You need to start doing, take actions toward your own and your companies’ success. Wait, for the moment.

In the post titled as a You have a Business Idea – What’s Next I write that you need to:

• Define your products and services. Your idea is something that can solve someone’s problem, but it is not already transferred in great products and services that need to do that job. Because of that you need to define your products and services.
• Define the market. Although your idea is something that solves someone’s problem, you need to know much more for them. You need to clearly, preciously and unambiguous to define the market that will be served with your products and services.

• 

  Define main competitors. You need to know the current conditions on the market. Who are main players? What they are offered? How they offer what they offer?

• Define the resources. If you want to start the company you need resources. You need finances. You need human resources. You need technology. You need buildings…

But, is there something that’s missing.

When I write that article, I was thinking that’s something is common sense or normal. However, I was made a mistake. I think that the missing element, here is one of the most important things that comes after your idea.

The missing thing is the answer on the question how the company will make a money. That’s your business model.

Today, there are different business models and different success stories behind them. But, you need to define your own business model that will tell you how your company will make money in the future.

Don’t make a mistake to start without a model even it is only in your brain, or on the napkin from the restaurant where your aha moment come to your brain. Your business model will give you the links between you, your customers, your partners and the value that your company will offer. That’s simply meant the answer on the question how you can make a money.

Do you find yourself to work on some ideas that after some period of time, you find that it is not so important as you think? The implementation did’t give expected results. You invest your time and money in something that was not so important for your business but also for your customers.

If you want constantly to improve your business, you need to have the system with which you can easily prioritize what need to be done as a first. You don’t want some very important ideas that can bring dramatic improvements in your business to be delayed. You don’t want to work on something that will not increase the value in the eye of your customers.

The real question that you need to answer today is how you can decide which idea is really the most important at any given time to be implemented?

There are too many ways that you can use to score your ideas to make the real prioritization. I want to give a possible system that you can use to improve your business through prioritization of your ideas as results of the creativity process in your business. This system will be based on the questions that will need your answer to show you what is more important and have the largest priority for the implementation.

• What is your main business objective?
• What is your main personal objective?
• How much resources are needed for the given idea? You need to assess needed resources for each idea. The resources can be human resources, time, money, physical energy, and so on.
• What will be the contribution of each idea to achieve your business and personal objective?
• Do you have enough resources to implement each idea? You can’t implement something if you don’t have enough resources. Probably, it is better to postpone such ideas.
• What will be the return of investments from each idea?
• How much time will be needed to reach the return of investments point?
• Is it and how much is each idea sustainable?
• What will be the overall improvements in your business from the implementation of each idea?
• What’s the type of the problems that solves each particular idea to your customers?
• How frequent is that problem? Does it occur too often or on the rare occasions?
• How much is the need for the solution that your customers have for the particular problem?
• From the customer’s viewpoint what they think that is most important for them?

Each answer on the questions must be translated in a numerical rating system that will be enough to find the most priority ideas that will need to be implemented as a first.

We will continue tomorrow with the fifth day where you will work on your plan for implementation of the ideas because you already have the priority of each idea that comes to you as an entrepreneur.

With the previous two days, you have improved creativity process that brings as many as possible quality ideas for your business. Furthermore, you have improved the process of the communication of each idea inside and outside your business that brings the potential to improve the idea.

But, the world with which you communicate your idea is your community around your business. If the community is larger and with better quality, it will add more business potential energy in each idea.

The purpose of this day in this challenge is to work on the improvements of the community with which you will communicate the ideas from your business.

If you want to be sure that the results from the ideas will be accepted and wanted from the extended community you need to communicate the ideas with:

• Real community,
• Enough large community and
• Enough quality community.

This process is like a planting the seeds about the future of your business. If you succeed to build real, quality and large community around your ideas, then you will have a much larger potential to succeed with that ideas. You will have future supporters. You will have more future buyers.

But, what you need to improve?

First, you need the right community around your ideas.

What this mean?

This means that the members of the community will need to be persons who need something that you, and your business made. They must have problems that your business solves or can solve in the future. If you ask the wrong community, you cannot expect to receive the right feedback for your ideas.

