Have you got an idea for a business you’d like to start – or perhaps refresh the business you already have?
Here are the top 4 things I recommend you do to evaluate your ideas and build your confidence that you will succeed!
TIP 1. Go deep. Do the work and research your desired audience and likely competition. When you understand both deeply, it forces you to properly define why you are different, and why that will matter to the people you want to sell to – two of the biggest keys to success.
TIP 2. Cost it out. Calculate what it will cost to bring you to the point of launching your idea, and what you are likely to spend in your first 12 months to keep you afloat. Add this up and then divide by the number of units of your product you expect to sell, or number of units of your service you expect to provide in the first year. What you’ll have at the end of the process is the base line cost to produce your products or offer your services, from which you can then make a value judgement. Is this base line cost for your product or service reasonable enough for you to add a margin, and still be attractive to your desired audience?
TIP 3. Test it out. Have a prototype made of your product or create a version of your service that you can test with your desired audience and ask for feedback on. Far better to make mistakes and refine early on, rather than launch and fall short of meeting expectations.
TIP 4. Promote before you are ready. Don’t wait until launch day to build the hype – there is nothing more unnerving than investing your passion, time and energy in to something, only to hear crickets on your first day. Bring people along on the journey of starting or evolving, and on day one, you’ll have a community who will support you – even if it’s just with an encouraging word or two!
