Would I be able to balance two businesses with a year full of exams?

[reree17]

I live in UK and I am in Year 11 which is a crucial year and full of exams. Obviously my education matters a lot to me and I get good grades (did very well in GCSE modules of year 10). Since starting school this September I have slacked and in my mock exams did not perform very well since I didn't put in much effort. I spent most of my time researching business since business is a passion of mine and I plan to start two businesses online.

My plan was to do 3 hours and 30 minutes of studying everyday with 2 hours of business on weekdays and on weekends a little bit of studying and a lot of business. I really really want to start up these businesses as soon as possible but I fear that they will get in the way of working hard this year.

Ideally I should be studying practically all of the time and my plan was to spend even my spare time doing practice questions out of textbooks for difficult subjects or topics. With owning two online businesses I feel this plan will fail.

The majority of the exams will be in the summer months (May - July). What do you think? Seeing as this year is incredibly important due to my GCSE's should I dedicate the majority of my time to my studying and not pursue with the business?

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[MilkmanAl]

I feel your plan will fail, as well. Running a business well is a massively time-consuming endeavor, and so is excelling on exams. Maybe you'll be able to stick your thumb in other pies once your business(es) is/are up and running well, but until then, I'd pick one or the other.

 

[reree17]

I feel your plan will fail, as well. Running a business well is a massively time-consuming endeavor, and so is excelling on exams. Maybe you'll be able to stick your thumb in other pies once your business(es) is/are up and running well, but until then, I'd pick one or the other.

The thing is having two businesses run by a teen makes a REALLY GOOD extra-curricular because not only your academics contributes to you getting into med school. Business makes you stand out from the competition.

 

[MilkmanAl]

Not sure if serious...

 

[reree17]

Not sure if serious...

I'm sorry, pardon?
What exactly do you mean by that?

 

[MilkmanAl]

It's pretty self explanatory; I'm not sure if you're serious or not. Starting a business as a resume builder is totally nuts, so you could either be joking or, you know, totally nuts.

 

[absolutdokta]

I'm sorry, pardon?
What exactly do you mean by that?

maybe this will help

 

[Don15]

hahahaha so let me get this straight. you are taking time out of studying so you can open two business just because it will make you stand out as an applicant? you're jokes bro

 

[reree17]

It's pretty self explanatory; I'm not sure if you're serious or not. Starting a business as a resume builder is totally nuts, so you could either be joking or, you know, totally nuts.

I have always had a passion for business since a young age. I am NOT starting it for that reason, at all! However it does come with this advantage.

 

[reree17]

hahahaha so let me get this straight. you are taking time out of studying so you can open two business just because it will make you stand out as an applicant? you're jokes bro

Ask anyone who knows me! I love business. I have always loved business since a young age. I want to start businesses because I purely love business, not as a resume builder! I am just saying that it does have this advantage.

Some of you seriously need to stop judging people you know nothing about.

 

[MilkmanAl]

Yikes...

In any event, I stand by my original position. Starting up multiple businesses and studying exceptionally hard are mutually exclusive. Also, if you have a passion for business, why aren't you focusing on business?

 

[reree17]

Yikes...

In any event, I stand by my original position. Starting up multiple businesses and studying exceptionally hard are mutually exclusive. Also, if you have a passion for business, why aren't you focusing on business?

What do you mean ' not focusing on business', in what way?

 

[MilkmanAl]

Right...I guess I'll rephrase: Why aren't you focusing on a career in business (finance, banking, etc.)?

 

[reree17]

Right...I guess I'll rephrase: Why aren't you focusing on a career in business (finance, banking, etc.)?

I have considered careers in business and finance. However, I love medicine because I get to help treat people and I have always loved health. I'm pretty sure you are able to have more than one interest. I see business as a favourite hobby for now.

 

[maxxpricey]

Right...I guess I'll rephrase: Why aren't you focusing on a career in business (finance, banking, etc.)?

That's like asking a dentist who likes golf why they didn't become a golf player.
That's like asking a lawyer who likes playing the violin why they didn't become a musician.
That's like asking a secretary who likes playing tennis why they didn't become a professional tennis player.
That's like asking a computer scientist who likes animals why they didn't become a zoo worker.

Do you get my drift?
People can have one more than passion.

hahahaha so let me get this straight. you are taking time out of studying so you can open two business just because it will make you stand out as an applicant? you're jokes bro

Also I don't get why you two can't see his/her point, owning businesses at a young age makes a very good extra-curricular since it shows your leadership skills but that doesn't mean they're just doing it for that purpose - have you ever thought that they might actually like business? When did he/she say they are only doing it for resume building? I assume if someone is willing to take time away daily for business they must actually like business, common sense.

