If you don’t know where you are, you can’t know where to go.  

Being an outdoor person when I started thinking about doing a series of LearnDesk courses on how to start a business, I incorporated my experiences as an outdoorsman to illustrate my points. The course will contain 12 lessons going through how to conceive of an original business concept and start a business in the U.S. One important aspect of this process is taking stock of one’s own capabilities which is the object of this lesson.

One of the most difficult tasks that beginning entrepreneurs have is to make a realistic evaluation of their own abilities. Lesson 4 of my LearnDesk series covers a series of points from personal appearance to communication skills. No one likely has all the skills to run a successful outdoor-based business. The objective of this lesson is to have viewers  systematically evaluate different aspects of the business world to determine which aspects they need to improve, and which are best farmed out to others. 

Often the person who starts a business has a creative idea. This idea goes through a developmental stage to production and finally to market. It makes no difference if the idea is a manufactured product, a piece of art, a service, or an intellectual product.   Of necessity this often starts as a one-person show. Very soon the person who sparked the idea will discover he needs help to file a patent, get a proofreader, or in finding someone to make a prototype. By identifying personal strengths and weaknesses the company can be designed so that the person who started the company can be put to best use and not bogged down with the details of accounting, shipping products, etc.  

By doing an honest self-evaluation, entrepreneurs can undergo self-training to overcome their own deficiencies or search for temporary collaborators who may come from educational institutions or chance encounters.   

This course is based on my acclaimed book designed for beginning entrepreneurs, “Make Your Own Job: Anytime, Anywhere, At Any Age.” The free 45-minute video lesson is available on YouTube at the Hovey Smith Channel and may be seen below. The twelve LearnDesk lessons may be subscribed to at a cost of $200.  The lessons will be held twice a week.

There are two versions of Lesson 4. The one immediately below is longer and more complete, and the version below it (scroll down) employs photographic illustrations to illustrate the topics and is shorter. I was fighting a respiratory condition at the time I recorded the lower version and my voice was impacted towards the end. I recorded the second version after I recovered.  

Text Version Lesson 4