In today’s episode, let’s talk about how you can validate your business idea before you launch it. And before we start digging into these ideas one by one, make sure that you’ve read the previous post. FYI we designed this topic sequentially to really help you grow your business. There are things that must be done first so that you can catch some things that we’re going to discuss now!

And here are the four steps to test your idea before building a  business. Let’s start.

1. Gather data from the people you interviewed

 In the first part of our series, one of the things that I mention in building your business idea is to interview at least 10 people that are more likely to become your client.  And you’re really just trying to gather what their single biggest problem is.  What we want to do today is we want to actually use data and use the internet to help us to be our best friend, because honestly, there’s plenty of evidence out there for us if we’re just willing to follow the breadcrumbs.

2. Check off is there competition for your market

Whatever your idea entails, one of the things that I want you to do is go find competition, what I would do personally, is I would find maybe five to six people that are in your market that serve particularly who you’re thinking about serving, maybe you have a rough idea of who you want to serve.  In checking for a competitor and inspiration, look for the hints, the clues, and some of the ways in which they have left breadcrumbs for you to follow.

3. Use Google Trends

Next, we’re going to use my favorite tool for this exercise, which is Google Trends.  So Google Trends will give you the ability to see actual search volume contingent upon whatever your search query entails.

When you’re using this Google Trends tool, think about the potential seasonality of your business or the potential trends, you want to find consistent stability over time because it’s probably a growing or emerging market, but you may find that it becomes saturated, and you need to niche down a little bit further and find your area where you can really appeal to a broad market, instead of trying to compete with everybody else.

4. Do more research on Youtube

 The last thing I would do is I would actually just go through and search things like YouTube. And I would see what are people searching for in my specific industry because that’s going to give you a ton of content ideas, but also is going to show you the actual search volume for your specific business and for your specific industry as far as what people are asking what relevant questions people are seeking.

Wrap Up

Now, I hope you have a clear idea of how you can validate your business idea, don’t forget to check the previous video because at the end of this we’re actually going to do an hour and a half long masterclass where I’m gonna give you even more right it’s gonna be the next steps in addition to that you can take to make sure that you get your business off the ground successfully this year.

See you guys on the next one!

In today’s episode, let’s talk about the top five things to avoid when starting your new business. These are the usual mistakes I’ve seen back from years and even into the future and you can use them in any market. Knowing these mistakes will help you with strategizing what must be done in building your business.

1. Fad Markets

It’s nothing like a fad market, getting into something where it’s this explosion for a couple of years, and then it just kind of dwindles away.  The problem is that if you’re positioned to ride that wave, and you got lucky, but at the end of the day, once you built the infrastructure, and you’ve got a company, you’ve got employees and you make all the investment, you need to really get up and running.  

More than likely that wave has already passed.  And now you’ve got to figure out okay, what do we do now.  And if you are starting out, it’s probably not worth pursuing.

2. Dying Market

 If you’re trying to launch something like a print ad or something that’s just an antiquated modality, you’re probably going to find that it’s on the tail end of a dying market. When thinking of a business to start, check out what’s trending and what product sells the most in this specific market. 

3. Unproven Market

So this is a huge mistake that I see people make when they think, there was no competition in that market.  Now the problem is, even if you do have this glamorous brand new idea, the problem is gonna be traction.  So it may be difficult, even if you are the very first person to think of this grandiose idea that you have for a business, it might be very hard for you to get penetration for a variety of different reasons, it also may be hard for you to secure funding if your business requires funding.

4. Low Margin Business

Growth requires cash in a low margin business and sacrifice had to be made.  So for low margin, you just have to understand it is what it is if it’s something you’re convicted about.  Just understand that that’s what you’re getting into and know that it’s going to be a little bit of a tougher challenge, you’re going to make sure that you do have other ways to subsidize your income outside of the business, because it may take a very long time for you to be able to pay yourself.

5. Low scalability business

Technology is easy to scale, That’s why people love technology concepts, why investors flock to them, and it doesn’t require more manpower to do that, just requires online bandwidth and, you know, a bigger server.

For you, it’s going to be great that you can really scale up without all the overhead and sunk costs and investment and manpower and all the things required to run a company unless you’re just truly convicted by what it is you’re trying to accomplish.

Bonus: Business that requires large investment

Your startup business will require a large investment to get started.  And one of the bigger challenges is that their idea is great but it will require so much to get off the ground. In today’s day and age, it is harder and harder to get idea stage funding since a lot of people want to see that a business is established. 

So if you have a business that requires a large investment to get started, I think you’re gonna find you’re always going to be fighting an uphill battle.

Hope was helpful, see you on the next one! 

In the previous episode, I talked about how to validate your business ideas and if you haven’t seen that yet and you don’t have an idea what business you should pursue, I highly highly suggest visiting it for a while before we hop into this episode.

But for the rest of you, let’s dig in.

Casting your vision

The problem is a lot of people don’t think about the other aspects of what makes them tick.  They think about the business and their financial goals and stuff like that.   So they make a lot of sacrificial decisions, they don’t take care of themselves, nor their relationships, their personal well being their fitness, their health. 

To start, please grab your own copy of The Business Roadmap and let’s do this  together. 

Five different layers to consider:
1. Faith
2. Family
3. Friends
4. Fitness
5. Finance

All of those things make up and embody the fulfillment that you have the desire and the motivation that you have, it’s important that you’re making sure that you are fulfilled in all those various areas.

For each category I want you to think of your long term goals, let’s start with year 5 and reverse engineer it. Going back to year one, think of the most meaningful, easiest, most viable step you can take right now. Start easy and focus on building that habit so it will be easier for you to reach each goal.  Scale out and of course, now you can continue to do the things you’re doing previously from year to year.

 So these are in order of what I deemed to be priority.  Let’s start filling this out.  (I provided an illustration for you as an example but you don’t have to follow that, you can put whatever you want).

Figuring out what’s required

In this part of your worksheet, identify the action steps, what are you going to do on every priority. 

Filling in your roadmap

So this is your actual business roadmap, what you’ll do is you’re going to take each one of those from the categories that we mentioned, and you’re going to add them into your one goals, those are your now your year, one, five goals for all those areas of your life.  And then underneath, what you’ll see is challenges and needs that you might encounter along the way.

I add a little stoplights here just as a visual, and I would circle if you’ve met all your goals, and you go back in hindsight, you reflect on those things, as you look over this over the coming years.  

So if you need to expand on these ideas, I absolutely would make it as detailed and as lengthy as you possibly would like it to be.  But definitely make sure you include those in that specific order. I think if you do that, what you’re going to find is that things are going to be much easier than had you not included them to begin.