Growing up, I watched shows like “Shark Tank” and “The Profit.” While these are great shows where people have the opportunity to ask a person to invest in their company, the shows can give people the wrong perception. They can disappoint aspiring entrepreneurs and make them think they cannot start their own businesses unless they have a lot of money.
It made me think that to start my own business I needed a creative idea for a product and needed a lot of money to start it. But there is a simple alternative for starting a side hustle that does not cost a lot of money.
Sarah Mehesy (’24) is a Business Administration major from Elizabethtown, Pa.
If you can find a problem that people have and create a unique solution to that problem by providing a service that others do not offer, you can start your own business with minimal start-up costs. For me, it was writing people’s LinkedIn profiles. I was trying to improve my own profile because I was using it so much to grow my professional network. When I didn’t know how to improve my profile, I wondered if others struggled with the same issue. Once I started looking at others’ profiles, I saw that I was not alone in this struggle. So I spent time researching how to write a good profile, improved my own and decided I could do the same for others.
I found a service I could offer that solved a common problem that many business professionals faced. After researching, I created a website, printed business cards and started networking. This is how my business, Impressions Matter, started. As I received new clients I learned so much along the way and my expertise in LinkedIn grew. Now I’m coming up on almost a year in business and have successfully helped many clients improve their personal brands through writing their profiles.
As a Business Administration major at Lancaster Bible College, why do I share all this with you? To make the point that students can start businesses even while they are still in college. I have found these three basic entrepreneurial principles to be true:
1. You can create a side hustle.
2. You do not need a ton of money to start a business.
3. If you find a problem and are able to come up with a service that solves that problem, you can start now.
The really cool thing about starting a business in college is that you have the opportunity to apply everything you are learning in the classroom now. You are no longer learning concepts that you will apply in the future. You can put into practice the concepts you are learning about now.
Here at Lancaster Bible College, the Business Administration Department helps students learn business practices in real time—and apply them right away. The Student Business Collective (SBC) also equips students with the tools they need in the business world, which is why the group hosts events like these: