How to find the World's best business.

For those of you following this blog, you have now faced some 'home truths'.

Do you have what it takes to become successful, and do you have the right product to fill a need?
Are you able to look long-term for your businesses' success, and can you afford to keep going through bad times in order to see the light at the end of the recession tunnel?
Can you promote, advertise, be responsible for, and sell your product in order to create the customers' need to buy?

If you are still with us, it's time for a field trip. Nothing too exotic, I'm afraid, just down to the local mall, but it will give you a break from the computer. Hopefully, there's a Starbucks, or something similar, there, so that you can look and listen; people watch and learn.

Most times we hit this place with one thought in mind: How can I get what I have come for, and then get out as fast as possible. Try relaxing into the mindset of looking and learning, listening and seeing. Once you take the regular pressures you have out of the equation, you can start seeing under the superficial look of the place, and see how this organic system works under the surface. How all of the different components work together. What you are doing is a first step in marketing, because you have the idea of what people are shopping for, and now you are going to discover how merchants fill that requirement.

Who is selling cheap, and why? Where are all of the crowds heading? If people are just window shopping, what are their destinations and why? What are the most popular stores and what to they have that others don't? If they are promoting a particular good or service over others, why are they doing it, and how? How much would it cost for you to do the same? Who is new to the mall, and what are they doing to announce their arrival? Before you got here today, what local advertising was being done to promote what stores, and how much did it cost?

Even if you are planing an online business, this is a good exercise, because online shoppers act exactly the same as offline ones. They roam the Internet in herds, and enter stores (websites) for particular reasons. Your costs may be lower than renting a mall store, but as we discussed before there are plenty of unseen costs to do with advertising and marketing your business that need to be planned before penny is spent.

In both worlds, you have competition. How long have they been around, and how far ahead are they of you? What has it cost them to get this far, and work out a sales and marketing cycle to take you through this first cycle. This could be either a time schedule based on where you think you will be in 2, 4 or 6 months, or even to get through a particular time of year like Easter or Christmas. It's also time to take notes on how you will measure your progress, and what back up details you will require to show legal or investment partners that require proof of who you are, where you have been, and where you are going.

Once this is done, it's time to finish the Late, and get back to the computer to find out more about your business model, and how others have done it. Online there are many websites, forums, and blogs like this offering free advice. Most of them have a product or service to sell you, and you can spend some of your seed money getting advice form others, but bear this in mind:

Only about 10 - 15% of the populace will ever do this. Everyone else wants to, and thinks that they can, but they fall by the wayside for many reasons. You will soon see the information services full of people that think that all of their questions can be answered free of charge by someone else. This is a lazy approach, and you won't learn anything from would be entrepreneurs waiting for answers. You will have done more in your field trip than most people ever do, so learn yourself, find the right information, and carry on. As part of your back up documentation, there should be a time line of what you need to tart: Time and money, of course, but a set of benchmarks to reach is crucial, especially in your early days.

Finally, remember the faces of the people that run these businesses. Are they THAT much different from you? Do they possess something that you don't? Of course not. they do it because they believe. Do you?

Good! Let's get started.