Monday, March 30, 2009

Start-up

Starting up a new business,

Starting up your own business is allot of fun. It involves allot of creative thinking, imagination, decisiveness and maturity.

If you don't like not having somebody tell you what to do, then starting your a business is probably not for you.

We can divide the planning stage of your business in three steps.

  1. Get a product/service that you can offer
  2. Find a market for it
  3. Mold your objectives around it


This has been the traditional way and it still is order in which most entrepreneur make their plans. It is the safest. You find something that you can make money from, then just work your way around it.

I believe it is more important to make your business suit your needs instead of the other way around, too many business owners find themselves in a position where they make allot of money and end up unhappy for various reasons.

In the end, starting a business should be more than just about making money, it should fulfill you in some way, it must improve you quality of life.

I recommend putting your objectives first, like this:

  1. Find out your objectives
  2. Find a potential un(der)explored market that meets your needs
  3. Search or design a product or service that will fit in it


In future posts I'll go indepth in each of these steps, but this is a simple breakdown of the above points:


1-Find out your objectives

Before starting your business, any business, you should look in yourself to find the reasons you want to do it. Be specific! In the end your business should be there to fill your objectives first.
Now, don't work with the intangible here, think of feelings and action, "become rich" and "stop working" are not good goals. Work on the feelings it gives you.

For example, rarely does somebody want to become rich, most of the times they want the lifestyle of being rich instead. Money for the sake of money does not improve your life, spending it does.
Or,
Not working is very boring, there is a huge amount of free time on your when everybody else is busy (working!) and while it is easy to achieve it is very hard to maintain. Instead "Having more time to spend with the family", "Making money in a way that I enjoy", "Be able to work from anywhere in the world". The first and third probably gives you almost the same end result and is tangible, the second you probably would be happy to get to work.

Bottom line: Choose something that will improve your life quality.


2-Find a potential un(der)explored market

Every time you see something and think to yourself "that sucks", "that's unsafe", "it should be easier" etc... it's a potential market to be explored. You may or may not have the means to explore it, but to start you only need one.

Next make sure the market is compatible with your objectives. If you tapping into an activity that requires your presence, such as most services, it will be incompatible with any objective that you may have of freeing up your time or working less.


3-Search or design a product or service that will fit in it

This is where the beginning ends, depending on your resourses you may design the product yourself, hire somebody to do it for you or buy it from somebody.

Your product should have something that will make it unique and different from any direct competition it may face. That will be your winning edge.
However your winning edge doesn't have to be in the product itself, instead it can be in the way you present it to the public or in the way sell it or how you support it or all of these.


Getting all the above steps done already puts you on the top 15% of all the entrepreneurs. Next comes the execution.



~Bruno A. R. Faria

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