Ask this questions to find is your community the right community for your ideas:

• Is the community members persons who need my products and services?
• If they aren’t, where I make the mistake or what is the community that needs my products and services?
• What are the biggest problems and frustrations of that community?
• Is my idea something that can solve their problems and frustrations?
• How I can define the best community for me to communicate my ideas with them?

The next important thing is the size of the community.

If the community is larger, thеn you will have more feedback about your ideas. More feedback means more improvement ideas for the basic idea that you communicate with the community. More improvements for the basic idea mean that your future business will be closer to the real customers needs.

Ask these questions and answer them if you want to find ideas to improve or increase your community:

• What is the size of my community?
• Where are the potential persons that can be part of my community?
• What I need to do to increase my community?
• How I can increase my community with the real persons?

The third thing that you can improve when it comes to your community is the quality of community itself.

You don’t want community that will not give you the feedback about your ideas. You don’t want the community that will be inactive. You want the community where there will be two-side communication. You want the community that will share their first impressions about you and your business.

Use this questions as ideas to improve the quality of your community:

• How much persons in my community is active and contribute to the basic ideas?
• How I can encourage activity in my community?
• Where I can find real contributors in my community?
• What I need to make to attract the right persons in my community?

As you can see these questions will lead you to different possible activities that you can make to improve your community. Make a list and start with the improvements. They will increase your business potential energy.

We will continue tomorrow with the fourth day where you will work on prioritization of your ideas.

Are the products and services something core for your business and something that solves your customer’s problems?

How are your customers satisfied with something that you sell to them?

If they are satisfied or over satisfied and they simple screaming for your products and services than you are probably great in making your business’s products and services.

You as an entrepreneur start a company because you know that you are great in the core subject of your business.

However, this is merely your thinking. You’l approve your greatness only when you go out on your market and the market after trying your products and services give you the best rating.

But, some risk exists in the period of time of your own thinking and the ratings from the market. The question is: are you really great for doing exactly that business? How you’l know that before you start your company? How you can lower the risk?

Here, I want to explain several ways that will contribute in increasing your self-confidence that you are really great and will lower the risk your company to fail because the lack of greatness.

1. Market Research

Before you conclude that you are the great for that type of business you’l need to make deep market research. What’s that mean for you? You’l need to make analysis of the current market and compare the results with you and your future company. Answer following questions to make this analysis:

• What is my target market?
• What problems I will solve to my target market?
• What are the main competitors?
• What are the types of problems which they solve?
• How are they currently solve the problems of my target market?
• How I will solve the problems of my current market?
• Am I better or worse than my potential future competitors?
• Where I am better and where I am worse?
• How to improve everything where I am better to be better or great?
• How to improve everything where I am worse to become better?

2. Plan Your Greatness

You have your initial market research, and you know where you are superior, where you are worse and where you are the great. Now you’l need to make clear path for you to become from worse to better, from better to great and to keep your greatness in the future.

Answer following questions to make a clear path to your greatness:

• What action’s steps should I take to become better from the main competitors?
• What action steps should I take to become great?
• What action steps should I take to keep my greatness in the future?

3. Try Yourself

The last thing that can help you to increase your self-confidence that you are the great for such a business startup is to try yourself on the market.

Find some of your family and friends that are closest to your target market and give them a trial version of your products and services. Ask them about what they think and what is the comparison between your products and services and products and services that they use until today, probably competitors.

Use your social media connections to find several volunteers that will try your products and services and in turn you’l get the answers about what they think.

In such a way, you can receive tons of ideas for improvement to make your company really great, and on the other hand you’l already make a buzz about your new company.

What you think? Are you great for the subject of your company?

Are you an entrepreneur who wants always to find possibilities to improve your business?

If your answer is yes, then you are the right person for your small business that will lead to the path to success.

However, when the business starts with expansion and quick development, you cannot always have all the ideas that your business need. You’l need a system that will collect and analyze all possible ideas that can be implemented in the purpose of your business improvements and future developments.

One of the best sources for ideas is your own employees. They are everyday in direct touch with their working places.

Why You Need to Listen to Your Employees?

Your sales team is everyday in touch with your customers. They know what they want and with what kind of problems, they are faced. They know exactly what are their needs and what they don’t want in your products and services. They know what need to be implemented in the sales process to be more productive.

Why not use this informations to improve your products and services and your overall sales process.

