Are you clear about your Business Idea?
Having worked with a startup since quite some time now, I have realized that one does not need to know rocket science to be an entrepreneur. You just have to plan and plan well. Right from the ideation stage to the execution to the allocation of your resources, all your activities should be planned well. Your idea need not be revolutionary in order for you to start; it just has to be in place!
Do You Lack Clarity?
One key reason why most startups fail is due to the lack of this clarity. ‘What do you want to achieve through this endeavor? What solution are you attempting to provide? Who are your target customers?’ – these are some crucial questions which need to be answered before you venture out.
These questions might seem redundant at the beginning but eventually you will realize that the answers to these questions hold the key to your success. As your venture grows, there would be different teams pulling and pushing this idea in different directions- your marketing team will have a different understanding of your product/service, your product team will have a different approach. At such a juncture your vision of the product/service is important to bring everybody on the same plane. Each team might be right in their own way and (without sounding too skeptical) might be thinking about the good of the organization, but there is only so much that can be achieved with the resourceson hand.
Don’t Be Led Astray
With new technologies coming up and new segments joining your target group, the lure to deviate from your core idea will be very strong. You will always find a better website, a better team and a better technology in the similar field of business and you would be tempted to incorporate their ideas into yours. This might be detrimental to your core idea. I am not suggesting do not take inspiration, I am just saying do not lose out on your key focus.
The clearer you are about your product/service, the easier it will be for you to steer your team in the right direction. Remember you cannot be everything to everybody but you can always be something to somebody!
About the Author: Shilpi Choudhury is a SEO, Social Media and Business Blogger based out of Bangalore, India. She is currently working for Vavia Technologies, Bangalore, specialists in developing Web and Mobile Applications.
Photo Credit: rachaelvoorhees
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So You’ve Got an Idea – Now What? 8 Foolproof Steps from Idea to Implementation
If you’re reading this blog, you probably had the realization at some point in your life that you could do it better. Maybe you were working for someone, and realized that there was a better way to run the business. Or maybe you were using a product and had a flash of insight about how to improve it. Or perhaps you had a brilliant idea for a product that could change the world.
But you’re realistic. You know things are never as easy as they seem. You’re willing to gamble your time and money on your idea, but what’s the first step towards realizing your dream? And how do you make sure you don’t lose all your money on a business that ends up failing?
Where to Focus?
The answer is to focus on the customer, not the product. It’s easiest to demonstrate this approach by example. Let’s say I have an idea for a new kind of recipe site, designed specifically for professional chefs. Before spending thousands of dollars building the site and creating all the content, I would go and talk to chefs and ask what they would like to see in a recipe site. I’d look for forums or Facebook groups for chefs and ask for ideas. I’d put my vision out and try to get feedback. And I’d do all of this before building the product at all.
Testing, Testing…
So now I’ve got a sense of how to build this amazing recipe site. My instinct might be to build out a huge site now and have a big release party in 6 months. But what if everybody was excited about it on forums and interviews, but nobody wants to pay? Or what if, when the site is actually built, it turns out to not really work the way people want it to? That’s where the idea of a minimal viable product comes in. Once you feel like you have a basic handle on your customer, create the minimum experience you need in order to test if you’re on the right path. For my recipe site, I might just create a site for desserts, with plans to expand into other meals if it goes well. I might have a very rudimentary billing system, and only the most important of my site’s future features.
Crowdsource and Improve
Once you’ve got some people using your product or service, you’ll have a better understanding of where to go. So far, I haven’t spent too much time or money on my recipe site, so if it turns out it’s a flop, I haven’t lost everything. I can talk to my customers and find out what’s going wrong: Do they have a hard time finding the recipes? Do they like the site but not want to pay as much as I’m charging? Or is the whole idea just not something they’re interested in?
If the answer to the last question is “yes”, it’s a disappointing day, but at least I haven’t wasted a huge amount of time and money. But otherwise, I’ve learned a lot from talking to our first customers. Now I can make changes – changes I probably never would have thought of myself, or changes I thought were unimportant but that my customers really value.
8 Foolproof Steps from Idea to Implementation
The process in its entirety looks like this:
1. Have an idea.
2. Talk to potential customers about the idea.
3. Build a minimal viable product or experience.
4. Get customers.
5. Learn what they like and don’t like.
6. Make changes.
7. Repeat 4-6 until you have a business people are steadily buying from.
If you get to 7, congratulations! It’s time for:
8. Scale out your business and grow like crazy.
The fallacy that too many entrepreneurs fall for is thinking that step 8 comes before step 3. They think (and I’ve thought this, too!) that, if they could just build the perfect product or service, the customers will come. In fact, you need to have the customers in order to know what the perfect product even is.
