Richard Bran­son

Q: I am a first-year uni­ver­si­ty stu­dent in Cana­da. I've got a won­der­ful plan for an on­line busi­ness, but my par­ents, who are en­tre­pre­neurs in the Philip­pines, are wor­ried that I'll ne­glect my stud­ies if I pur­sue it. They sent me to Cana­da to study, which is a heavy bur­den for them. I'm very pas­sion­ate about my busi­ness plans.

How do I per­suade them to sup­port me?

–Luisa Sal­im­ban­gon

My mum was–and still is–an en­tre­pre­neur, so I have al­ways had some­one to turn to when I need ad­vice. My par­ents were al­ways the first peo­ple I con­sult­ed when I had a new idea for a busi­ness. Luisa, you are very lucky, since your mum and dad have al­ready start­ed busi­ness­es them­selves!

My moth­er's ca­reer was a huge in­flu­ence on mine, and you seem to be in­spired by your par­ents as well, but I un­der­stand that school is al­so a big draw. I have al­ways want­ed to go to uni­ver­si­ty. When I was in my 40s, I even con­sid­ered tak­ing a cou­ple of years off to go back to school. My wife talked me out of it - earn­ing a de­gree takes a lot of time, and I sim­ply wouldn't be able to study and con­tin­ue my work at Vir­gin.

Many peo­ple as­sume that young en­tre­pre­neurs must choose be­tween con­tin­u­ing their ed­u­ca­tion and start­ing a busi­ness.

In re­al­i­ty, these two choic­es can co­ex­ist. Uni­ver­si­ties should be en­cour­ag­ing stu­dents to start busi­ness­es linked to their stud­ies. Es­pe­cial­ly in busi­ness pro­grammes, pro­fes­sors should be en­cour­aged to fos­ter an en­tre­pre­neur­ial spir­it in the class­room.

Uni­ver­si­ties should of­fer guid­ance to stu­dents who have launched busi­ness­es, help­ing them to­ward suc­cess - bud­ding en­tre­pre­neurs shouldn't be forced to go it alone.

One way to help stu­dent en­tre­pre­neurs is to make de­gree pro­grams short­er. They are far too long at present - for young stu­dents, the first year is of­ten wast­ed, and a three-year pro­gramme could eas­i­ly be com­plet­ed with­in two years. This would de­crease stu­dents' debt loads and put them in a bet­ter po­si­tion to start their own busi­ness­es.

I'm thrilled to hear that you're con­sid­er­ing launch­ing your busi­ness de­spite the ob­sta­cles. When you're talk­ing with your par­ents about it, keep in mind –and con­vey to them–that start­ing a busi­ness while at­tend­ing uni­ver­si­ty can be a great de­ci­sion.

Col­lege is an en­vi­ron­ment in which you're al­ways learn­ing, and while many sub­jects you're ex­posed to won't be di­rect­ly rel­e­vant to your busi­ness, you will learn to think crit­i­cal­ly.

The learn­ing en­vi­ron­ment al­so pro­vides stu­dents with many op­por­tu­ni­ties to meet new peo­ple and share ideas. This is a huge ben­e­fit: the num­ber of com­pa­nies and life­time friend­ships that are formed in col­lege is end­less.

But, as you've asked, how can you do this with­out ne­glect­ing your stud­ies?

While both your busi­ness and your stud­ies will re­quire a lot of hard work, your study hours will like­ly be quite flex­i­ble. And if you're study­ing sub­jects that you're pas­sion­ate about and love, you won't mind putting in long hours - you may re­al­ly en­joy it.

Keep in mind that most new en­tre­pre­neurs have some jug­gling to do, whether it is with school, day jobs or child care. But the suc­cess­ful ones cre­ate a plan of ac­tion that helps them avoid get­ting sucked in­to work­ing non­stop. In your case, it might be easy to let time slip away when you're knee-deep in an ex­cit­ing idea, so es­tab­lish bound­aries; al­lo­cate spe­cif­ic days and times for your stud­ies and oth­ers for work­ing on your start­up. Be hon­est with your­self about whether the launch will im­pact your stud­ies, and plan for that.

Have you con­sid­ered look­ing for a lo­cal men­tor who can give you ad­vice and keep you on track? How about check­ing on whether there is a club for en­tre­pre­neurs at your school? A group like that could plug you in­to a help­ful peer net­work, and in­tro­duce you to oth­er stu­dents who are bal­anc­ing study and work. (You might al­so make friends with whom you can bounce ideas around.)

You might al­so want to con­sid­er find­ing a co-founder who can share the work­load with you. If you can show your par­ents that you're not go­ing to be do­ing every­thing on your own, they might be re­as­sured that your plan is a work­able one.

Af­ter you've sketched out your plan, show it to your par­ents, and stress how much their sup­port means to you. Be hon­est with them about how much time your busi­ness will re­quire, then dis­cuss the steps you will take to min­imise the im­pact.

There's no bet­ter way to learn about time man­age­ment, prob­lem-solv­ing and good, old-fash­ioned hard work than run­ning a start­up. And if you pull this off, by the time you grad­u­ate from col­lege, you may own a small (and, hope­ful­ly, thriv­ing!) busi­ness. Good luck!

(Richard Bran­son is the founder of the Vir­gin Group and com­pa­nies such as Vir­gin At­lantic, Vir­gin Amer­i­ca, Vir­gin Mo­bile and Vir­gin Ac­tive. He main­tains a blog at www.vir­gin.com/richard-bran­son/blog. You can fol­low him on Twit­ter at twit­ter.com/richard­bran­son. To learn more about the Vir­gin Group: www.vir­gin.com.)

(Ques­tions from read­ers will be an­swered in fu­ture columns. Please send them to Richard­Bran­son@ny­times.com. Please in­clude your name, coun­try, email ad­dress and the name of the web­site or pub­li­ca­tion where you read the col­umn.)