GUIDE: How To Get A Winning Business Idea Going PART3
Hey everyone,
welcome to this third and final post on business ideas and development.
This guide will take you through the steps needed to find your passion and skills, and how to use them to create your perfect business idea.
Here are links to the first and second part of this guide:
Click here to access PART1 of this guide!
Click here to access PART2 of this guide!
Right, let's get this final part of the puzzle under way!
This post is all about validating and testing your business idea.
But don't worry if your idea doesn't pass the vetting or validating phase.
Just pick one of your other ideas you created by following the first and second part of this guide, and put them through the same process.
So now take a look at all the ideas you came up with.
- Which one of them is the most exciting for you?
- Which idea really gets you going?
- Which one is the most promising?
Once you made a decision, it's time to put your idea through some tests.
Now if your business idea is not ticking all the right boxes, you have two choices to take:
Scratch the idea off completely and pick another one.
Make changes to the idea so it DOES meet all the criteria for a winning business.
In the first two parts of this guide we went over a lot information.
We went over motivation, your unique excellence, qualifications, and target markets.
Now where all these criteria overlap, is where winning business ideas are hiding.
Incorporating all these concepts is the blueprint for a successful business.
First of all, let's talk about self-assessing your business idea
After all, you came up with the idea, so you're in the best position to answer tricky questions about it!
1: Does my idea actually meet my needs?
2: Does my idea use my excellence?
- Will it be emotionally fulfilling
- Does it use my natural excellence?
- Do I have a real passion for this idea?
- Can I utilize my strengths?
3: Am I qualified to actually make this happen?
- Do I know everything I need to know?
- What do I need to learn?
- Do have the skills to run this business model?
- Do I have enough knowledge on this niche?
4: Am I adressing a specific market?
- Are you meeting a need in the market with your idea?
- Do you actually WANT to solve their problem?
- Do you have a clear idea on who your audience is?
Don't worry if the idea already exists! You bring your own uniqueness to the market! Competition is not necessarily bad!
Think further. Dig deep to find the right answers:
What offer do you most want to create and share with the world?
Which offer do customers really want to buy?
Do you feel a call to offer this product to the market?
So now that we have put the ideas through a first round of vetting validating, it’s time to dig a little deeper. This first elimination round was focused on yourself. If your idea passed this vetting round, it's time to scrutinize it a bit more.
There are three main areas that we have to test before we can actually get started on our new business venture.
- Audience
- Industry
- Financially viable
Let's start with audience testing
We need feedback from our actual audience, from our ideal customers. We want to know what they think and feel when getting in contact with our new idea.
If you already have an audience through your website or mailing list, you can run a survey by your existing customer base.
Sites like surveymonkey make it easy to setup and share a survey. Create one and send to your email list, your social media followers, or create popup on your website.
Even if you don't have any of those resources, you can still run the survey by family and friends. Although the preferred way is to actually get your target audience to fill in these surveys.
Since family and friends might not be completely honest with you, they are biased by default and are probably not identifying as your 'ideal customer'.
No, the best way is to find where your customers are hanging out, and actually ask them questions!
Now this could be online or offline! Imagine you're creating a service for social media marketing for coffeeshops.
The easiest way to validate that idea is to ask actual coffeeshop owners, right?
So make a list of 10-20 potential customers and reach out to them.
Ask if they would be willing to do a quick 5-10 minute interview with you.
This doesn't have to be hard and painful. You could actually have fun with this!
This is your frickin business, you worked hard to get this idea, this is your precious baby goddammit!
Show love and enthusiasm for it. People will take notice!
Right, now that we have the audience covered. Let’s test if our business idea is financially sound!
Look it’s simple.
If you don’t make money with your business, it’s not a business!
(Yes, I will be adding any opportunistic Terry Pratchett references I can find to my posts!)
You just created an expensive hobby!
So we have to make sure the potential for a decent income is there. Since your business needs to make enough money to cover your expenses and financial requirements!
First of all, think about how much money you need.
Dig deep to figure out how much salary you’ll need to pay yourself to keep living your current lifestyle.
Look, we would all like to create a business that earns 6-7 figures annually, ammiright?
However, let me tell you a little secret…
In this day and age, you don’t NEED to be a millionaire to live like one. If you’re free from working, and you’re earning the amount you need to live the life you wish to, you’re already living the life of a millionaire!
You can enjoy luxury cruises, holidays, flights, and anything else if you get smart about it. You don’t need to buy a yacht, just rent one for a week. You don’t need to buy a villa, rent one! You can rent the most extravagant sports car you can think of for 1-2 years instead of having to cough up the HUGE cost to buy the car.
Instead of trying to acquire material assets and possessions, learn to earn what you need to experience those things temporarily, until you wish to move on… Doing things this way will give you a taste of a millionaires’ lifestyle, without having to have millions in the bank!
Remember, your business is your financial vehicle. Work out the numbers you need to earn to live the life you’ve designed, and then generate those numbers from your business…
Now that you know how much your lifestyle is going to cost you, it’s time to think about your startup cost.
Before you can start your business and get clients, you’ll need to make an investment.
Think about expenses such as office supplies, business license, software that needs to be bought, or other equipment.
What kind of investment do you need for training and learning new skills?
What will be the marketing cost for your business? You’ll need a website, email marketing software, and more.
If you have answered all the questions, you’ll have crystal clear picture of how much the business is going to cost you to startup and run.
The next step is checking what the earning potential of your business is.
Think about the following questions:
• What can I charge for my product?
• How many clients can I accommodate?
• How quickly can I get new clients?
The last part of the puzzle is testing the industry.
We’ll try to identify successful people in our chosen industry to get expert feedback from them.
Make a list of 5-10 people who truly succeeded in building a business in your industry. Reach out to them and ask them a few simple questions:
- What is the biggest risk or pitfall you encountered when starting your business?
- How did you build your business?
- What kind of investment did you make?
Make sure to keep the conversation focused on them and their experience, and not so much about you.
It’s so important to truly know your industry and business model. I cannot stress this enough.
Try to engage your industry. So apart from talking to experts, look where your industry meets. Take a class, go to a conference or seminar, or find online forums or groups.
If you have done all of these steps, and you feel confident and assured that your idea is holding up after this kind of scrutiny, it’s time to give it a go.
This could be start of your ideal business, based on your qualifications and strengths, and using your interest and passions as a guideline.
I wish you all the luck on this exciting journey!
Very nice, I hope to learn from you :)
Thanks @rendra-permana. I'll be adding more of this soon! :)
Truly excellent series!