OP there are teenagers who have succeeded in balancing. Instead of doing two hours cut it down to one hour dedicated to business daily, then on weekends I would make sure you try and get more studying done than business.

 

[MilkmanAl]

That's like asking a dentist who likes golf why they didn't become a golf player.
That's like asking a lawyer who likes playing the violin why they didn't become a musician.
That's like asking a secretary who likes playing tennis why they didn't become a professional tennis player.
That's like asking a computer scientist who likes animals why they didn't become a zoo worker.

Do you get my drift?
People can have one more than passion.

Actually, all of those examples are completely different than this case. Starting a business requires far more time and effort than a mere hobby would. To steal your example, it'd be more like asking a dentist who had already played golf professionally and loved it why he didn't continue to do so. Chances are he wasn't playing golf professionally and going to dental school simultaneously, also.

By the way, it is very unlikely that someone would have more than one passion. Multiple interests - even serious interests - sure. Passions, probably not.

Also I don't get why you two can't see his/her point, owning businesses at a young age makes a very good extra-curricular, blah blah blah

I don't disagree, but it seems to be at least part of his motivation for starting a business. Again, running a successful business is a massive undertaking. Claiming that owning a business is a good EC, while true, just sounds foolish. You're entirely missing the forest for the trees. Nobody ever argued that he didn't like business, so I'm not sure where you're getting that part from.

OP there are teenagers who have succeeded in balancing. Instead of doing two hours cut it down to one hour dedicated to business daily

An hour a day? Good luck with that. I have several friends who own or are partial owners in businesses, and they all absolutely work their asses off, day in and day out. I'm sure there are some miracle companies out there that started up successfully with such little input from their originators, but I certainly wouldn't count on that happening.

 

[absolutdokta]

That's like asking a dentist who likes golf why they didn't become a golf player.
That's like asking a lawyer who likes playing the violin why they didn't become a musician.
That's like asking a secretary who likes playing tennis why they didn't become a professional tennis player.
That's like asking a computer scientist who likes animals why they didn't become a zoo worker.

your logic = fail, trying to become a professional anything while trying to become a professional something else at the same time tends to not really work. The OP wants to start not one, but two, businesses while still in school and from other threads started by the OP he(she?) has stated s/he is thinking about law school, medical school or dental school. Starting two businesses while preparing for professional school and then maintaining those said businesses while in professional school is probably gonna cause one of your undertakings to suffer.

Get my drift? Listen to the milkman....hes got a point

 

[DrYoda]

Ideally I should be studying practically all of the time and my plan was to spend even my spare time doing practice questions out of textbooks for difficult subjects or topics. With owning two online businesses I feel this plan will fail.

If you feel this plan will fail (and based on your post I agree with you), then you should consider what Milkman said in his first response: pick one or the other and then come back to do the other later.

On the topic of EC's: while they are an important part of your application, a killer EC won't save you from poor grades and standardized test scores.

As for time to start businesses: It's hard to say for sure without knowing both the industry (for example being a landlord on a non-tycoon scale can easily be done part-time) and the OP's goals with the company. But in general starting a business is going to be a very time consuming endeavor. Some people have what I call hobby companies, which are for-fun businesses never intended to become a big money-maker (an example would be making crafts and selling them online). Those can be less time consuming, but like any hobby your education/professional life should come first (which makes the decision of study or business easy if this is the case).

 

[maxxpricey]

Actually, all of those examples are completely different than this case. Starting a business requires far more time and effort than a mere hobby would. To steal your example, it'd be more like asking a dentist who had already played golf professionally and loved it why he didn't continue to do so. Chances are he wasn't playing golf professionally and going to dental school simultaneously, also.

By the way, it is very unlikely that someone would have more than one passion. Multiple interests - even serious interests - sure. Passions, probably not.
I don't disagree, but it seems to be at least part of his motivation for starting a business. Again, running a successful business is a massive undertaking. Claiming that owning a business is a good EC, while true, just sounds foolish. You're entirely missing the forest for the trees. Nobody ever argued that he didn't like business, so I'm not sure where you're getting that part from.

An hour a day? Good luck with that. I have several friends who own or are partial owners in businesses, and they all absolutely work their asses off, day in and day out. I'm sure there are some miracle companies out there that started up successfully with such little input from their originators, but I certainly wouldn't count on that happening.

Not really as to the OP business seems to be a hobby, and for those examples those were their hobbies. Even if the professional golf player is simultaneously going to dental school, the time spent in lessons in dental school could be similar to the hours of someone working in a particular career. Jenny Thompson managed to win 8 gold medals in swimming, training vigorously, at the same time as attending medical school.

