks to entrepreneurship schools in the Philippines is sufficient in running a business. This is false because the world demands them to be skilled in more than just that field. With that being said, aspiring entrepreneurs should be willing to expand their horizons and skillsets by studying courses outside of business management.