Idea Development, Who Am I
This part of the business idea development process, is probably one of the more critical parts, essential to making sure that you will be successful.
Essentially defining who you are will serve as a very useful guide to developing your best fit business plan.
What skills, expertise, personal experience and capabilities you have will have significant impact on your ability to grow and develop a successful business.
And I agree this step seems logical but I have seen far too many times that someone decides to make a life changing decision (following their dream), and then venture into areas where they have no expertise whatsoever, which results in significant struggle and even more often dismal failure.
I would use an example of a woman I met several years ago, whom after being offered early retirement, working in an administrative job for 20 years, decided to promptly take all her retirement savings and plow it into a retail furniture business.
She had no retail experience, no sales experience, and clearly no real understanding of the contracts that she signed, nor the commitments that she made (which included a five year rental agreement for retail space).
The net result was that she was shut down, and out of business, in under a year, and not without significant legal ramifications.
A sad story, but a dramatic illustration of the importance of this step.
So my personal approach to dealing with this aspect is to think of myself as a product (and a brand), and essentially I like to take the time to create a "specification sheet" of who I am.
And I do not mean creating a resume.
I mean create a "skill sheet", so to speak, of everything you know how to do.
I would also create a parallel list of all the things you really enjoy doing.
And here I mean everything.
If you like hiking or cooking or blogging, no matter how mundane put it on the list.
And by all means do not be shy about it.
It is your personal list, and not something you need to share with anyone.
Once you have a list of your expertise, abilities, and the things you really enjoy, I would take this list and rank each item from the highest to the lowest.
So the thing you enjoy the most, put that at the top of your "love to do" list, and your most significant skills and expertise at the top of your "skills" list, and so on..
Using a spreadsheet for this is usually quite handy, since you can just move things around, and add and delete things as your list develops.
Again I suspect this will prove something that requires some thought, and I would suggest that you take your time to develop this list, since this will really help you figure out what to do, and what not to do.
In fact here are some of the benefits I have gained from doing this:
Update it, change it and measure your progress.
It often proves a lot of fun...
I wish you all the best in your ventures.
Cheers!!
Essentially defining who you are will serve as a very useful guide to developing your best fit business plan.
What skills, expertise, personal experience and capabilities you have will have significant impact on your ability to grow and develop a successful business.
And I agree this step seems logical but I have seen far too many times that someone decides to make a life changing decision (following their dream), and then venture into areas where they have no expertise whatsoever, which results in significant struggle and even more often dismal failure.
I would use an example of a woman I met several years ago, whom after being offered early retirement, working in an administrative job for 20 years, decided to promptly take all her retirement savings and plow it into a retail furniture business.
She had no retail experience, no sales experience, and clearly no real understanding of the contracts that she signed, nor the commitments that she made (which included a five year rental agreement for retail space).
The net result was that she was shut down, and out of business, in under a year, and not without significant legal ramifications.
A sad story, but a dramatic illustration of the importance of this step.
So my personal approach to dealing with this aspect is to think of myself as a product (and a brand), and essentially I like to take the time to create a "specification sheet" of who I am.
And I do not mean creating a resume.
I mean create a "skill sheet", so to speak, of everything you know how to do.
I would also create a parallel list of all the things you really enjoy doing.
And here I mean everything.
If you like hiking or cooking or blogging, no matter how mundane put it on the list.
And by all means do not be shy about it.
It is your personal list, and not something you need to share with anyone.
Once you have a list of your expertise, abilities, and the things you really enjoy, I would take this list and rank each item from the highest to the lowest.
So the thing you enjoy the most, put that at the top of your "love to do" list, and your most significant skills and expertise at the top of your "skills" list, and so on..
Using a spreadsheet for this is usually quite handy, since you can just move things around, and add and delete things as your list develops.
Again I suspect this will prove something that requires some thought, and I would suggest that you take your time to develop this list, since this will really help you figure out what to do, and what not to do.
In fact here are some of the benefits I have gained from doing this:
- It created a clearer understanding for me, of what I really know, and what I really enjoy, which in turn allowed me to figure out the best possible match for my skills to the things that will get me out of bed in the morning.
- It also helped me to identify what skills I need to develop in order to actually get to do the things I really enjoy and want to do, and make money from them of course.
- And last, but by no means the least, it helped me understand that there are certain things that I should probably steer clear of.
Update it, change it and measure your progress.
It often proves a lot of fun...
I wish you all the best in your ventures.
Cheers!!