Whether you think it is foolish or not, any worthwhile and frequent hobby you do outside of school is considered a good EC, if relevant. In this case he/she has interests in business, and even if they played the piano, played in their school's baseball team, did figure skating they all contribute as good EC's so what is the difference?

I'm guessing you're very ignorant on the success of various teenage entrepreneurs who a few claimed they spent 1 - 2 hours daily on their projects, particularly Mark Bao who says his parents were very stern on his education and studying. It can be achieved. There is no set time period in terms of working on business it all depends on how much the individual wants to spend. Different businesses have different scales. You don't mention what types of businesses your friends do or why they work so hard. It also depends on your skill too, if you're not too knowledgeable on some aspects of business such as marketing then you're evidently going to spend more time on it. You can't say you 'can't count on that happening' because you really have no idea on how well the OP can execute the businesses. I presume you don't even know him/her so I don't see how you can claim something like that.

Christian Owens, a 16 year old (from same place as OP I think) built two $1M companies each (Branchr and MBB) and was doing his GCSE's, managed to pull a good amount of A*'s while managing multiple business projects online. He claimed he worked on the projects half an hour each daily. It is manageable if you have good time management skills.

 

[maxxpricey]

your logic = fail, trying to become a professional anything while trying to become a professional something else at the same time tends to not really work. The OP wants to start not one, but two, businesses while still in school and from other threads started by the OP he(she?) has stated s/he is thinking about law school, medical school or dental school. Starting two businesses while preparing for professional school and then maintaining those said businesses while in professional school is probably gonna cause one of your undertakings to suffer.

Get my drift? Listen to the milkman....hes got a point

Orly Taitz - Successful lawyer, successful dentist with her own practice and successful real estate agent/developer.

Friend's aunt - Successful neurosurgeon and successful lawyer.

Jenny Thompson - Successful professional swimmer (8 golds) and anaesthesiologist (now that is. Was in med school while being a competitive swimmer)

Brandon Conley - Hedge fund CEO and student.

Christian Owens - Successful teen entrepreneur and successful high school student.

Tom Daley - Successful professional diver and A-Levels student who got good grades at AS level.

Karlie Kloss - High school student who hopes to go to med school and top high fashion model.

Ali Moeen Nawazish - Student who got 21 A grades at A-Levels while at the same time running a popular online business, computer repair business and the leader of some big organisation for youth, can't remember the name. Plans to go to Medical School (think he got accepted into Cambridge).

Lexi Thompson - Sucessful teen professional golfer and high school student.

Diba Thomas - Successful figure skater (1986 world champion) and successful orthopaedic surgeon.

Myron Rolle - Medical school student and NFL player.

The list goes on.

I do understand the points the both you have. However, Christian Owens is a perfect example - 16 year old GCSE student (think he is in lower sixth now though) built many successful projects online, two of them each pulled in $1 million in revenue (Branchr and MBB). Crazy! Not only that, he got a load of A*'s in his GCSE's with a few A's. It shows that it IS possible, but will be a very hard task. OP sounds like a hard-worker and determined so he/she may be able to handle it. It really all goes down to time-management. Christian is not the only one either, I have seen many other examples of teen entrepreneurs who did quite well at school too.

 

[MilkmanAl]

Like I said, I don't doubt that it's possible to be a businessman and be in professional school and be successful at both. I just wouldn't recommend to anyone that they attempt to balance such a work load. The people you listed are all extreme outliers; most people who start businesses fail, regardless of what else they're doing. Similarly, most people can't manage the work necessary for med school or for Olympic training individually, let alone both simultaneously. Like you said, I don't know the OP, so I'm not going to take your route and assume he's one of those phenomenal cases you cited. Rather, I'm going to assume he's more in line with the rest of us, the vast majority, and offer advice accordingly.

 

[Druggernaut]

Orly Taitz - Successful lawyer, successful dentist with her own practice and successful real estate agent/developer.

Friend's aunt - Successful neurosurgeon and successful lawyer.

Jenny Thompson - Successful professional swimmer (8 golds) and anaesthesiologist.

Christian Owens - Successful teen entrepreneur and successful high school student.

Diba Thomas - Successful figure skater (1986 world champion) and successful orthopaedic surgeon.

Myron Rolle - Medical school student and NFL player.

Orly Taitz - Became a dentist in Israel in the '80's, law degree in California in 2002. It also looks like there's a movement to disbar her.

Jenny Thompson - 3/4 of her gold medal years were prior to medical school

Christian Owens - High school requires essentially no effort, and his businesses seem to be pretty simple ideas that require very little work, despite being profitable. If you come up with one of these kinds of things, it could work, but it's unlikely.

Debi Thomas - 1986 Gold medalist, 1997 M.D.

