Business owners urged to learn from peer experiences

Small business owners could benefit from contacting their peers and learning from their experiences, an entrepreneur has said.

Adopting such a practice could be vital for preventing business owners from walking into pitfalls their peers may have fallen into before, says Tessa Lyndon-Skeggs, founder of Women in Business for RBS and Natwest.

"I would say that the biggest challenge for all businesses, whether they're male- or female-led, is that most small businesses don't know what they don't know until they've made that mistake," she said.

"By calling on professional and peer-to-peer support, you actually learn from other people so you don't have to make those mistakes."

According to Ms Lyndon-Skeggs, the last few years have also seen the support network for women's enterprise "changed hugely".

Some 32% of men have either set up a business for themselves or considered doing so, compared to just 19% of women, according to the NatWest and RBS Small Business Monitor 2008.