Juggling the roles of an entrepreneur and a student proves challenging yet rewarding for female business owners.

By Aliza Sherman Risdahl

Returning to school can turbocharge your business, according to Sally Hogshead, author of Radical Careering. But how does a busy woman entrepreneur meet the challenges of both school and running a company? And are the gains worth the pains?

“The biggest challenge for me was learning better time management,” says Laura Alter, 27, vice president of PC Torque Ltd., a custom laptop computer company she started with her husband, Adam, 31, in Austin, Texas. At the time she went back to school, she had an infant and another baby on the way. “It had always been drilled into me that successful people had college degrees, so I decided I should go back before [my life] got even more complicated.”

Hogshead agrees that the most difficult part of returning to school for women business owners can be balancing two lives. “Try to keep the plates spinning at your company,” she says, “even if it means going into short-term ‘maintenance mode’ while you focus your energy on your longer-term educational goals.”

Donna Childs, 39, founder and president of New York City-based Childs Capital LLC, a global provider of financial services to micro- and small businesses, went back to school to gain a broader skill set. “I regarded an MBA program as an investment in my business and began to examine executive MBA programs where classes were held on Fridays and Saturdays so I could combine work and school,” she says. Childs, whose company is fast approaching $3 million, found what she was looking for at Columbia University and set out to secure her MBA.

Fiona Wilson, a lecturer at Simmons School of Management in Boston, which offers the only MBA program in the U.S. designed specifically for women, believes that going back to school provides more than skills—it gives women entrepreneurs a chance to broaden their networks through business plan competitions and other forums.

Says Wilson, “Entrepreneurs always ask, ‘Can I really afford the money or the time to go back to school?’ I believe this is the wrong question. Rather, they should ask, ‘What is the opportunity cost of not going back to school? Do I have the skills and the social capital necessary to grow with my business?’”

Alter, who reports 2005 sales of $5 million for PC Torque, advises that to get through school while working, women entrepreneurs need to be prepared, set goals and remember it isn’t forever. “This crazy part of your life—juggling a successful business and school—is not permanent. This is not the way life will be. This is not the life to which you have committed yourself,” says Alter.

Childs recommends that you plan carefully, communicate with your professors and your teammates, and don’t procrastinate. One of the most valuable lessons Childs learned back at school was teamwork. “You are given so much work, you cannot possibly do it on your own—certainly not while working full time. Each team member must contribute. I always found that our end product was substantially better than what any one of us could have delivered on an individual basis. And isn’t that what being an entrepreneur and realizing a vision is all about?”

Aliza Sherman Risdahl (www.mediaegg.com) is an author, speaker and radio producer specializing in minority and women’s issues.