Starting A Business With No Experience And No Business Degree

November 21, 2014

Many entrepreneurs who use my apps, take my online business courses or read my books, often ask me about starting a business with no experience and no degree. The common questions I get have to do with how to actually pull off a successful business with no money, no business education, and no business experience. If you are wondering about those same things, sit back and let me explain how to get around these challenges and put yourself in a position to succeed.

Starting A Business With No Money

Almost all entrepreneurs, regardless whether they are young or in their thirties or forties, inquire about raising money at some point of their entrepreneurial journey. Unfortunately, most people are never able to raise money, and that stops them from starting. Most entrepreneurs are advised to not get discouraged by lack of funds, and forge forward as best they can. To help you understand how to raise money for your business, here is a playlist of 20 videos that will play one after another about different ways to raise money.

Despite all the information in this video, I encourage you to try bootstrapping to get your business going without needing outside funding if possible. Here is a video tutorial on bootstrapping.

Need Mentors And Guidance

You will need to start and grow your business weather you raise money or not. If you don’t have much business experience or a business education, that is ok, but I would strongly advise you to find people who could mentor you and give you good advice.

Most new entrepreneurs feel that their journeys are very special and unique. But the truth is that first-time entrepreneurs fall into the same pitfalls time and time again. Getting a good mentor or advisor who has created a successful business before can help you avoid many common mistakes that entrepreneurs typically make. A good advisor can save you a lot of money and months of time by steering you away from mistakes you are about to make, and helping you choose a strategy that has a much higher chance of success.

Here is a video about getting guidance and finding good mentors when you don’t have much business experience.

Continue To Educate Yourself

In life and in your entrepreneurial journey, you must continue to learn, evolve and consistently work to get new skills. One website where I personally learn and also teach others is Udemy. Udemy is a website where experts can create courses. I have created 17 business and marketing courses on Udemy, and I am an instructor there. But I also try to take at least a couple of courses a month to improve my skills in whatever I might be working on at any given moment. For example, right now I am working on improving my sales skills and copywriting so I signed up for a couple of courses to learn that.

Here is a list of some of my Udemy courses.

If you are just wondering about starting your business, I recommend a course of mine on starting a business. The course takes you through each step from getting business ideas to actually starting a successful business. Here is a link to get over 60% OFF discount from the course.

Learn About Business Planning And Business Modeling Before Starting

Before jumping in and starting your business, you must create a great plan of action and completely think through your business model. Most young and first-time entrepreneurs make the mistake of jumping into a business with insufficient planning and strategy. But turning a blind eye to possible future challenges just has the effect of facing those challenges when you least expect them at times where it is possibly not easy to solve them because your business will be fully in motion which would make it tough to quickly change direction. Insufficient planning is typically a result of lack of experience and lack of foresight that comes with not understanding the steps needed to create a successful business and not being able to tell in advance what the challenges might be.

It isn’t difficult to write a business plan. Especially if you are just creating your own business plan to organize your own ideas, you need to keep a few important issues in mind. You must plan how to create a high quality product, how to promote that product, and how to do all this in a way that eventually creates a profit.

Here is a tutorial on what exactly a business model is, with some tips for how you should structure yours.

My course on starting a business that I linked to earlier in this article has a section that shows you how to write and think about each section of your business plan. Here is a brief tutorial on how to write a good business plan.

Build A Good Team Around You

You must surround yourself with good mentors and co-founders who understand your business niche and have experience in it. Finding good business partners is a far more sensitive process than you might think. Here is a tutorial on how to find good business partners and co-founders for your business.

If you need to find a technical partner to build a technical product, and you can’t find one, you may consider hiring a developer or an agency. That isn’t my favorite approach, but many people choose this option so here is a tutorial on how to work with freelance developers or agencies to get the best results out of your collaboration.

Starting A Business If You Hate Your Job

Many people start businesses because they simply hate their regular work, and want to figure out a new way to make a living. In fact, many people contact me asking me whether I think quitting a job to start a business is a good idea. This is a big life decision and I typically don’t feel comfortable telling people how to decide on it. So here are some general thoughts on it that can you help think about this decision if this is something that you are wondering.

Generally, the best businesses tend to come out of people’s passions. But escaping something you hate can be a strong passion and a tremendous motivator. If you are starting a business, you must be so motivated that every morning when you wake up, all you can think about is working on your business.

But motivation isn’t enough. You need skills, and an effort that can move a mountain which means that you should start sooner rather than later (but make sure you have a good plan first). I tend to suggest starting small by putting up a blog or a website, and trying different things on your own, to see if you are able to make money with your business ideas, and slowly improve and grow your new business.

Here is a fuller tutorial with more thoughts on some smart ways to go if you hate your work, and are wondering whether quitting and starting a business is a good idea.

Book And Course On Starting A Business

As I mentioned earlier, I have a full course on starting a business. If you prefer books instead of online courses, I also wrote a full book on starting a business by going from business ideas to actually starting your business with great fundamentals.

business book on AmazonHere is that .