No Experience Necessary

Contrary to its slacker image, Generation X may ultimately prove to be the most entrepreneurial generation in history. Surprised? Don't be. As author Jennifer Kushell explains in No Experience Necessary: The Young Entrepreneur's Guide to Starting a Business (The Princeton Review, $12 paper), starting a business while still in your teens or 20s isn't the anomaly it once was. Indeed, statistics cited by Kushell in-dicate that those 25 years old and younger launch businesses at the highest rate in the nation.

As a Gen X entrepreneur herself (presiding over a membership organization for young business owners), Kushell seeks to inspire and inform others wishing to follow in her footsteps. "If you look at the skills and experience that create a solid foundation for entrepreneurship," Kushell says, "it is not uncommon to find that younger people are probably the best equipped for self-employment."

Which isn't to suggest that it's easy. Prepare to sacrifice; prepare to show initiative. "What you will read here is what really happens to you, and what you really need to know when you start a company," Kushell writes. "From what I have seen, no other book has ever taught a young entrepreneur how not to starve when they are broke, how not to get carded while entertaining clients, and other very important, yet seemingly trivial information about dealing with your life as a business owner." Written in a straightforward style, No Experience Necessary seeks to fill that gap.

This article was originally published in the September 1997 print edition of Entrepreneur with the headline: No Experience Necessary.