It‘s not so long ago when I was rotating in high schools and talking to students about the importance of choosing the right career. Anyone can preach. So I didn‘t do that. I simple created a startup that would help them connects with companies like IBM to explore different careers. We even went too far to offer a virtual reality career simulation. However, that was ten years ago when the word VR was not correlated with Meta. Since then, since creating my first startup, I embarked on a ten-year business services career path. Hence, if you‘re thinking about business services as a career path, I think I could be of great help.
Also, this is not one of those SEO‘d articles where I‘ll write a generic text that tells you that it‘s great or do a pros and cons analysis.
I‘ll be referencing personal experiences. So if you‘re interested in business services or know someone who is, send them this article. Business services is quite a wide term. As long as you know what you’re focused on offering, you’ll be able to work it out.
The world nowadays is crazy about AI and how it’s changing the world. But when it comes to a business service like consulting, it’ll always be a human job.
Swiftly, my story.
I‘ve graduated with a software engineering bachelors. Then founded the startup I mentioned in the first paragraph. Only then was I sure that engineering is definitely not my thing. That entrepreneurship and working in various business services is what I love doing.
Ten years later, I still believe in this more than anything. I could‘ve continued as a software engineer and worked in a company like IBM. However, I choose the path of freelancing in business services, and ever since then, I‘ve had the type of career freedom that many people dream of.
You want a conclusion to career choice? It‘s the biggest myth that exist in our world. Each person specializing in a specific career is not human. The truth is I could be a brilliant engineer, a wonderful cook, and a fantastic farmer at the same time. Most people find that out in time. They‘d try different careers and end up enjoying one over the others.
The keyword here is enjoyment, not compatibility. You want a career that you enjoy. Everyone could eat apples for survival, but is it what everyone prefers? Nope, I hate apples.
You need to know whether the career path of business services is one that you would enjoy. That‘s it.
Business services is a wide, but good career path.
You know how they say not everything is black or white? Business services is definitely not black or white. It‘s quite a word that symbolizes quite many options that you could work in. The ones that I can think of right now are the following:
1. Corporate business services
Think of yourself as someone working in Google on their customer experience, for example.
- Why are people searching for these trends on google?
- What are they going to search for?
- Where are they going?
- How can you improve the customer experience?
- What‘s the latest market research saying?
These are all questions that could be categorized under this branch. You could be working in the career path of business services and consider it good and enjoyable. It‘s simply working as part of a big company like McKinsey and Deloitte. You‘d be facilitating the operations of other companies.
Nevertheless, you don‘t have to posses a particular business degree. But it‘s highly preferable if you want to work with one of these companies.
If you think this is good, and you‘re interested in following this career path of business services, here‘s what you should do:
- Get a degree, preferably a masters in anything that falls under business services (like business intelligence or data analytics.)
- Apply and get a job in firms like the above. You‘ll need to try a few times as they are selective. A good place to start looking for such jobs is LinkedIn.
2. Freelance business services
Not what you imagined? Alright, you can follow my career path and choose to freelance. I‘m a freelance business consultant who helps startups and companies in their business planning.
This particular path does not require a degree, per se. It values experience a lot more. If you worked or helped Uber in their launch, and now you‘re freelancing, that‘s much more powerful than having a business degree. Clients in the freelancing world mostly care about results, which are only guaranteed in time and with experience.
This has been a good career path of business services to me, and here‘s what I recommend if you want to pursue it:
- Start building a portfolio, experiment and fear nothing.
- Fail, then fail, and then finally fail again. Failure is the most essential aspect of this path.
- Educate yourself into the latest business trends. You need to know when Elon Musk decides to buy a new company for example.
- Start working on a freelancing website. There‘s Upwork, Fiverr, Toptal, and many other websites you could try out. Hopefully, we’ll be able to add Albusi to the list soon. We are a freelancing platform focused on business services. But we are, unfortunately, not hiring at the moment until we get more demand to fulfill the supply of freelancers we already have.
Oh, and if you‘re looking for a guide to help you start your profile on Upwork, or Fiverr. I‘ve created a couple of those.
Additionally, I have other guides for Fiverr and Medium (a writing website where I specialize in business writing.)
3. Entrepreneurship business services
Finally, this is also one of my favorites. Entrepreneurship is not particularly a business service, but it can be. Technically speaking, you could be creating a company that helps other people in business services like a marketing agency or Salesforce (which has a bit of complex niche).
Anything that could be providing users with help in their work is categorized under business services. Thereby, what Elon Musk is doing with Starlink when they sell their product to businesses, or when they create a Tesla truck to help companies, are all considered business services.
You could be the next Elon Musk, but it won‘t be easy. The key of entrepreneurship as a business service career path is patience and failure. People like Elon failed countless times. Hence, it requires your mentality to be accepting that you‘re a “Big failure“, which is not easy, but doable.
For this particular business services career path, you need to practice multiple good habits, including, but not only:
- Learning and getting mentored.
- Experimenting
- Budget analysis and financial planning.
- Being patient for years.
How to have a truly good career path in business services?
As I told you earlier, if you‘re looking for an answer to the question, “Is business services a good career path?“ then you didn‘t grasp the essence of the article.
It is, if you want it to be. In terms of durability of the market, it will always exist. It‘s not like the career of mathematicians that would be replaced by calculators. As someone working in business services, it‘s hard to replace you in the near future.
There are a few final tips that would make this path a good one for you that I can‘t end this article without telling you:
Good Reading is the only path to a business services career.
You know how doctors need to learn about new diseases? You need to read about new businesses and what they‘re doing. Reading is something that I‘ve been doing for years every single morning.
Hence, in order for you to advise other companies or businesses, you need to know how they do things. Reading is the only option to achieve that.
Reforming Your Mindset is a must in business services.
Finally, you will have people who will tell you that what you‘re doing is a bad idea. That it isn‘t “safe.“
However, the problem is, these people are going to be your closest friends and family members. Don‘t blame them. Any person would want to advise their close acquaintances by telling them what they know or what they have done. If you‘re friends with Elon Musk, I am sure he won‘t tell you it isn‘t “safe“.
You need to empower your mindset to accept advice from people, but know when to not use their advice. Some advice is gold. Other pieces of advice are not your gold.
Meet The Author Of This Article
I’m Al Anany, the founder and CEO of Albusi.
Writing in the business industry has shifted my mentality toward entrepreneurship. I started on Medium in 2021 and ended up being a Top Writer of more than 4 categories and had my content viewed more than 213k times.
I always have a single goal while writing: focus on entertaining while adding value.