Honestly, this is absolutely the wrong questions!
Being a small business owner is one of the easiest things imaginable. You perform a service or sell a product and BAM!
Congratulations, you are a small business owner!
It takes almost nothing to be a small business owner. If you have sold anything online via eBay, Facebook Marketplace or Etsy, you are further along in your small business journey than you think you are. Posting the listing for sale, printing the label and making sure the package gets to the mailbox or meeting up with the prospective buyer for your mom's old futon. All of the skills you just used to make that casual sale and extra spending money are the same skills you will need for a more formal or larger scale successful small business ownership journey.
The real question is, where do you even start? In my opinion, it doesn’t really matter. For me, I started in the middle. I started selling things, had marginal success and then I worked backwards to understand what I needed to make my business legitimate. I got insurance, I got an EIN, I got an accountant, I started researching marketing and sales.
I would argue that the most important part of any small business ownership journey is making that first sale. Just getting up and putting yourself, or your stuff, out there is the biggest first step.
Don't worry about looking stupid or failing. After all, the number one characteristic every successful entrepreneur has is resilience. Everyone, small business or no, fails sometimes. We trip over our own feet, we stay the wrong thing or we wear last season's fashion. At the end of the day, most of your mistakes don't really matter to anyone other than you.
So put yourself out there already!
Post that handmade scarf on Etsy.
Sell that old designer hand bag.
Post your ad for baby sitting on Care.com.
Entrepreneurships is waiting for you!