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What types of experience do I need to have to open a business?

I want to become a young entrepreneur and have many businesses. #business #entrepreneurship #business-development

business entrepreneurship business-development
Thank you comment icon Hey Kiara, I feel that a job as a product manager can give you great experience and lay a foundation for opening your own business. As a product manager you act as the "CEO" of your product including business case development, pricing and profitability, product strategy, as well as product design & creation. I have started a business as well as been a product manager and find lots of similarities. Good luck! Zach Sivertson
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Ken’s Answer

The first thing for you to do is to get to know yourself well enough to determine which type of business might best be suited for you as an individual based on your personality traits. Then as you get closer to knowing what the proper business might be, get to know and work with people in those businesses to learn how a successful business operates.


Getting to know yourself and how your personality traits relate to people involved in various career opportunities is very important in your decision making process. During my many years in Human Resources and College Recruiting, I ran across too many students who had skipped this very important step and ended up in a job situation which for which they were not well suited. Selecting a career area is like buying a pair of shoes. First you have to be properly fitted for the correct size, and then you need to try on and walk in the various shoe options to determine which is fits the best and is most comfortable for you to wear. Following are some important steps which I developed during my career which have been helpful to many .

Ken recommends the following next steps:

The first step is to take an interest and aptitude test and have it interpreted by your school counselor to see if you share the personality traits necessary to enter the field. You might want to do this again upon entry into college, as the interpretation might differ slightly due to the course offering of the school. However, do not wait until entering college, as the information from the test will help to determine the courses that you take in high school. Too many students, due to poor planning, end up paying for courses in college which they could have taken for free in high school.
Next, when you have the results of the testing, talk to the person at your high school and college who tracks and works with graduates to arrange to talk to, visit, and possibly shadow people doing what you think that you might want to do, so that you can get know what they are doing and how they got there. Here are some tips: ## http://www.wikihow.com/Network ## ## https://www.themuse.com/advice/nonawkward-ways-to-start-and-end-networking-conversations ## ## https://www.themuse.com/advice/4-questions-to-ask-your-network-besides-can-you-get-me-a-job?ref=carousel-slide-1 ##
Locate and attend meetings of professional associations to which people who are doing what you think that you want to do belong, so that you can get their advice. These associations may offer or know of intern, coop, shadowing, and scholarship opportunities. These associations are the means whereby the professionals keep abreast of their career area following college and advance in their career. You can locate them by asking your school academic advisor, favorite teachers, and the reference librarian at your local library. Here are some tips: ## https://www.careeronestop.org/BusinessCenter/Toolkit/find-professional-associations.aspx?&frd=true ## ## https://www.themuse.com/advice/9-tips-for-navigating-your-first-networking-event ##
It is very important to express your appreciation to those who help you along the way to be able to continue to receive helpful information and to create important networking contacts along the way. Here are some good tips: ## https://www.themuse.com/advice/the-informational-interview-thank-you-note-smart-people-know-to-send?ref=recently-published-2 ## ## https://www.themuse.com/advice/3-tips-for-writing-a-thank-you-note-thatll-make-you-look-like-the-best-candidate-alive?bsft_eid=7e230cba-a92f-4ec7-8ca3-2f50c8fc9c3c&bsft_pid=d08b95c2-bc8f-4eae-8618-d0826841a284&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=daily_20171020&utm_source=blueshift&utm_content=daily_20171020&bsft_clkid=edfe52ae-9e40-4d90-8e6a-e0bb76116570&bsft_uid=54658fa1-0090-41fd-b88c-20a86c513a6c&bsft_mid=214115cb-cca2-4aec-aa86-92a31d371185&bsft_pp=2 ##
- During my years in Human Resources I have found many instances that the best way of becoming involved in a business is to work for an existing successful business of the type which you would like to have and become the best employee possible, as through this process many people have had the business turned over to them when the owner decided to make other plans and/or had the opportunity to become partner or co-owner of the business. - - If you are interested in learning about setting up and running a business, there is a free service called SCORE (Service Corp of Retired Executives) which is part of the Small Business Administration, which will match you with retired executives of similar businesses to help you develop and run your small business. They also put on helpful workshops. You can find them by doing a Google Search for SCORE.
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G. Mark’s Answer

