Steps to starting a business: Part 1 – Finding and Developing an Idea

There’s basically 3 steps to starting a business:

• Finding and developing an idea
• Testing the idea to see if people will pay for it
• Planning how you will implement

Completing all these steps before you launch your business gives you the best possible potential for success. Leaving out one of these steps will affect your business negatively – it could mean your business is not as successful as it could be, cost you a lot of money because of mistakes or ultimately force you to close your doors. That’s why I have created the Ready Set Startup! guide to help you work through each of these steps in detail.

In this blog post, we will look at the first step:

Finding and developing an Idea

You might think this one is obvious, but it is amazing how many people start businesses with an unfocused idea. At the end of this step you need to be clear about what problem you are trying to solve, who your customers are and what your solution is. The clearer you are about these questions, the better your planning and research prior to launch will be and the more likely your business will be a success.

So, the absolutely most important question for your startup is:

What is the problem you are trying to solve?

Entrepreneurs are paid for solving problems. If people could solve their problem themselves, they wouldn’t need to pay your business to do it. Being clear about the problem will help you to design a product or service that people really want or need.The reason this is important is that if people WANT to buy your product or service, you need to spend much less time, effort and money convincing them to buy – which means a more successful business.

If you don’t have an idea yet, this is a good place to start. Find a group of people with a problem and provide a solution for them. The better the solution, the more your customers will be prepared to pay you for it – but only if you are giving them solutions they want or need.

If you already have a business idea, you need to work out whose problem you are solving. Once you know who your customers are, you can tweak your idea to make it even more appealing to them.

You can read about  the next step, testing your business idea, here.

If you’ve found this helpful, you’ll love my video series on how to use my proven process to create great business ideas that give you an unfair advantage. Click on the banner below to get access.