3 Steps: The Business Idea
1. Find your niche: You really need to spend a lot of time thinking about what area of business you want to attack. You need to find that certain hole in the market that is just waiting to be ripped open and explored. Be original. Think about things that can really help a certain group of people. Maybe you’ve spotted a trend of grandmothers who want to start learning how to use the computer, but they don’t know where to start. Well, if you know about computers and are able to teach, then there you go — you’ve found a nice niche. Maybe your school computer system such as Blackboard.com is starting to become too confusing and you’ve figured out a way to improve the system, that can be a niche. The key is to fill a void, so look for one!
2. Follow your heart: Never let anybody tell you no. Always go with what your hearts tells you is right, it wont steer you wrong. Believe in yourself and your vision more than anybody else in the world. I warn you, there will be many people, negative people, who try to bring you down and break you, please don’t let these people inflitrate your mind. Always go with your gut and stand strong.
3. Build a financial model: Think about how you plan to make money through your business. Many new companies on the web start off by offering really great free services, such as 37signals.com does, and then offer upgrades of those same free services for a small monthly fee — that is a beautiful model to me. You may want to construct an outline for a business plan which will basically state the mission of your company, how you plan to market it, and where you see it going. In a future post, I’ll write about starting the business plan.
By staying true to your vision, dreams, and ideas you’ll be on a great start to getting your business off the ground. Just keep at it.
LEts Brainstorm!