From Ideas to Income: I have an idea!

You came up with an idea for your business!

Now what?

It’s now time to take action!

Sounds great!

How?

That’s always where I got bogged down. On one hand, I believed since this business idea was my idea, I would just kind of know how to proceed. At least, that’s what I was hoping for.

On the other hand, I knew I needed some kind of map but rarely went looking or asking for one.

Well, I am going to help you out here and just give you a very simple business plan framework that will help you think through what you need to bring your business to life.

The questions that need to be answered are:

1. What is the problem your business is going to solve?

Write down your business name, what you do in it, and what you want to achieve with this business. Explain in simple terms what your business does.

What problem does it solve, and how does it help people?

2. How does it solve that problem?

Start by identifying the problem your business provides the solution to. Identify or illustrate the pain someone in search of you is currently feeling and then give them your solution (“Using my simple 5-step system!”) that gets them the result they are looking for (“So you can [result]!”)

3. What is the product or service you are going to offer to provide that solution?

This is a list of information that you can share easily with others:

• What your product or service is
• How the product is delivered (through physical, digital, or in-person means)
• What you are charging for your product
• Why this is important to you (people want to know why you chose to start your business)

If you are still putting your product or service together, this information is essential to helping you to decide how to create what you want to create.

4. What about your offer or business is unique to you? What’s going to make you stand out from your competition?

This is your secret sauce; all the things that you bring to your business that are unique to you. These are:

• Your experience with work and with people
• Your skills (in and out of the work you have performed)
• Your desire to help others

While there are probably more for you to list, this is a good place to start.

5. Who has this problem that needs your solution?

This is where you define who needs you or in entrepreneurial terms, your niche.

If your product is not fully developed, think about:

• What interests you all the time
• What topics or activities that you have real knowledge about and experience with
• Which of those topics or activities will keep your interest long term

After that, you need to do some market research.

What does that mean? It means getting online and searching for:

• The current solutions to the problem you are solving
• Who is selling a product or service similar to the one you are going to offer
• Where do they market their business
• Who is looking for this solution
• How many people are asking for the help you provide

What you are looking for are the demographics that make up your intended niche. This means:

• What professions your intended customers will have
• How much money they need to earn to afford your product or service
• Their age range
• Where they may need to be located at
• Where they spend the most of their time online

6. How and where will you market your business?

The research you do will feed directly into your marketing. Contrary to how it may appear, you do not need to spend much or anything to begin to market your business initially.

You have the ability to use social media to your benefit. In your research, you will have discovered which platforms are better for your niche because you will see that the people you want to attract post and spend time there.

You can start accounts that feature your business name and begin to post and interact with others. This is also helpful because you are going to need to test your offer with your posts and see what gets and keeps people’s attention.

If you already know that marketing of a certain type or in a certain publication is going to be necessary for you, then research what you will need to have to publish your offer there.

Always keep an eye on what you competitors are doing; you can learn a lot from their efforts and interaction.

7. What will your finances look like?

Your product or service will likely have costs associated with it to get up and running. Your product or service may need a website to do business on.

Or, you may be able to host a business page on your chosen social media platform which may or may not cost you anything to maintain.

But your internet service will need to be figured into your business expenses as well as any other expense that goes into building and equipping your business.

It’s important to have a realistic expectation of what kind of investment your business will need from you.

It’s also important to set an expectation for yourself of what kind of income you will need to earn from your business to achieve why you began your business in the first place. This is why charging a fair price for your product or service is so important; you will need to know how many clients or sales you need to make your monthly or quarterly goals.

At this point, you may be thinking: “EGADS… I did not know I needed to do all this!!”

If that’s where you are at, I can relate.

What I learned doing this work for my business initially was that it saved me a lot of time and frustration from all my earlier efforts where I just threw my name and face out there, hoping someone would take notice.

Your business requires a more directed effort to get known, get customers, and to become successful.

Thankfully, that’s the cool thing about this blog: I am here to help you do this. In coming posts, I will go into more depth about what it takes to get your business up and running.

You are always encouraged to DM me with your questions about something I have covered here or anything you may have a question about.?

We are on this journey together.

Talk to you in my next post soon!

#Entrepreneurship #OnlineBusiness #DigitalMarketing #Ecommerce #StartupLife #SocialMediaMarketing #SmallBusiness #BusinessStrategy #SEO #ContentMarketing