Why and What Business
WHY
Your WHY is your Purpose!
Purpose: it is the meaning, the reason why something exists.
Without Purpose, life, work, relationships, and goals have not meaning! Knowing your WHY will simplify the decisions you need to make.
Why are you starting a business? If you don’t know the answer to this question, you might be doing it for the wrong reasons.
Example: I am starting a business to make money! Money and profitability are just by products of a business. If you are doing it for this reason, it will only take you so far. As you grow, you will start sacrificing your morals and principles. Your customers and employees will be the ones to suffer in the long run. Because you will use them to make more money and greed will set in. You need a higher reason than just money.
If you change your mind set to, I am starting a business to help my customers and grow my employees. Now you have a foundation to be successful. Change your focus from you to other and you will be able to grow by leaps and bounds. Don’t forget about making money, it is just not your why!
Now that you have your why let move to your what!
WHAT
Ask yourself these 6 questions!
1. What experience do I have?
Ashley Hill, founder and CEO of College Prep Ready, says she started her business because she had personal success financing her college dream.
“I researched the challenges that students and families are experiencing with paying for college to help me refine my core message and services,” she says.
From her experience and research, she learned that there was a market for the knowledge she had to offer. With Americans in trillions of dollars of student loan debt, Hill understood the pain points of students and parents when navigating the college application and financial aid process. She took this understanding and converted into a business that assuaged the difficulties she had witnessed.
Similarly, Victoria Garlick, CEO of event services matchmaking website Air Events Global, also believes in choosing a business based on experience and skill set. Hers is built off of a 20-year career in event planning.
“When deciding on what type of business to start, I looked at my personal and professional history and what I could contribute as an event director,” says Garlick.
2. What am I passionate about?
Another common recommendation entrepreneurs shared with us is to find and follow your passion. Nick Ehret, founder of Varieteas, is passionate about tea. So, he built a successful business by curating specialty teas for his monthly subscription boxes.
He’s a premium tea aficionado who knew he could transform his passion into a business. His advice to people when picking a business to start is to “[choose] something you are extremely passionate about because you will be working with it all day, every day.”
Brian Davis, CEO of Spark Rental, subscribes to a Japanese concept called ikigai. It means “reason for being.” In this context, Davis says, a truly good business idea is at the intersection of four things: what you love doing, what you’re good at, what you can be paid for, and what the world needs.
3. What problem can I solve?
We all know that necessity is the mother of invention but applying that knowledge to the business world hasn’t always been the next step. An entrepreneur who converts that need to a business plan could swiftly become a successful business owner. As any consumer can tell you, problems and pain points abound in just about any industry. Finding out what these difficulties and inefficiencies are—and coming up with a business plan to fix them—is a sure-fire way to step out on the right business path.
Take the dog bed company Big Barker, for example. This company generated $4.75 million in revenue in 2016. Eric Shannon, founder, and CEO, saw a glaring problem in the market for dog beds. “I started Big Barker because there was a huge problem that large dog owners had to deal with. They had to replace their dog beds once or twice a year because they weren’t made well enough to support the weight of a big dog.”
Shannon adjures would-be entrepreneurs to solve big problems: “The bigger problem you solve, the more potential your business has.”
4. What is my lifestyle preference?
Your business goal may or may not include revenues in the millions and employees in the thousands — and that’s OK. Perhaps what’s most important to you is choosing a business model that supports your ideal work-life balance.
Antonella Pisani was a VP of global ecommerce for Fossil and held leadership roles at JCPenney, Guitar Center, and ProFlowers. But her primary interests were in travel and photography. Because she knew she would prefer mobility in order to pursue these interests, Pisani knew she needed a flexible business model that wouldn’t require space or inventory.
This was the impetus for creating her websites, Official Coupon Code and FACT Goods. These flexible, web-based businesses have allowed her to work from Antarctica, the Arctic, Bhutan, Morocco, and other countries.
5. How much capital do I have access to?
The lean startup wasn’t a fad after all. In fact, the concept grew from one inevitable and enduring truth about starting a business -- people don’t want to risk their life savings on a business idea they have yet to prove or make profitable.
A great example of this fact is Robert Lomax, who founded an educational services firm, RSL Educational, based on needs he saw in his day job as a teacher. Not only did his teaching experience help him see gaps in the educational books market, but it also gave him the ability to keep his job and develop new products. Because he had a steady income as he founded his firm, Lomax was able to avoid taking on debt and minimize risk while he grew his business.
And he wouldn’t have done it any other way. According to Lomax, his approach is ideal because it allows you to “take your time and explore your ideas properly."
6. What ideas can I test easily?
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg once said, “Move fast and break things. Unless you are breaking stuff, you are not moving fast enough.”
In other words, your business idea should be something you can prove (or disprove) early on. If you’ve got no experience in the trucking industry, starting a logistics company would be costly to test out. Instead, think about the lower hanging fruit in industries that interest you.
Marc Roche, co-founder at Annuities HQ, a Canadian online resource on retirement-planning products, suggests doing preliminary research with family and friends, and then move on to the Internet for some more digging.
“Don’t be afraid to try a have a few ideas in mind to ‘test drive’ before you choose a direction,” Roche says. “Do some basic research online and get a feel for what idea will be worth the time and effort of developing into a business.”
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