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.

Mindset: 6 months, 1 week, and 4 days from now

God, How I hate that word! When I was starting out, this is all I ever heard. It prefaced every argument and conversation. I couldn't get a single piece of information without listening to someone question my staying power, and positive mindset.

In one incredibly 'Kafa-esque' episode, I couldn't post on a forum to get answers to similar responses because I was being too negative, and didn't have a positive angle to my question. Considering that my question was about how to get feedback, because I wasn't getting any, there wasn't a way to actually sound 'solution-driven', because I couldn't get assistance in getting my foot on the very first rung of the ladder. Frustrating wasn't the word for how I felt. It was as if having access to the Web had itself become a hindrance.

The question has to be asked, though, and you are the only person that can answer it to your own satisfaction. You have found the gap in the marketplace, and have found the opportunity to fill it. Now comes the tough question to answer: Can you do it? If the question of financial funding isn't tough enough to face, you then have to find the reason WHY you want to do it. Let's go into that a little deeper.

If you have realised that you have something else to offer society, rather than simply earning a salary helping someone else out - known as hiring yourself out for the lowest possible amount to receive the highest workload possible and have someone else get wealthy on the results - then the question you have to answer is this: Do I have what it takes to get to the end of the journey. Because along with opportunity comes responsibility, and if you cannot face the latter, the former is a wasted exercise. No matter how you feel today, amid all of the certainty that this is for you, tempered by the excitement you feel about actually starting to do this, how are you going to feel 6 months, 1 week, and 4 days from now? On that day, you will have to feel the same. You may also be in exactly the same situation you are today, or even worse - you could owe a lot of money, and be honour bound to continue with your new business, already hating both the daily grind, and the decision to go ahead with it in the first place.

Put another way: If you hate life now because the only motivation you have in your life is to get up because you need the money, you may be faced with that every single day, and have added the responsibility of earning it yourself. Now you not only have to roll that boulder uphill, a few weeks or months from now, you will be doing it alone, without the Corporation to lean on. The answer to this is research and information.

You may have gone through an exhausting search to find the business you decided on, and learned a lot about being an entrepreneur along the way. The time spent now researching yourself will pay off in the future. It isn't the product or service you chose that will make things easier for you - it is the certainty in your own success that will. No matter how long it takes, the sacrifices you have to make, the ever changing schedule for success, you have to keep going. Only you can answer these questions. There are books and other tools from a whole host of people telling how they 'made it', and all of them state that they went through hard times to get there. What they won't tell you is how to actually do it, other than persevering, and that is what you have to have: The ability to keep going knowing that the business idea you have had is right, AND you are the right person in the right place at the right time to do it.

While you get up every morning, and feel good about the decision you have made to do this, you have to know that the struggle to get there has to be just as enjoyable as the end result you have in mind. Running your own business means being an accountant, to ensure that every penny spent has some kind of payoff for the business. You have to be in charge of Sales and Marketing, and have the desire to stand up and be seen as the spokesperson of this business. You have to be the CEO, and to make the decision necessary to keep going, change your expenditure, be honest with the Accountant and the Sales Manager about how it is all going, and you have to ask for help from everyone to make some tough decisions.

While you have being doing exercises where every single aspect of the business plan has been ripped apart, parsed, and coldly looked at, the next step is the toughest one of all.
You have to start again with the same exercise, and do it to yourself: About 10% of the population can sell, and that includes being the centre of attention and being proud of what you are doing. Only about 15% of the population can be an accountant without having the years of practice to get there. Can you do it? If you aim to be as successful as a member of the Fortune 500, then that is only a drop in the bucket compared to all business owners out there, not including the 70% or so of all businesses that fail within 5 years. Altogether that puts you in a certain 1% of the population: Not the most talented, not the most committed, or the most creative. It is a mix of all of these and more that matters, but most of all perseverance. Most of all it requires standing in the shower 6 months, 1 week and 4 days from now, looking forward to getting to work, and not being as pissed off at life as you are now.

Mark your calender, and let's see how you feel.