If you’d like to read more about these ideas, check out Steve Blank’s Four Steps to Epiphany and Eric Ries’ The Lean Startup.
About the Author: Michael Kaiser-Nyman is the CEO and founder of Impact Dialing, an easy to use power dialer and hosted predictive dialer for small businesses, call centers, and political campaigns.
Photo Credit: Roomic Cube
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Is My Idea Good Enough to Start a Business From?
Today is the second part of our four part series in response to a reader’s question. If you missed part 1, you can catch up here.
The question at hand today is “Is your business idea good enough”? As we all know, “good enough” is relative, but I will provide some ideas for you to think through in answering that question for yourself.
Ask the Question Another Way
I hear this a lot, “do you think my idea is good enough to start a business?”…and normally what people mean is “do you think I’ll make money doing this?”.
The short answer is- most ideas you can think of are good enough to start a business around – in short you can probably make some money doing almost anything.
The real question is whether or not your business idea is worth the risk, and will provide adequate reward if it works out. For sake of argument let’s say adequate return is enough money for you to live on, at least replacing your current income.
So now the question changes once again, this time to “given my idea, what is the potential?” We’ll talk about potential in a minute, but first let’s dispel some myths about what your business idea should be.
Business Idea Myths
To make an adequate return, your business idea doesn’t need to be:
- Revolutionary
- Totally unique
- Game changing
- Competition free
Now, you’ll make a heck of a lot more money if your idea happens to be one of the above – but the honest truth is very few of us will invent the new wheel, or be so unique we become our own category.
You can make your adequate return, and then some, if within your business idea you can see your unique selling proposition.
Unique Selling Proposition
Simply put your unique selling proposition (USP) is the reason I’d buy from you and not a competitor. What makes you special, why do you deserve a share of the market?
For example let’s say you want to start a lawn care business. You know lawns, your tomato plants are huge, and the azalea’s in your yard are the envy of the neighborhood.
Great – you’d probably make a very good lawn care person, and make money doing it. But, will you make an adequate return?
Probably not if just doing lawn care is eh extent of your idea.
Take for example: Where I live there are literally 1000’s of lawn care people. Why am I buying from you, what’s your USP?
Your potential USP’s may be:
- Creativity
- Service
- Convenience
- Price
HINT – Best not build your USP around price. It’s a very hard way to compete, and only a matter of time before somebody bigger and more efficient comes in a does it cheaper than you. Don’t believe me? Try selling toilet paper cheaper than Costco.
Okay, so you tell me “Matt, my Lawn Care business will focus on organic lawn care that is pesticide free. I offer free same day quotes for service, and tailor my schedule around the homeowners.”
Hey, now we’re on to something. You’ve taken your idea which 1000’s of people do and turned it into a special offering. If I’m into pesticide free gardening, I’m using you and not your competition who killed my cat with chemicals last spring.
The Market Potential
Once you have your business idea, and understand what your USP is, the last piece of the puzzle in deciding whether your idea is good enough is to look at the market potential and assess if it will provide your adequate return.
Three questions to ask when assessing market potential.
1) How big is the market?
2) What share can I get?
3) Is that enough?
Back to your lawn care business.
You know your area has 10,000 homeowners. There are only 2 people in your area providing organic lawn care, and you’ve heard they aren’t very shall we say “customer orientated” – given that you think you can get between 2-5% of the lawn contracts in your neighborhood (a small amount, but you are offering a very specialized service).
That means you can get around 300 contracts from your market. You also know that each lawn is worth about $200/month in profit, which works out to a profit of $60,000/month or $720,000/ year. Is that enough? Is your business idea “good enough”? That’s for you to decide when you run the numbers yourself.
I know, I know, you couldn’t do 300 lawns a month yourself so you’d have to hire people which would cut your profit, but that’s a blog post for another day.
To Summarize
You can see that deciding whether an idea is good enough to start a business around is a relative question. The good news is most ideas have the potential to make some money, they don’t need to be revolutionary, and quite often you won’t be the “game changer”. If you know your USP, and your market well enough I’m sure you can see how an “ordinary” idea could turn into extra-ordinary profits.
Your job is:
- To decide how much you need for an adequate return,
- Do you have a USP, and
- Do the market dynamics offer enough potential to pursue it?
Coming Up
Coming up next in this series we’ll look at:
Stay tuned…
Photo Credit: alancleaver_2000
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