When I graduated from college with an English major, I was always asked the same question: “Are you going to teach?” When I answered that, actually, I planned to start a business, I was met with blank stares. “But you majored in English,” came the reply. As if an English major were a creature from outer space, unable to breathe the same air or share the same dreams as a more typical business preparation, like an Economics, or Business, or even Poli Sci major. English literature was for frivolity, not business.

Never mind that the core of business is very similar to the core of writing: gestating an idea and communicating it in a compelling manner. Liberal arts majors, especially humanities majors, were simply not serious candidates to make decent money, let alone start their own businesses.

There are so many misconceptions about starting a business, beginning with the idea of what a business is in the first place. Most people think of a business as being a bunch of people in a building somewhere, often in a large city, doing teleconferences and displaying wares at conventions, having meetings, hiring and firing. The reality is that most businesses are nothing like that.

This is a business.ASSOCIATED PRESS

This is a business.ASSOCIATED PRESS