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Skills and Qualifications Many people are put off from starting a business as they feel underqualified for the tasks ahead. This really should be the least of your concerns. If you have suitable ambition you can gain the qualifications through experience. The skill-level will really be industry dependant. What is it that you are trying to do? Are you going to be making something with your own hands, or paying someone to make it for you? If the former, one would assume that a high skill level is a prerequisite and that you have the necessary ability to ply your trade. Some organizational skill will certainly be a benefit. You'll soon be getting into areas of office administration that will require organizational disciplines and possibly computer skills too. Don't be overwhelmed by the computer side of things. Hardware and software is nowadays very affordable and easy to learn. I recommend that you do have or are willing to acquire some basic computer skills. As you are reading this, you already know at least the basics. An important aspect of growing a successful business enterprise is building the business on a solid and organized foundation. Office management and basic organizational discipline at the early stages of your start-up business will reap many benefits as your business starts to grow. For example, it's easy to implement a contact database when you have a dozen or so contacts. But try converting a paper system to a computerized system when you have a couple thousand contacts, and it can be quite disruptive. The same can be said for accounting systems. Using something like Quickbooks early in your business growth cycle will reap many rewards as your business grows. So it helps to have some of these skills or at least have the acumen to learn new computer skills as you go along. If you're thinking about actual paper qualification, then unless you're considering a trade that requires formal qualification, I wouldn't be too concerned about not having a degree, or whatever. Remember, your role is the idea person. You have the idea for a product or service and you need to find a way to present that to potential buyers. There are many stages needed to go from product inception to product sale, and you don't have to be an expert in all of them. Soon, you can afford to pay "experts" to operate each of the different stages for you. The key is that you have an idea for a business and the ambition to implement it through it's various stages of development. Later we'll talk about a term called "Affiliate Marketing". As an affiliate you'll generally be representing the products/services of an existing business, so the areas of business that you become involved in will be far fewer. So if you are concerned about certain aspects of running your own business, such as product development for example, then an affiliate program might be better for you. Again, we will come back to that, and each of these points in much more detail. More detail to follow.
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