Your employees from production departments know the technology, know where there are “bottlenecks,” where are the biggest costs and what can be improved to become more productive…

These answers that are known for your employees in the production department can make your business more productive and costs effective. Use them to improve.

These are only two examples from two different departments – sales and production.

What about the rest departments? There are plenty of useful ideas that you as an entrepreneur need to unlock from your employees.

But, it is not the simple task…

As I mention at the beginning of this post is that you need a system. You need to implement systematically approach to implement the process of collection, analyzing, and implementing ideas from everywhere in your business.

To build such a system you’l need to answer following questions:

• How I can motivate my employees to be more creative and share their thoughts for improvements?
• What will be the idea sharing process inside my business?
• Who will be responsible for collecting ideas and initial assessment of them?
• Who will be responsible to decide what ideas will be implemented in the business operations?
• What will be rewards for the employees with the best idea?

As you can see you must motivate your employees to start sharing their everyday thoughts about possible improvements. Sometimes you can simply ask them, sometimes you can build questionnaires, sometimes you can make periodical contests… This is called as unlocking process for idea sharing.

After that you need to develop the process that will contain the flow of ideas through your business hierarchy, and responsibilities on different levels.

At the end there must be some type of rewards that will bring initiation of the future sharing through your business.

I see many entrepreneurs with a brilliant idea for business but when they start, they screw up everything, even their personal life.

I see many entrepreneurs that have idea probably in each several minute from their life, but also nothing more than idea.

Are you a type of entrepreneur with many ideas but without execution?

Business ideas are worth capital for each entrepreneur and each aspiring entrepreneur. That ideas contain potential energy that must be converted into the kinetic energy (work, execution, doing something…)

What you can do with your idea:

• You can start a company.
• You can implement it into your current company for the purposes for your future work.

You can’t sell your business ideas. They are not worth without your business success. They don’t make you money. They only have the potential to make you money but in the future if it is executed well.

Your business idea isn’t your most valuable business assets. They only have the potential to help you to increase your business assets if you implement them into the practice.

On the other side, too many ideas can be only ideas without opportunities integrated in them. This type of idea doesn’t have business potential energy within them. They are not worth for our current execution, but sometimes it can be worth for the execution in the future if the future will integrate business opportunities in that business ideas.

Persons with ideas are dreamers. They never ever go out from their dreams. Successful entrepreneurs are not only dreamers, but also doers. They implement business idea with opportunities to start or grow their company.

Because of that stop with dreams and start with execution. Become a doer, become an entrepreneur.

Some project succeeds, but some can fail. Some will bring opportunity and money, but some of them simply spend your time and money. With some of them, you are happy, but some of them can bring you in the very difficult position.

I know how frustrating can be projects that simply fail. I felt this on my own skin. However, on the other hand, I think that the experience and knowledge gained from the projects that fail make me stronger to sustain on the planned trajectory to the final goals.

In my brain, every day, every hour and every moment come with too many ideas for different projects that I can start. However, they go in the folder for future analysis. The process of analysis that I use is simple giving the assessment of various features of the project to make a final decision, whether the project deserves to be implemented or not.

Here are the features that I use in the analysis process:

Project Test

1. Potential

What is the potential of the project? Is it something that will contribute to the wealth of my business in the future? Is it something that will increase my business potential energy? Is it something that will bring more profit to my business?

2. Time to Finish

How much time is needed to implement the project? How much time is needed to reach the first results? How much time is needed to feel the benefits from the implementation?

3. Urgency

Is it urgent for implementation? Is it makes the difference if I start it today or after some period of time?

4. Easy of Implementation

Is it easy to be implemented or is something that will need more efforts?

5. Costs

How much will cost the implementation process? Is it worth being implemented?

This 5 features simply give me enough information for my decision about what’s next with a certain project from my folder for future analysis. If they passed the tests, then they are ready for implementation. However, if they failed the test, they go in another folder something that is not appropriate for implementation, at least not today.

Both terms are used in the process of business start up by the entrepreneur. However, what is notable is that often businesses are started only with the idea, which is not converted or transformed into a real business opportunity. Because of that business startups suffer immediately after the startup stage, The suffer is manifested through lack of buyers, therefore, a lack of money for financing the business operation.

An business owner is a person who, where all the people see a problem, he sees a business opportunity. That is the biggest advantage of an entrepreneur.

How does it work in practice?

