Founding and running a company early in one’s career is a bold move that provides invaluable opportunities to learn a vast range of business skills, lessons, etiquette, and roles. However, when it comes to discussing such experiences in an MBA application, many entrepreneurs find it challenging to identify the unique value of their entrepreneurial journey. Generally, these applicants have no shortage of professional growth and transformative stories that demonstrate learning and achievements, but the challenge arises in connecting prior experiences with future ambitions. This post will look at some key areas that entrepreneurs can identify to demonstrate their preparedness for graduate study.
Formative Experiences
Writing essays that showcase the applicant’s individual journey is central to any MBA application. As a starting point, consider 3-5 exceptionally important or impactful experiences and think about which aspects of your profile they highlight. For example, pitching investors develops or sharpens negotiation and public speaking skills for some. Alternatively, working as a solopreneur can reveal that project management and task delegation are unexpected strengths. It can be easy to downplay experiences that we feel are normal in the scope of our everyday lives and work, but taking a more critical look at how and why we do things often reveals significant aspects of our character, values, and mindset.
Skills Growth
Every entrepreneur starts from his or her own area of strength – product design, service excellence, supply chain expertise, etc. – but they will invariably develop and refine new skills while running a business. Highlighting continued skills growth supports many aspects of an MBA application. First, adding new skills is the centerpiece of a growth mindset, which is essential to endure the rigors of case study evaluation and business problem solving and come out on the other side with an MBA and a strong career outlook. Second, learning accounting or search engine optimization in order to help your company and save money tells an admissions team that you are capable of adapting to dynamic environments and adding skills outside your comfort zone. Lastly, whether making a career pivot or expecting to continue to pursue entrepreneurial endeavors, the applicant can point to some of their transferrable skills as a way to project future career success.
Understanding Roles and Teams
Out of necessity, many entrepreneurs wear more than one hat, managing or supporting multiple departments and learning about the roles in those departments as a result. Supporting different functions can help serial entrepreneurs to build better-performing teams in the future. Conversely, this dynamism can make those pivoting out of entrepreneurship especially well-suited for connecting roles, such as product managers or supply chain managers, because they are adept at understanding the specialized knowledge that tech or logistics teams might be working with, but they also have the soft skills to form strong relationships with business development teams or clients.
Intangibles: Resilience, Adaptability, Vision, Values
It is well documented that up to 90% of startups fail. Many change their product or service offerings dramatically from the initial launch. A lucky few startups survive, thrive, and are even acquired. The mercurial people who start these companies often possess one or more innate traits or abilities – such as resilience, adaptability, or vision – that are seen by many as indicators of (eventual) success. Using a business failure as a growth opportunity suggests that a person could be an effective and resilient leader in the future. Persisting through multiple product design iterations or altering a business model in the face of a market shift shows a willingness to adapt and find solutions. These are just a couple of examples of how entrepreneurs can augment their achievements by pointing to personal characteristics that will help them succeed in an MBA program and beyond.
Make Connections
While planning to write MBA essays, each applicant should do detailed research about their target schools and programs. Identifying program strengths and values that align with the entrepreneur’s areas of need and values can help the applicant understand which of their stories and experiences will best articulate program fit when writing their essays. Long gone are the days of a one-size-fits-all MBA SOP and the best story for one essay question is unlikely to fit other distinct questions. Using the school’s strengths, values, and essay topics as a guide can help applicants determine which aspects of their profile and experiences they should focus on.
[Conclusion]
Entrepreneurship is often such a rich, diverse (and sometimes chaotic or broad) set of experiences that it can be challenging to focus on the elements that best convey one’s preparedness for MBA study. By stepping back and looking holistically at themselves as a person and their set of experiences, entrepreneurs will be able to showcase the skills, experiences, and intangible traits that best project them to be successful business people in the future. To start the discussion about how you might best leverage your business ownership into an MBA, book a free 20-minute consultation with us today.