Can you start a business without experience?

Sure why not? Does experience help? Sometimes it does other times it does not. With experience, you can limit yourself; you can get stuck in doing things the way they always have been done or the way “they” say it should be done. When you don’t have experience, you just do it. Sometimes you do something because nobody told you that you couldn’t.

Having experience in business could simply mean that you have failed before. Because if you hadn’t failed, would you be attempting the project you have in mind? OK, so sometimes people do have experience in business and are successful and only want to attempt a second project now that the first has taken off.

The knowledge is out there, anyone can learn it and apply it. You have to start somewhere and at some point, you will begin something and not have ‘the experience’. But I disagree, you do have the experience, all of the actions you have taken in your life are experiences that can be applied towards running a business. Sure some may be more suited or even more direct experience but there are so many things that come into play which can be counted as experience. Here are just a few that come to mind which could be applied to business experience.

• Writing – In business you have to be able to articulate what you want to say in a number of different styles, from emails to news copy.
• Meetings – So much business is conducted in meetings, knowing how to run one maintains professionalism.
• Babysitting – It amazed me when I became a supervisor, how much of the job was over glorified babysitting. Learning how to deal with people is a huge advantage.
• Checkbooks – Being able to understand numbers and balance books will help to keep your business successful.
• Perseverance – This one quality alone can make or break your business, too many people want to give up at the first sign of a struggle.
• Organizing – Being in charge means to be the organizer, you are the one who makes sure everyone is doing what they should be doing.

These are just a few examples of the way that the duties in your day to day life can pertain to the skills needed in business. There are several things that every business owner needs, creativity and persistence being a couple of the biggest items. you have to be able to think on your feet and stick with it, no matter how difficult it may become, you need to keep your sights on your dream and fight for it. So if anyone tells you that you can’t run a business or that you shouldn’t be in business because you don’t have experience, you can tell them that you have a lot of experience and then you can relate to them how your life experience corresponds to your business.

So what do you think of this idea of starting a business without experience?

What experience do you think someone needs to run a business?

How should they gain that experience?