Is It A Good Idea To Start A Business With No Experience

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Many people on my apps write to me and ask me whether they should start a business if they have no business experience. And sometimes people ask whether it is a good idea to start a business if they have no experience in that particular business niche. In this article we will go over the pros and cons of starting a business with no experience, and suggest some things you can do to increase your chance of success.

It Is Better To Have Experience

It is certainly better to have experience than not having it. Experience can help you choose a stronger business strategy overall. It can also help you avoid some of the common mistakes which have the potential to derail your business or waste resources. If you do not have a great amount of experience in business, or within your business idea niche, it is not the end of the world. What you will need to do is build a team around you which does have the necessary experience. The team can be your business partners, mentors, or advisors.

Get Mentors And Advisors

Having great mentors and advisors is a crucial component to building a successful business. Entrepreneurs (and especially first-time entrepreneurs or young entrepreneurs) should seek out mentors or advisors. But don’t just seek out any mentor who tells you that they understand business. A quality mentor must satisfy a few criteria.

The first criteria is that this potential mentor must have started and built a successful business before. And it is even better if the business that they previously built is in the same business niche as your current business. The next criteria is that this mentor must have an incentive for you to succeed. People approach things much differently when their own money is on the line. So if you find a great potential mentor or an advisor, you can offer them equity in your business to get them motivated. Another criteria for a potential mentor is that they do not look down on you as too inexperienced, and that they do not have an ego. They must respect your ideas even though their ideas are probably better.  Lastly, a potential mentor must also be a good teacher because they will need to explain many things to you along the way.

Here is a video tutorial on how to get great business advice from mentors and advisors, and why it is so important to get business help.

http://youtu.be/8qW_v1gRUI4

Someone On The Team Needs Experience

Even if you do find great mentors, when you build your team, you should make sure that the team members you bring in have complimenting skill sets to each other. Of course, if you have a tech start-up, most people should have a technology background. But you should also have at least one person who understands business, branding and marketing so that they can help guide the work of the developers.  Here is a video tutorial on how to find great business partners and co-founders.

Extremely Hard Work Can Compensate For Lack Of Experience

With hard work, you can move mountains and scale the unscalable. Hard work can definitely compensate for many things you might lack in experience. But there is no reason to approach your business solely with hard work. Hard work is an absolute must in any business. So try to also supplement it with savvy and experience.

Do You Need A Degree To Start A Business?

Many people also ask whether a business degree is necessary to start a business. While a degree is not a legal requirement to start a business, getting a degree is one way to gain experience in a number of different fields. Here is a blog post discussing whether a degree is necessary to start a business.

And here is a video tutorial discussing whether a degree is needed to start a business.

Further Business Resources

For more business-starting resources, please take a look at our business planning mobile apps. Here is the iOS business plan app and here is the Android business plan app.  Additionally, here is the iOS fundraising app. And here is the Android fundraising app. And here are our business apps on the Kindle. And here is an article where I give the argument that our Android apps are the best business apps on Android.

And please check out and subscribe to my YouTube channel where we cover many marketing topics.

Author: Alex Genadinik

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