Myron Rolle - Didn't attend medical school, received an MSc. in medical anthropology. Was drafted by the Titans afterwards, but never played in regular or postseason games before being released.

With the exception of one of these people (who is a high school student), they all achieved these things at different times. It's unlikely you'd be able to start one, much less two, profitable businesses while going through. If you're trying it as a high school student, there probably isn't much to lose, since it's not too difficult to find your way into a decent university. Keeping your grades up in college to gain admission to medical school will be more difficult. You could take a few years off to get them going and into a position where they can generate income more passively for you during medical school, but to try to do them at the same time seems like a mistake.

 

[maxxpricey]

Orly Taitz - Became a dentist in Israel in the '80's, law degree in California in 2002. It also looks like there's a movement to disbar her.

Jenny Thompson - 3/4 of her gold medal years were prior to medical school

Christian Owens - High school requires essentially no effort, and his businesses seem to be pretty simple ideas that require very little work, despite being profitable. If you come up with one of these kinds of things, it could work, but it's unlikely.

Debi Thomas - 1986 Gold medalist, 1997 M.D.

Myron Rolle - Didn't attend medical school, received an MSc. in medical anthropology. Was drafted by the Titans afterwards, but never played in regular or postseason games before being released.

With the exception of one of these people (who is a high school student), they all achieved these things at different times. It's unlikely you'd be able to start one, much less two, profitable businesses while going through. If you're trying it as a high school student, there probably isn't much to lose, since it's not too difficult to find your way into a decent university. Keeping your grades up in college to gain admission to medical school will be more difficult. You could take a few years off to get them going and into a position where they can generate income more passively for you during medical school, but to try to do them at the same time seems like a mistake.

In the UK high school, especially during GCSE year (same year as OP), does not require 'essentially no effort'. Also, you're trying to tell me that starting a full-scale advertising network is a 'simple' idea? Do you know how much work goes into that? All the programming, servers etc. required?

The examples you picked out are only a few from the list I wrote.

"It's unlikely you'd be able to start one, much less two, profitable businesses while going through" try telling that to Christian Owens. Two $1M companies while doing GCSE's.

If you read the original post, you would see that the OP is a high school student, and you just said "If you're trying it as a high school student, there probably isn't much to lose".

 

[maxxpricey]

Like I said, I don't doubt that it's possible to be a businessman and be in professional school and be successful at both. I just wouldn't recommend to anyone that they attempt to balance such a work load. The people you listed are all extreme outliers; most people who start businesses fail, regardless of what else they're doing. Similarly, most people can't manage the work necessary for med school or for Olympic training individually, let alone both simultaneously. Like you said, I don't know the OP, so I'm not going to take your route and assume he's one of those phenomenal cases you cited. Rather, I'm going to assume he's more in line with the rest of us, the vast majority, and offer advice accordingly.

Even if you claim they are 'extreme outliers', like I said before, you do not personally know the OP (I presume) so you cannot really judge on whether they will succeed or not. You don't know if they have the capability to become an extreme outlier.

Rather, try and be neutral at least. It's unfair to assume they will be more in line with the majority without knowing their potential or skills however you are also reluctant to assume they are one of the phenomenal cases so be neutral.

 

[reree17]

For goodness sake can everyone please stop arguing?!

And 'maxxpricey' thank you for all your defending. I do agree that it is quite unfair to say that I probably won't have the potential to be an 'extreme outlier' when you know nothing about me!

Regardless I asked a simple question and now everyone is arguing. Don't get so stressed about it. I think I'm going to add everyone to my ignore list

How can I lock the thread because I seriously regret starting this thread when really I have realised it is silly to ask strangers who know nothing about your potential or anything about you for advice? So I'm just asking family and friends which I wish I did in the first place.

Thank you all for your time, at least.

 

[reree17]

How do I delete my account?
Since every time I start a thread on here I always get either some horrid people or some comments that bring my self-esteem down. I'm never happy here whenever I make a thread but I always hope it gets better. Whatever how do I delete it?

 

[MilkmanAl]

And 'maxxpricey' thank you for all your defending. I do agree that it is quite unfair to say that I probably won't have the potential to be an 'extreme outlier' when you know nothing about me!

Possibly unfair, but definitely not unreasonable.

How can I lock the thread because I seriously regret starting this thread when really I have realised it is silly to ask strangers who know nothing about your potential or anything about you for advice?

Honestly, unless your family and friends are either business owners or dentists/lawyers/doctors themselves, the advice you get here will likely be more objective and useful. If you're looking for blind encouragement, go for family and friends. In any event, I'll lock the the thread if you wish.

edit: Ninja'd. Thread closed per OP's request. Steps to delete your account can be found here:https://help.studentdoctor.net/entries/94420-cancel-membership