Starting a business – generating & evaluating business ideas
Starting your own business in 4 easy steps
Step 1 of 4 – Generating and evaluating business ideas
By Simon Misiewicz of www.optimise-gb.com -25th October 2011
Are you a student of education or life wanting to remove the shackles of employment to start their own business? Are you in need of support / resources to make your decision a little easier? If you answered yes to either question then this article is for you.
What business should I be in?
This is a fundamental question and needs to be answered in detail. Take a blank piece of paper and in the centre draw out a box with the words “business idea” and then four boxes with the words: “Passion” (What motivates you, gets you out of bed fully energised) “Capability (What I am good at), “Ethics” (What are my beliefs and values), and “Needs” (How much money, what security do I need to provide for myself and family and what customer needs are you trying to serve).
To be successful in business you need determination to drive the business forward when times are good and more importantly when the chips are down and you need to dig deep. It is therefore essential that you are passionate about what you do. Doing anything in life cannot be just about money.
If you have a high level of expertise in your field then you are more likely to succeed than those less skilled.
What do you believe in and what are your values? Be careful that you do not undertake a business that goes against your values, beliefs and principles.
What are your and your family needs? This is a significant question. If you have a need for regular income to pay for life’s essentials but you do not have any customers for your business idea then you are likely to come against hard times and may not be able to provide financial security for yourself and family. This is likely to cause hardship and frustration in your personal relationship and your own emotions.
Needs also focuses on your customers. If you live in a very cold country, making iced tea may not be the most sensible idea. It is therefore very important to know your potential customers intimately so that you understand their needs. These needs should then be the basis of your business ideas.
If you are now thinking of a business idea then you may have many ideas running through your mind. The best thing to do is write them all down. Do not worry about the volume of ideas at this time. The more you can encourage your mind to be creative the better.
Once you have all your ideas you can then evaluate them against the objectives that you have set from the above. For each idea you can take suggest if they would have a big impact on your objectives or a small impact. Only focus on those ideas that have a big impact.
Once you have assembled the big / small impact you will need to decide if they will be easy to implement or hard to implement. Ideas that can be done within a week without too much investment are easy to implement. Those ideas that take longer than a week and require time and effort from others or requires significant financial investment will be considered hard to implement.
You are now ready to focus on the big impact and easy to implement solutions. Do not worry if you do not have big impact and easy to implement solutions as long as you have the big impact, it is up to you how you grasp the challenge and achieve your dream.
You should now be in a good position to start writing your business plan.
.
If you have any additional questions or would like additional support then please contact us
Good luck
Simon
