Choose a Market In Which You Excel

• The best success strategy for any business is simple: provide a higher-quality product or service than your competition. Every entrepreneur should focus on an area in which he has a natural talent; the easiest way to excel in your work is to pick an area in which your product or service is better than everyone else's, without necessarily requiring more labor.
  
  For example, if you are planning a retail business, choose a product line you truly care about, and develop a customer base of people who love your products like you do. But if your strength is negotiating and getting a low price for goods, then pick the products that you can sell with the highest profit margin -- provided those products will still compete successfully. More people will be successful with the first, or "boutique," model of selling products; it is far more rare for an entrepreneur to be consistently successful based on his ability to out-negotiate his competitors.
  
  If you are not sure what kind of business will be best for you, try brainstorming as many ideas as you can, then choose the one you find most energizing -- not necessarily the one you find most profitable. It is easier to do something you enjoy and discover how to make money later than it is to dedicate yourself to something you dislike on a daily basis.
  
  

Review the Competition

• Every business enters a market with competition, even if your product is entirely new. Your potential customers all have a limited amount of money to spend, and you should consider as your competition any business that takes money out of the pool that might otherwise go to you. A retail store in a commercial mall competes not only with the businesses that sell similar products, but also with all other stores in that mall; once a customer hits his budget limit, he cannot buy your products.
  
  Therefore, review the competition you face in several different areas. Obviously, you should first consider companies that compete directly against your product or service; these give you the baseline by which you determine whether your offerings are better, and how you might convince customers of this. Then consider other businesses that your customers might consider spending money at -- and think about how you can use creative marketing to bring those customers to you directly for quicker sales.
  
  

Write Your Business Plan

• Finally, be certain that your business will make money. Many startups fail not because they do not make a profit, but because they do not make enough money to justify the time commitment by the entrepreneur. Your profit margin should be high enough to both pay yourself a decent salary and reinvest in your business to allow for growth. A business that can only support one of these goals is likely to be short-lived. Your business plan should allow for this. Any business that can meet both goals with conservative sales estimates is much more likely to succeed than one that expects to immediately corner the market.