Business Ideas and Business Opportunities

Are besides entrepreneurs someone else is in the same frustrating situation?

If the answer is no, although business is a brilliant idea it is not a business opportunity.

If the answer is yes, it is necessary to check is that business idea good business opportunity.

What’s the Difference?

As you can see from the previous subtitle a business idea is:

• known personally to the entrepreneur,
• based on their own frustration,
• innovation by the entrepreneur.

However, is the idea only for one man?

In business world exist one basic principle, which says:

If an entrepreneur personally knows the minimum of 10 people who are eager to buy a product or service as a result of the business idea, with appropriate price and other conditions, there are probably at the market hundreds, thousands or millions potential buyers who would buy it if they knew about it.

So, if you want to transform business ideas into the business opportunity, you need to bring another person in the process. That person is the customer.

Business opportunity = business idea + customers

Qualities of the business idea

An idea to become a business opportunity it must meet certain qualities:

• It is attractive to the customers.
• Customers can afford that products or services.
• Entrepreneur can achieve it.

If the idea is not attractive to potential buyers it is not a good business idea. Because of that on the market must exist the need about the product or service. On the other side, the business idea that creates an expensive product or service whereby potential buyers cannot afford it, is also a bad idea. And, of course the business idea must be implemented by the entrepreneur. They must have the knowledge and opportunities to realize it in practice.

For you, the business ideas are something that you believe will work like a profitable business. When you include the customers needs into the idea it can become the business opportunity ready for the following startup.

For example, you have a business idea that can be presented as a statement that statisticians will call it a hypothesis. Hypothesis in simple words is the idea that can be tested.

If we want to use statistical language in this process we can tell that your business idea is a null hypothesis, and now we want to test it with another hypothesis that are opposite to the null hypothesis. The opposite hypothesis for your null hypothesis will be that the business idea will not succeed.

It is important to think about all possibilities in the process of initial development or testing the business idea. One of them is that the idea will not succeed on the market.

Look at the picture below as an example of this.

Business Ideas - Testing With Null Hypothesis

What this means?

• You have your business idea with the null hypothesis that it will succeed on the market as a standalone business.
• The alternative hypothesis is that your business idea will not succeed on the market as a standalone business.
• There are different reasons for the alternative hypothesis. Your job is to find all the most important reasons that can lead to fail of your business idea.
• Each reason that leads to fail can be avoided if you as an entrepreneur prepare concrete action steps for them.

This is the process that you must apply before you start your business if you are a startup entrepreneur, or before you start implementing business ideas into your current business. Always use an alternative hypothesis, something opposite if you want to test future success.

The last, but not the least important thing is that you must always see things as they really are.

iThoughts - Mindmapping Software for the iPhone

Mindmapping is a very useful tool for entrepreneurs. It is the process of visualization of business ideas that will make them happen. I am using mindmaps to be more organized and to track all of my ideas and plans for things that I must do in the projects.

What is MindMap?

Mind map is diagram connected with our mind where we make different connections around one idea or project.

Let’s look at definition of mindmap in Wikipedia:

A mind map is a diagram used to represent words, ideas, tasks, or other items linked to and arranged around a central key word or idea.

However, the most important thing is that with this type of diagrams you can visualize any idea with all elements connected with that idea.

iThoughts Mind Map Software

Before some period of time, I buy iThoughts mind map software from Apple Store. It’s iPhone application for creating mind maps.

After playing with this tool, I liked this application because:

• It is easy to use.
• Maps can be viewed on iPhone and PC.
• It can be used like task management software.

1. Easy to Use

I find iThoughts very easy to use. It has two simple toolbars, one at the top and the other at the bottom of the screen. First one is about making maps and second on the bottom is about adding notes to the maps.

In several minutes, I can transform my idea into the real action steps and give it additional improvements.

Mindmap with iThoughts

2. Maps Can be Viewed on iPhone and PC

With the help of dropbox, e-mail or box.net all your maps can be saved in a folder that you can have access from everywhere.

Mindmapping - Transfer Options

There are possibilities to choose which type of file to be saved particular mind map.

Mindmapping - Upload Format

3. Task Management

An important feature in the iThoughts is the possibilities to make each mind map element to be as a task with start and end date. This allows me to measure progress of each of my tasks.

Tasks - Mindmapping