Many individuals have their own big ideas that can be transformed into business reality. But, still, they are only their own ideas, not something available for the rest of us. So, the question is how you can turn your big idea into business reality.
The fact is that only a few potential entrepreneurs succeed in this transformation that results in the real company that will enable the results of the ideas to become available in our hands. The significant part will never start with their ideas, and another final part of them will start but will start suffering immediately after the startup process.
So, you have a great, big, dream, exceptional idea to start a business that will change the world we know today. But, on the other side is one massive obstacle because ideas don’t bring the results, they are only business potential energy to achieve something really great that you want to achieve. You need to develop them, you need to implement them, and you need to improve them continuously. That will be your job in the first year of your entrepreneurial career.
#1 Is Your Big Idea Really Big as You Thought?
You can think that your idea is a really big idea, but the question is if this is really true? Are you the person who gives the final assessment of the idea? No, you aren’t. The biggest assessors of business ideas are customers or users, persons who will use the products and services which will result from this big idea.
Your thinking tells us only that there are some possibilities for your ideas, but you can’t base the next decision only because you think that the specific idea is a really big idea. So, you need to start with experiments to test them and approve them. You need to start with experiments to test and validate your own thinking.
The best way is to start talking with your closest friends or family members, but have in mind that they will need to be someone who will need the solution that your big idea will bring to the market. Often, you will get really important recommendations to improve your initial thinking and make your big idea even bigger.
Next, you will need to expand your experiments and start talking and explaining your idea and corresponding solutions for potential customers with persons outside your circle of influence. What does this mean? This means you will need to talk with potential customers that will not have any type of emotional connection with you and your activities. In such a way, you will include bigger objectivity in the initial thinking and responses from closest family members and friends.
Now, you have something much better than your initial thoughts about the idea so that you can go to the next step.
#2 Develop Draft Version of Your Business Model Based on Your Big Idea
Because you already have done some experiments and know something about the future product or service that will result from your big idea and potential customers, you can simply start developing the draft version of your business model. In this stage of the process, you will need to define everything about your future business and how it will interact with the closest environment. The following questions will help you to start drafting your business model:
[click_to_tweet tweet= “Your thinking tells us only that there are some possibilities for your ideas, but you can’t base the next decision only because you think that the specific idea is a really big idea.” quote= “Your thinking tells us only that there are some possibilities for your ideas, but you can’t base the next decision only because you think that the specific idea is a really big idea.”]
- What is the biggest value that my customers will get using or having my products and services?
- Who are the ideal customers that I will want for my business?
- How will my business interact with these customers?
- How can my customers get my products and services?
- How can they pay me for my products and services?
- How much will they need to pay if they want to get my products and services?
- What will my business need to have if I want to realize everything from answers to the previous questions?
- What will my business need to do if I want to realize everything from the first six questions?
- Who will help me with the activities of my company?
- What type of costs my business will have and how much they will be?
#3 Start Testing Already Developed Business Model
The next stage is experimenting to test your already developed business model from the second stage in this process. The biggest question here is how you can test your business model, and the simplest answer is again related to your potential customers.
You will need to talk with your potential customers, and that means you will need to build an initial offer based on the value defined in your business model. If they are eager to pay you for your offer, then you are in the right way. If they are interested and eager to pay you for your offer, then you are on the right way to approve that your big idea is a really big idea worth being transformed into a real company.
Pay attention to the different parts of your offer, prices of the products and services, and the way they can pay you or become owners of your products and services. You will probably need to make improvements to your business model based on the feedback from the customers.
If you succeed in creating orders in this stage, you can start working on producing and delivering to your customers. So, you will have additional possibilities to improve the value, distribution channels, or sales tactics that will be used.
#4 Start Your Company But Remember: Your Job is To Test and Improve The Business Model.
And, finally, if everything from the previous stages is ok, you have started to receive orders, and you have already delivered some amount of your products and services, you can start your company. So, your big idea becomes a business reality.
But, the problem is that your job doesn’t finish with this stage, it’s only the beginning of new cycles of experiments and test to implement continuous improvement of your business model.
