You Have a Business Idea – What’s Next?

A business idea is a starting point for any current or future entrepreneurs. It is essential because it is the beginning of a new life – a life of a business and a life of an entrepreneur.

But, an idea is important only in the initial stage of a startup. The results from good business ideas will feel in all phases of the development of a company, but also in large part will depend on other entrepreneurial activities.

An average person always has many ideas. It is the very nature of us as humans to dream about better life, about a better environment, about a better world. However, ideas in many cases will come and go from our brain. If you want to remember and make something about your specific business idea, you can simply use the business ideas book. I have also developed the business ideas book template that you can download for free.

Well, we have an idea, and now the most important question is: what’s next? In this post, I can’t cover all entrepreneurial tasks that will need to be accomplished, but I will try to summarise simply what you as an entrepreneur will need to take when you come with a good idea.

1. Define Your Products and Services

Every business will rely on something that will sell to customers. That something can be product or service. Until now, you have an idea that covers some product or service for your future or current company. The next thing that you must to do is to clearly and accurately define those products or services as result of the initial idea. You will need to answer following questions:

• What product or service you will offer?
• What are the features of these products or services?
• What are the benefits that your products or service will bring to your potential customers?
• What types of additional services will be offered by that product or service?

2. Define the Market

You already have an idea, and you already have defined the products or services that you will offer on the market. The next thing that you must to do is clearly, precisely, and unambiguously define the market that you will serve with these products or services. Here are some questions that you as an entrepreneur will need to answer:

• On which market you will offer these products and services (city, region, country, continent…)?
• Who will be the customer of these products or services?
• What are the features of those customers who will consume your products or services (sex, age, income, ethnicity, etc.)?

3. Define Main Competitors

Next important thing after the products, services, and market when you want to define your next steps about your initial business idea are competitors.

Don’t make a mistake to underestimate your competitors, because the success of your business in large part will depend on your own, but also on their performance. It is necessary to precisely define the main competitors who are already on the market that you defined earlier. Here are some questions that you as an entrepreneur will need to answer:

• What are the five most significant market players in the industry in which your categorize your business idea?
• What, where, and how that five major market players offer their products and services?
• What are the main features of their products or services?
• What are the benefits that they provide to the market with their products or services?
• What is the resistance of the market related to entry of new competitors and how difficult it can be accomplished?

You can find more about defining main competitors in the post titled as a How to Differentiate Yourself.

4. Define Resources

You already have an idea, have defined your products and services, have defined the market where you will offer those products and services and have defined the main competitors, and what they are doing currently. Now, it is time to define the necessary resources you will need if you want your idea to become a reality. You will need to define minimum the following:

• How many human resources you will need?
• What kind of intellectual capital will you need for your business?
• How much financial resources you will need?
• Where will you find that financial resources?
• What material resources you will need?
• Where will you find that material resources?
• What information resources you will need?
• What will be the sources of that information resources?

And What’s Next?

Always there will be something next because you are an entrepreneur who starts a business or work on the expansion of your current business. Once you define these elements, start again from scratch and adjust the product or service and market. This is because, by definition and understanding of competitors and all resources that you will need, you will have additional facts, which must be included in your offers to the market.

For example, after defining the competitors, you will find something about what they are doing to sell their products or services to the market. You can simply copy their experience and improve it to gain competitive advantage. So, you have to redefine the first two elements.

Also, with all of this information, you will need to develop your business model and start implementing and testing it outside, on the market with your customers.

In the end, the most frequently entrepreneurial activity is to take action.