SO WHAT NEXT AFTER THE BRILLIANT BUSINESS IDEA HAS ROLLED-IN?

Hi, this is Godwin Mayaki and I want to talk about something that came to mind. My thought is, what are the next steps after you catch a great business idea?

It is very likely that one experiences one of those light bulb moments when a ‘brilliant business idea sparks in your mind, right? This is perhaps that one time when everything you have been up to starts coming together in that one brilliant idea. At this moment you are supercharged and ready to go right on with this omega idea that’s gonna make you super rich.

Well there are a couple of things you will need to consider, so you are properly guided.

• One of the first things you need to do is RESEARCH. In this regard, you want to go on platforms like Google, you want to take a look online, because just like is well know; at least one hundred other people have thought about that same idea that you're having. You would need to go on websites and take a look at who is doing it directly or indirectly. You also want to take a look at who maybe has done it in the past, whether people have failed at it. You want to know why they failed. What was the reason? I actually think that Google is great for this purpose. For example, you should take a look at some articles; see how people are talking about some of the competitors and perhaps the business model and the approach in which they are actually tacklingthe idea. See if you can do it faster and better than the people that are out there, perhaps there's a good way for you to actually have a place in the market.
• The next is a question, and it is this; what are you willing to sacrifice? I mean, let's face it, if this is something that you're going to go at, you're most likely going to have to sacrifice at least five to 10 years of your life. And that's something that you need to be willing to commit. Right? You need to be passionate enough to really tackle this idea. And that's going to include missing parties, perhaps not being able to be with your friends as much as you want it. But again, you really need to understand that this is going to be a marathon that you're going to be embarking on and not a sprint. And you need to be willing to take the risk and to go all out to make it happen.
• The next thing that you really want to ask yourself is how big could this be? Look, in realistic terms the last thing that you want is to get into an idea, go all in, and then all of a sudden the market is super small. If the market is small, not only is it going to determine the potential outcome of your value in the event that this enterprise gets acquired in the future, but it will certainly determine your business’ potential attractiveness towards the investors. Typically investors, especially hyper-growth investors like venture capital, private equity etc. do not want to be involved in businesses where the market is small. So you want to make sure that the market is big enough and that it is going to justify all the sweat, all the tears and all the incredible amount of time and effort that you're going to have to put into this over the course of time.
• The next part is how much money will you need? let's take a look at it. I mean, basically, it's all about developing a minimum viable product. It doesn't need to be beautiful. It doesn't need to be perfect. It just needs to work, period. It needs to work. You need to put it in front of other people. You need to get people's reactions. You need to get them to give you feedback so that eventually you're able to optimize based on what they are telling you. Because the last thing that you want is to go on assumptions, thinking that you're putting something beautiful out there. And then all of a sudden you put it out there and it's a complete flop. So for this reason, you need to understand how much that minimum viable product is going to cost you? And then eventually to take a look if that is something feasible, if that is something that you can actually do.
• The next thing that you're going to need to ask yourself is who are you going to need for this? And essentially, it's all about execution, surrounding yourselfwith the right people. What you want to know is,who are those that will work on this idea with me for the next eighteen to twenty four months on the execution roadmap? And essentially, what should be the profiles of people that you need to be surrounded by in order to achieve those different milestones that you're going to have on your  roadmap? So if it's technical for example, service or product, you want to make sure that you have technical people. If it's something in retail, you need to have retail experts. So just make sure that you have the right expertise, the right knowledge and the right guidance helping you along the way.  Success is more or less about having the right people on the right seats of the bus. And essentially, if that's the case, you will find your direction toward success. Now, obviously, at the beginning, you're not going to be able to have a lot of cash potentially to really be able to go out and hire a recruit.
• The next part is you talking to customers, you want to be able to get as much data as possible, and you can do that on a qualitative or quantitative basis. Qualitative basis is you want to go door to door. You want to make as many phone calls as needed, send as many emails as you can to people that you think could be potential customers of this and just get their feedback. Maybe there's like a set of questions, maybe like five to ten questions that you develop and you get to see very certain patterns when they are replying to those questions. And that's going to guide you a little bit more on the execution, on being able to bring that idea to market. On the other hand, you might have to get raw industry data relating to what you want to do, you may also want to do a lot of quantifying and all that. And some of that data is going to be super valuable when you go out and execute, because you're going to know that what you're doing is something that people were indirectly asking you about.
• The next thing that you want to do is you want to claim the name. You want a situation where everything that links to your end product should be unique; be it enterprise name, product name, website domain name etc; let's face it, this will go a long way to determine how well you will be able to market you business in the long-run. Additionally steer clear of ambiguous names and particularly those that sound, seem or are close to existing businesses. Once you've secured the right branding, you want to go into social media, secure those pages and really start creating that name for the potential service or product that you're bringing to market so that you have that safely already on your end and nobody else is going to take it away from you.
• Finally, you need to start selling. You need to get out there, you need to sell the product, you need to sell the service, you need to get all the feedback that you can. And again, it's all about iteration. You need to iterate. You need to optimize. You need to constantly make it better and better. And the only way that you're going to do that is by getting in front of people and selling it.

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