Entrepreneurship - How To Start Your Business

Do you know what an automobile and a business have in common? Both need to be started, and both need to be run.

In business, it is the entrepreneur who is responsible for business start up, while it is the manger who is responsible for running the business. Generally, the entrepreneur is not equally gifted for starting a business and managing it, and the manager, again, is not equally gifted as an innovator and being able to run a business.

What is the basic component of any business? It starts with a good idea. However, please be aware that all good ideas do not necessarily make a good, viable business. Why is that? Let me explain.

Good ideas must be tested for realizability. How do you do this? The first step is to validate the market. While you may feel very passionate and excited about your good idea, you are the seller, not the buyer. You need to determine if there are enough other people who feel as excited and passionate as you do about your idea, AND are ready, willing and able to open their wallets and part with their hard earned money to pay you enough, and often enough, so you can sustain your business.

This market research can be done by you, and can be done by a paid professional. However, this is the first step that must be done - you must verify the market size and demand, for the market is finite and demand is finite. The question becomes, "Is the market size and demand sufficient to support my business?" If so, it is time to take the next step. If not, it is important to ask why, as there may be some way to resurrect your idea in a different manner so it can become a successful business.

With a good idea and substantiated market demand statistics, you may find it necessary to get some money to get going. To approach institutions or friends or family, you will need to package your findings in a compelling manner. This is called a business plan, and should have your market data, cost data, pricing data, and a simple analysis showing that you can sell enough, at a high enough price, often enough, to support your ongoing business.

Once you have secured your funding, it is important to ask yourself, how, where and when can your customer reach you to do business? If you are going to have a "retail" location, you want to get drive by statistics, walk by statistics and sales statistics for the location(s) you are considering.

So now you are in business with a big pretty sign over your door, and you are waiting for customers to beat a path to your location and buy, buy, buy from you. While you know where you are and what a wonderful offering you have, all your desired customers may not know that you exist, where you are, what wonderfulness you offer, when you are open, what you can do for them, or how they will benefit by doing business with you.

To let the world, and especially your desired customers know about you, you need to determine the best way of reaching them with your message, and then do so. Advertising is both a science and an art, and each campaign must be tested and tracked. You don't want to pay for no results, so you want to keep track of how your customers found out about you, so you can judge the cost effectiveness of your ad campaign.

Last, and most important, is to keep in tune with changing customer desires, and determine how to profitably align your business to deliver what the customer wants to buy today.

About the Author:
Jack Donner has managed businesses from startup, through growth and into maturity. He can help you overcome obstacles in every phase of business development. Launching something new? Grab Jack's first steps to a Successful Launch at http://businessproadvisor.com