We’re back with another guest post for you! This time from Stuart McClure, the CMO and co-founder of a company called LovetheSales.com – a website that aggregates sale items from 100’s of retailers into one website, helping consumers find the best deals on products they want. Keep reading to find out more about how to choose and refine your business ideas.
Creating your business idea is an exciting start to becoming an entrepreneur.
Bringing something completely new to the business world or disrupting an old market is where the most successful entrepreneurs operate.
But which of your ideas is the one to invest time in?
Below I lay out 5 actions to take which will help you decide which ideas to focus on whilst also helping you understand your proposal a lot better.
1. Choosing the right idea
Focus is an important attribute of an entrepreneur. You might have dozens of half-thought out ideas with little time to flesh out each one in tremendous detail.
So how do you know which is your best bet?
I’d suggest keeping a list of all your ideas in a notebook. Then, when you have a sufficient amount, you should run each potential venture through this exercise.
One by one write the crux of the idea in the middle of a blank page. Then answer the following questions, writing the answers around the outside of the idea:
- What problem / issue does your business solve? How big is that problem?
- Has it already been done?
- Who would be your ideal customer?
- Could your business be recreated easily by competitors?
- What resources would you need to start the business? Starting capital? A website?
- Can you get it going by yourself or will you need outside skills to get started? What would those skills be?
You might need to do a bit of preliminary research on each idea, but this is exercise is a great way of weeding out the infeasible ideas from the ones that have potential.
2. Putting each business proposal into one sentence
You need to have a clear picture of what your business offers, to whom it is helping and what is its biggest benefit.
You should be able to put all that information into one sentence, for example, like the one in this template:
(“My business is, _(insert name of business)_, we develop _(define your product or service)_ to help _(define your audience)_ _(the problem you are solving for them)_ by _(main benefit of the business )_”).
Mine looked like this:
“My business is LovetheSales.com, we are a discount search engine that brings the sale products from 1000 online retailers, onto one website. We help shoppers save money on the brands they love by finding the best deals across the web.”
Try this exercise with the remainder of your ideas, this will come in useful for action 3 & 4, where you will need to describe your idea succinctly to people – within a couple of sentences. (Will they understand it?)
3. Get feedback on your top 3 business proposals
Pick your 3 most plausible ideas so far and begin sharing them with the people around you. Anyone who can spare 5 minutes to hear your proposal, who would then be able to offer a somewhat unbiased and honest feedback.
This is a great way to get direct feedback on what’s good and not so good about your potential business. Did they understand it? What issues do they have with the idea?
Try to get it round at least 20 people. It would also be an added bonus if some of them are your target customer.
It can be difficult to listen to criticism of your ideas from others, however it’s really important to try to elicit this kind of feedback without getting defensive.
Tips: Try and get peoples uninfluenced and unbiased opinions. Refrain from interrupting or trying to change their objections with new information. The best feedback is fresh, unaltered first impressions.
4. Attend regular events related to your industry
From here, you should have 1, possibly 2 concrete ideas.
By now you should be researching in more detail the industry your business falls into. Is it fashion and retail, a tech business?
Like a research project, you should be finding out who the major players are in that field, is there a supply chain? What is the type of customer that you need to attract?
Don’t overload yourself with too much information at once, it will take time to understand the ins and outs of an industry, it doesn’t happen overnight.
A great way to learn more about the field your business will fall into is to attend regular events, talks and seminars that bring people from that field together. If you are starting a recruitment company, you want to attend recruitment conferences, business talks and meet ups that involve relevant people in that industry.
Eventbrite is a really useful tool to find events near you. If you have a niche business and you can’t find events relating to your idea, try broadening your search to general business lectures, Marketing & PR events. (Any event that improves your skill set as an entrepreneur is worth investing time in).
Tip: These events are also fantastic for networking. Set up a LinkedIn and have it open and ready to connect with valuable contacts you meet.
5. Find a good mentor
Starting out as a new entrepreneur, good advice is gold dust. Having mentors that are invested in helping you succeed is really important. A good mentor should allow you to bounce off concerns you have and give a sometimes-alternate perspective on the problems you will face.
Your aim is to build a board of unofficial advisors. People whose advice you trust, it be financial, legal or just general advice. Reach out to your university business professors, join a business & entrepreneur society (if your university has one). Try to find people who wouldn’t mind offering you bits of guidance from time to time.
I would start with warm contacts, people you know. Once your business begins interacting with other start-ups, you’ll naturally start to fill these advisory positions.
Final thoughts
Refining your business ideas can be tough.
Sometimes the idea that you are more emotionally attached to can take precedence over the ones that have more potential.
You need to find the right balance between finding an idea that has the potential to grow and one that you are motivated to get off the ground.