How To Get A Winning Business Idea Going

Hi,
I decided to share my knowledge on getting a great business idea on paper with the great steemit community.
I hope you’ll find this guide valuable and will open your mind to an entrepreneurial mindset!
By following these guidelines and making sure your business idea adheres to the principles outlined in this guide, you’ll maximize your chances for building a successful business!

Right, let’s get started!

If you’re wondering why we are doing this and why knowing your target market is important, then know this:

You cannot build a successful business if you do not understand how you are solving your customer’s problem!

There’s tons of reasons why you have to have clarity on your audience. It makes it easier to create your marketing message, it reduces refunds, and helps you gain valuable insight into the minds of your customer.

These are the 3 components that make up a great business idea:

You have a specific audience, the WHO.
You solve a specific problem, the WHAT
And you address a specific industry, the HOW

We are doing this because having a clear view on your market allows you to have total clarity and focus on your business, which is the basis of success. You’ll get better results faster. When you completely understand your audience and the problem that you solve for them, your marketing message will be clear and your business has more chance of being successful.

Let’s start with identifying the HOW.

Your industry

This is where we brainstorm different raw business ideas
Start brainstorming combinations of your interests, strengths, and skills.
This is a great exercise to get your creativity going and perhaps discover ideas that you would never have thought about in the first place.

So start playing with the idea of different combinations. Try to get 10 to 20 ideas on paper, based on what you love and know.
Think outside the box and try different variations and wild ideas. You’re not bound by anything so let your creativity run free!

Here are some examples we'll flesh out later in the guide.

After getting some business ideas on paper, it’s time to look at your ideal customer.

We’re now looking at the WHO, of the how/who/what concept.

If you’re not meeting a specific need for a specific audience, you won’t have any customers once you start your business.
At this moment we are going to get an idea of who you are serving your offer to. Try to hone in on your specific audience.
First of all, what is their age, gender, what job do they have, what kind of education do they have, are they married?

The point here is to flesh out a complete character that identifies your ideal customer

• What are their dreams and aspirations?
• What keeps them awake at night?
• What are they struggling with?
• What impresses them?
• What is the most important thing in their life?

Answering all these questions will allow you to gain clarity on the audience you want to serve, and the problems you are solving
At this moment we are just getting an idea of your ideal customer. Once you have an actual business idea, you can go into much more detail to really hone in to who your customer is and what he does. For now, we're just scratching the surface to get our creative juices flowing!

Thinking about this BEFORE you start your business will be an immense advantage!

Now that you’ve identified your audience and industry, you can think about which problem you are going to solve.

Every successful business fills a need for their customers.

I can't stress this enough... I've seen people get this wrong so many times.

What are you going to do for your customers?

Remember though, just having a certain skill won’t cut it. It needs to serve a real person with a real problem, otherwise you don’t have a market.
There are plenty of resources available to find the problems of your audience.
Online you can turn to the forums where your customers hang out, visit Facebook groups about the subject, find popular blogs and look through the comment section, or run your own survey if you already have a customer list.

But you can also find information offline. Does any of your friends or family fit your ideal customer profile? Go have chat with them!
If not, get the magazines and newspapers your audience reads frequently. See what they care about and what their pains are. Some tv-shows might even be helpful.

Listening to the market is the best research you can do to ensure that you build the right solutions!

Right, let's go back to the business idea examples I showed you before:

Check whether your business concepts have the 3 components that make up a successful business idea.

Let’s take the yoga accountant for example. The industry is book keeping, doing accounts. Seems like yoga instructors are really bad at doing book keeping, so that’s the problem you are solving (just an example though, yoga instructors might be brilliant at book keeping, I have no idea :) )

And the audience are yoga schools, instructors, and other professionals.
This one ticks all the boxes! Let’s do another one…

The surfboard designer is trickier.
The industry is easy enough, that’s basically creating surfboards.
The audience is easy too, those are surfers, right? Who else would buy a surfboard!

But is there a need we are fulfilling with our offer? Nobody really NEEDS a surfboard design. This idea obviously needs tweaking, at this moment there is no need within our audience for the service or product we are offering.

So how do we fix this?

We can change one of the 3 components to see if we can get it to a more profitable business idea. Let’s say, hypothetically, that surfers want to have custom designs on their boards, but are unable to pay for a completely custom made surfboard.

This is a problem that we can address by changing our industry component.
Instead of designing custom surfboards, why not design stickers that they can stick on their boards as customization.

Then we get this, and suddenly our business idea is viable.
See how changing any of these components can transform a mediocre idea to a great one?

This is the end of the first part of how I go about and find my business ideas. Let me know if you thought it was useful by leaving a comment.

If people found this valuable, I’ll be posting a second part to this guide that explains how to validate your business ideas and turn them into a reality.

I wish to bring value to the Steemit community by posting guides like this! So if you like what I'm doing, please comment and upvote this how to guide.

That way, I'll be able to spend even more time here and add tons of value to the community.

Talk soon!

Jan Schets

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