Who started a Business with no knowlege of what he was selling?

Hello everyone!
I'm a young student from Switzerland and I just started thinking about how much business opportunities are out there!

I was wondering if someone could share a personal experience on how he or she started a business without any knowledge.

For example, any computer geeks out there that began selling coffee beans imported from Jamaica?

 

Don't you think that you could learn on the way? I'm not talking about a huge starting capital...

 

Sounds like about 9*% of so called SEO's.

So yes is the answer 9*% of those purporting to be SEO's or SEO experts go blindly in where those with more sense fear to tread without a huge amount of reaearch.

* = pick a number 1 to 9

 

OP, in 2000 I started a business, it was a great idea, had alot of potential and at the time would have been very little competition. But it was the lack of experience and contacts that left me high and dry. I had businesses wanting to sell their products to me at "wholesale" but the price they wanted was already higher then what I could purchase it for at a normal shop.
Your example of "selling beans"; well these days its so easy to communicate internationally and find sellers, but still alot of risk, and without knowing what you are doing, you could easily be overpaying for low quality (or even damaged) product that you could be liable for. In the same way, there are people who use dropshipping, and find out all the products are fake, which means chargebacks so you lose everything but the rippoff merchants make the money.

OP, always remember this:
A man with money, meets a man with experience;
the man with the money gets the experience;
the man with the experience gets the money.

Which one are you?

 

If you want to start a business the best thing to do is to get a business plan before, you do anything else.
If you don't you are setting yourself up to fail in the future.

Another thing you should consider is to follow your passion. Don't do it for the money. The best thing you can do is when you over deliver value to your customers which sets you apart from the rest.

 

Thanks for all your replays!
I was just wondering, how are you supposed to learn how to resell from a dropshipping company when you have never done it before?

 

Learning from mistake may be the best way for anyone to get things right, and I totally agree when you said " The life lessons are worth the time ".


Well, I see that you are motivated, which is the first step anyone should do, but it's not the biggest step at all, there is much more things you have to do as well.
I've never had a business offline, though I read about it a lot just to use it someday whenever i have to.
I would advice you to go through these simple steps, and everything will be just fine i suppose if you were that good.
1. Get a business plan ready, brainstorming is your friend, take your time and write down every single idea that comes to your mind, keep in mind that this process is not something you do just in few days, give it time, go outside your house and see how business is done around you, write down on a paper every idea that comes to your mind, even if it seems useless today, someday it might make you rich.

2. Learn from the experts, read success stories, keep in mind that most of them started with a failure, try to cover each and every angle of the field you have chosen, don't use what you learned only in business, apply it anywhere, things will get clearer day by day.

3. you learned a lot, now you are eligible to study the market around you, you can define whether what you are about to do is right or wrong, decisions will take place in this step, pricing, location, providers and all what you need.

4. Everything is on paper now, it's time to bring it on !
Investment is your twin, where to invest ? how much is the budget ? how to invest ? marketing first ? or there is other priorities ? want to hire someone ? or you are superman and you can do it by yourself ? don't hesitate to make a big step if you were sure of what your doing, drop the blurry ideas, you just getting started, keep it clear, nice and slow.

5. You've done your first service, fine, bring all the related papers and study them, make plans for the next 2 years, is this income enough ? will you be able to grow and develop your business if you continue this way ? there must be a part from the process where you can charge extra, or pay less, look for it, and refresh your providers list because they have competitors too, if not, Negotiate.

Now i hope you all the best buddy, it would be lovely if you hire me later as a security agent :d LOL

 

Ha ha! Thank you for your considerations, who knows what's going to happen. I'll come back to your offer in some years from now

 

I thnik you need to have a tleast some knowledge of wht ayou're selling, to be successful. You can teach yourself though, that's the best part

 

"I was just wondering, how are you supposed to learn how to resell from a dropshipping company when you have never done it before?"

This is the curse of the internet - you can spend years trying to find good sources of info on stuff like this online, when 1 week of actually trying it yourself will teach you a hundred times more

Don't spend too long looking for people to tell you how to do things - the people who succeed do it their own way. Then a bunch of other people copy them!