The Key to Entrepreneurship That Business Schools Don’t Teach
By: Rachel Greenberg
Tags: Startup, Success, Business, Marketing, Entrepreneurship

A vanilla business degree just doesn’t cut it — and neither does an internship or business-related job:

It would take you all of five seconds to find some statistics pointing to the 80/20 rule as it pertains to time and resource allocation in marketing (indicating that a company should spend 80% of its time, tools, and effort on marketing a product or service, and a mere 20% creating it). But knowing that alone doesn’t fulfill the “how”, which is arguably the hardest part.

Yes, you know that marketing is important. Maybe you’ve even read books or taken courses on it. But do you thoroughly understand how to implement and test a wide variety of marketing strategies yourself?

If fallacy #1 is the idea that understanding business is enough to guarantee (or significantly boost the likelihood of) entrepreneurial success, then fallacy #2 is the idea that delegation is the shortcut solution for inexperience and incompetence.

Yes, you can try to pay your problems (and incompetencies) away. No, it isn’t a bulletproof solution, and your titanium shield against the requirement to learn, stretch, investigate, try, fail, and grow.

The type of degree that might actually help

No matter what field you’re pursuing, nothing trumps experience. Ever. A marketing degree made up of case studies, shadowing assignments, and multiple-choice tests is lacking; badly. It’s lacking in the one free thing to which we all have access: firsthand experience.

Sure, some types of marketing cost money right off the bat (think paid advertising). But some don’t. Think of guerilla marketing, partnerships, virtual events, referral programs, commissioned salespeople, and so many more. Marketing doesn’t just take smarts or technical know-how; it takes gall and gumption. It takes a salesperson’s attitude, combined with empathy for your customer, plus a bit of investigative research. And a lot of trial and error, as well as qualitative and quantitative analyses to assess, tweak, reassess, and perfect your strategy.

And frankly, as someone who’s had to learn everything from guerilla marketing to digital marketing to SEO, content marketing, direct sales, and more, I can confidently say that not 1% of this was covered in my traditional educational or professional career.

Not in business school.

Not in marketing classes.

Not in internships.

Not in full-time jobs.

Not when I was sitting down with the C-suites of hugely successful companies, projecting their future years’ spending, marketing plans, expected sales, and bottom-line earnings to present their $100M+ valuations to interested buyers.

Throughout all that, I still never got a thorough understanding of what marketing for a brand-new, unknown startup entails.

The one class we all need

A good, effective marketing degree won’t be limited to a handful of aging strategies or Harvard Business case studies. It won’t be down to learning from the business successes and failures that have preceded us. It will actually include a class called “Trial and Failure”, in which students try out a wide range of marketing strategies on their own — for a brand-new product or service with no existing presence or audience. They’ll need to go deep down rabbit holes the standard curriculum may not cover. And share their failures and findings with their peers.

There’s a delicate balance to strike between “doing” and “learning”. When it comes to marketing, I would err on the side of more “doing”, since through doing, learning should occur.

Here’s why delegation doesn’t work either

I’ve already alluded to the fact that delegation isn’t the catch-all silver bullet solution. But I didn’t really cover why. It’s actually for a reason most entrepreneurs might find hard to believe.

The rationale for delegation: You hire a professional to complete a task more effectively and efficiently than you’d be able to. You hire a person with the specific experience and expertise you’re lacking to cut through the wasted time and money you would otherwise spend flailing around, trying to figure it out through firsthand trial and error. You’re paying them to avoid the mistakes you, as a first-timer, would most definitely make.

Ah, but that right there is the hole in the argument. The misconception. The one truth these professional marketers want to keep out of your sights and far from your mind.

That truth? They don’t know what they’re doing either! Not at first.

Before you tear me apart here, screaming, “Of course, professional marketers know what they’re doing! How dare I discredit their expertise?!” let me explain what I mean. Yes, they may be well-versed in a specific (or a wide variety of) marketing technique(s). But no, they aren’t likely psychic, and they can’t know exactly how your audience will react. They cannot know with 100% certainty what is or isn’t going to work or the degree to which you’ll see those positive or negative results.

It’s not possible. Because marketing isn’t a “right or wrong” type of discipline. It’s a culmination of positioning, human psychology, design, strategy, cost-benefit analyses, and a lot of trial and error. Not every customer will react the same to your marketing. Not every target audience will behave as a marketer might expect to a specific campaign. Nobody can know, for sure, the bulletproof strategy to achieve a flood of profitable sales from day one for an unproven, brand-new company.

What that means: If you’re delegating from day one and hiring a professional marketing team, you should be equipped with the knowledge that you’re paying them to experiment. To try and fail. To make mistakes and try to fix them. You’re paying them to learn what works for your company and your audience. No, they don’t already know this from the jump. They can’t possibly.

I’ve worked with enough marketing teams that, by this point, I’ve asked them flat-out, so this isn’t simply my budget-conscious, scrappy entrepreneur’s perspective talking. Marketers whom I’ve paid tens of thousands of dollars have fessed up to this admission as well.

Here’s a prime example: In a subsequent startup, I decided to hand off marketing to the professionals. To the tune of about a $10k/month burn rate.

They finally let me in on a little secret, after months of lackluster results: In the first three months of working together, they’re just figuring things out, too.

That means I spent $30k+ in those first three months for them to experiment, tinker around, and hopefully get one step closer to figuring out how the heck to make this thing work (to get sales).

Why shouldn’t you let your marketers go to town, from day one?

Different strategies work for different companies. You can either forego learning and sacrifice your dime (delegate) or save your cash and sacrifice your time instead. You’ll never get back the dimes you spent on that subpar first few months working with that marketing team. However, if you attempt it yourself and save the $10k/month, you will accumulate priceless knowledge to serve you for years to come.

Sure, it may take a few hours each day, but if it’ll save you a 5-figure monthly management fee down the line, it’s probably worth it.

My personal proof point? A 200x ROI

While I won’t go into the specifics, yes, I did figure out a cheaper, more effective method of marketing for my subsequent companies. And I did so all on my own.

No professional ad agencies struggling to get us our first sales.

No “trial and error” on somebody else’s dime; or their time.

The time was my own, the learning was my own, and the transferability of the skills I’ve learned through that experience is vast. To me, those skills are worth far more than whatever return a professional marketing team could have generated for me.

Oh, and by the way, the method of marketing that got me 90% of that 200x ROI is one I’ve never been taught in school, never observed from another company secondhand, and never been exposed to in my former Wall Street career. It’s something I stumbled upon and mastered all my own.

And yes, I did get a 200x ROI on that business. With under $1k initially invested. And quickly. You’re welcome to read more about it, but let that be proof that delegation isn’t always the answer and may actually be robbing you of the valuable, transferable experience and skill set from which you’ll reap the rewards for years to come.