Most entrepreneurs I know used to have a management 9 to 5 job before starting their own business. I can assume that while being at their regular job they learned about managing people in various ways, either on paid trainings from the employer, either as a result of their day to day tasks. But I hardly saw any entrepreneurs taking management classes, and still, entrepreneurship is mostly about putting people at work to accomplish the company mission.
Professional development is probably one of the things that shouldn’t stop when you open a business. Still, I can understand why you don’t have this on your mind when starting, because you need to do most of the functions a company has – sales, production, customer care, development and logistics.
For the entrepreneurs that start a business from their professional career (meaning they are very good at something and they turn it into a business) sales training is what they miss most. They are for example very good programmers but lack the time and skills to sell whatever they are putting on the market.
Also, while starting up, is very easy to be so focused on the day by day business operation and become totally non-focused on the fiscal and regular regulations. Some corporate finance training might do the trick, but how many entrepreneurs have you seen going back to school?
Starting a business is never easy. But if you stop learning and improving your professional skills, you just make everything harder. Sometimes is hard to see the forest because of the trees.