Aside from the usual stress factors of running a business, young entrepreneurs, especially millennials, are being subject to certain stereotypes that are making their job even more difficult and creating insecurities that will not allow them to properly position themselves in the market.
Millennial entrepreneurs are known for their innovative ideas, creativity, and will-power. But with these highlights comes a certain resistance to what these young business people can offer despite their age.
Millennial Entrepreneurs and the Age Stereotype
People coming from an older generation and business mindset tend to have a quick reflex in judging the younger generation of entrepreneurs and automatically assume that because of their age, they are lazy, irresponsible, and unreliable.
This can be caused by multiple factors, one of them is the recent trend with millennials to rotate between jobs roughly after six to eight months of being hired. Needless to say, this is due to the rise of working remotely, particularly in the digital sector; however this does not mean that they’re not passionate and won’t follow their idea till completion.
And even though loyalty is being questioned because of that, the young entrepreneurs of this era maintain professional conduct during their meetings and networking experience, mainly because they have to make twice the effort to prove themselves. Here is when the famous expression “age is just a number” comes in handy.
Financial Instability
Many millennial entrepreneurs go through the financial challenges of kick-starting their business and finding the right funding and investors. This is directly linked to prior students loans they might have accumulated, which makes it even more difficult to personally finance the beginning of a project, resulting in fewer funding opportunities.
Little do people know that these millennials develop early on in their career soft skills that enable them to make great sales pitch and a solid business plan to improve their chances of attracting business investors. Nonetheless, this also takes a lot of practice and patience to see actual result; it doesn’t happen over night.
A great example of how entrepreneurs are being taught at a very young age to gain confidence and sell themselves, their skills, and their ideas is the I-Pitch and meet event, organized by the Corporate Relations Department of EMLV business school, to help international students integrate into the French and international market.
Recruiters gathered on Pôle de Vinci’s campus during “I pitch & Meet” sessions
About one hundred 5th year students from MBA and MSc attend the event to improve their pitching skills and meet around 20 different companies representatives who will also give them feedback and constructive criticism around their pitch.
Self-doubt
Owning a business is definitely something to be proud of, but with such a serious and heavy experience comes a big load of anxiety and stress which eventually might lead into second guessing one’s decision.
This fact can become a stereotype only if the young business owners allow the tension to get the best of them. Nothing is steady at first, just like everything else in the world of business, but giving up from the get go is not an option.
Dealing with such insecurities can be handled by revising goals, learning from mistakes, and having mentors for extra guidance.
Are you an entrepreneur in the making? Discover the entrepreneurship and innovation programme opened to all fifth-year Master’s programme students from EMLV, and engineering school ESILV who want to create a startup or are interested in learning the basics of business creation.
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