Something I haven't seen mentioned anywhere is the fact that about 70 percent of businesses are started by folks using experience and training from prior employment. This demonstrates to me that 1) Experience in a field is a great springboard, 2) Employees often are not bored with what they do, but excited to the point that they want to do more and better, and 3) Folks doing what they enjoy don't keep doing it, but are creatively solving problems and coming up with ways to extend and improve what they're doing. Employers can either think of a former employee as someone who "took advantage of what we taught and left," or, since we are all here temporarily, and what we leave behind should be more than fertilizer, should think of a former employee as a mentee who will carry on what they started and grow it. The answer to your question is that I would recommend you do a job you enjoy and that excites you, learn it, do it as well as you can, and use the environment to be creative and innovate ways to do it better. Fresh eyes on a problem do this. What college and training are for are to learn from what other smart people have spent so much effort to find out. Innovation is not re-inventing the wheel or independently discovering something you could learn by studying what others have done, but building on it, and using it to spark new combinations and variations and amplifications and improvements. When I got to Bell Labs I was given a huge stack of folders with designs and requirements and systems and processes. I said, "So, when I read all these and learn them, I'll get promoted?" The answer was, "No, when you read all these and learn them, we'll let you touch something in the lab. If all you did was learn these, well, we already have these books. What would we need you for?" Newton once said, "If I have seen farther than other men, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants." With all the communication and processing power and information accessibility we have today, it should be pretty easy to find some giants' shoulders to stand on.
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Greg’s Answer

Learn and know how to manage your cash flow. It is very important to understand your potential customer base and how you will offer a product or service that is unique. There are many things you can study, but I would recommend really understanding and trying to apply the Porter's five forces model. I'm not sure if you would seek an investment but understanding these items above are an important part of building out your business plan.
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Stephen’s Answer

Truth is you don't need ANY experience to start a business. The best experience you're going to get is the experience of starting a business... so get after it. When I was 8 years old, I had a street-side chewing gum stand (everyone else had lemonade stands... so I went for chewing gum - haha!). When I was 10, I made pressed-flower bookmarks with my mom, and then walked the neighborhood door-to-door selling them. When I was 12, I was into doing magic tricks and would get hired regularly to perform at children's birthday parties. Whatever your age, you have PLENTY of opportunities! It doesn't have to be your life's passion - just start something... anything... you'll like make a little money, but the experience you get will be valuable as you start your next one... and your next one after that!

OK, that said... there ARE lots of other types of experience that will help you. In fact, almost anything to do with any aspect of building or running business will be valuable. You could learn accounting, so you understand business financials. You could do marketing, so you learn how to reach and motivate a customer base. You could do product management, so you'll learn how to translate market feedback into a compelling marketable product (or service). To me, those are three of the most important areas to learn. Every business will start with some kind of product or service - so learning how to listen to the needs of a marketplace and turn that into a solution is key. Every business will need to reach and motivate a set of customers, so learning how to do that is also critical. And of course, every business (even non-profits) will have revenues and expenses to manage - learning how they interact, and how to track and manage them well, is also super valuable.

No matter what kind of business you start, I think it starts with deciding who your CORE customer is, and getting to know them intimately. Start by defining a small, very specific type of customer. Talk to them. Understand what it is they NEED... BEFORE you start creating or even defining your "product" (or service). Even if YOU would be a core customer for your business - don't just listen to yourself. Find others. Ideally find potential customers who don't know you so well. They will give you the most honest feedback. Anyway, find them and spend a lot of time with them. Then, when you think you really understand what they need... start SMALL. Start by creating something very simple that addresses an important PART of their need. Don't try to address their whole problem at once! Often you can do this without having to make a big investment of your time or money (yet). Create something small and basic and show it your customer. Then listen to them carefully. Do they find it useful? Would they actually use it? What is the 1 or 2 most important things they would ask you to change or improve upon? They will tell you exactly what you need to do differently or to improve upon.

And, believe it or not, THAT is basically the whole process to getting launched. You just keep doing that over and over and over again: listening to your core customer, giving them a piece of a solution to react to, getting their direct feedback, making changes or improvements based on their feedback, and then starting with another cycle of the same process.

The reason it's good to start with a small, "core" audience is that it allows you to focus on solving one or two parts of a bigger problem - a small audience that all share the same problem will most likely give you consistent feedback you can easily build into the next pass of your solution. A large audience will give you TOO MUCH... and too different... feedback. It won't be so clear what's most important for you to improve next. In that case it's more likely you'll try to do a little bit to please everyone, and end up with a solution that doesn't really excite anyone. So start with a small, core audience and work through several passes to give them better-and-better versions that they can ultimately get really excited about. If you do that, they'll start paying you for it - and THAT is the point at which you have really started your business! Then you have a core set of passionate customers. From that strong base it is much easier to broaden your market, and expand your solution.

GOOD LUCK TO YOU!!!
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