The best small business to start should be investigated slowly and thoroughly.
What is the best small business to start?
What do you wish to do with the rest of my life?
Incredible questions, no doubt you are considering serious life altering decisions.
With 2010 unemployment reaching 10% and 18% if discouraged workers are included, now is the time to secure your financial future and health related fitness.
Your passions begin this self analysis; documenting demand for your product or services follows.
Now we will guide you through this process.......
What all businesses and customers have in common is the need to exchange information.
- "I need this, you have that."
- "I have this, you need that."
The one constant is
INFORMATION.
All business people and customers deal in information. Information may be the final deliverable product or information may cause a customer to purchase a good.
Your best small business to start must solve a problem, or as my Dad told me about raising my kids, "it comes down to giving pleasure or relieving pain".
Here we will introduce you to various questioning techniques, brainstorming tools, that will help you identify a small business you will enjoy and:
- Fulfils a need (solves a problem)
- Has something people want
- Has a profit potential.
Give yourself more credit, you have something that people want......
We all have unique experiences which we can share with the internet public. We all have some schooling, some work experience, and deep personal experiences. Sharing many of these experiences no doubt can help many people with their daily lives. People need information as we need air, water and food.
Every day we must make important decisions based upon information we glean from our environment, from local people and businesses, from publications, from radio and television, and finally from the internet.
Here at Eagle Wood, we don't just sell sustainably grown meats, we educate our customers in many aspects of healthy living including:
- How to cook a pork roast?
- What is natural, sustainable agriculture and how does it affect health?
- How to find locally grown products?
- What artificial ingredients in the meat should be avoided and who else acknowledges this risk?
- Roaming versus caged livestock - how does it affect the quality of meat?
- Why are by-catch reduction devices important in shrimping?
- Can I build a home smoker?
Information, Information, Information and More Information ......
Combine, what you enjoy and love, with what people are looking for? The best small business to start is the one to love.
"
Are you bored with life? Then throw yourself into some work you believe in with all your heart, live for it, die for it, and you will find happiness that you had thought could never be yours." from Dale Carnegie
Let's begin this two part self analysis - begin here with your internal review followed by a business needs review.
Answer these questions in free form over several days. Take your time. Print the questions out on paper so they are portable. Work on them during your daily commute or lunch break or after you put the kids to bed. The questions appear below or can be downloaded by clicking the next line.
Personal Requirements Worksheet - Download for Free
Best Small Business to Start - Your Emotional Requirements
- What are your passions?
- What do you read, talk about, dream about?
- Do you need excitement?
- Do work and friendships go together?
- Must you directly help others?
- Are physical challenges important?
- Do you need to be surrounded by beauty?
- Should your business incorporate art and music?
- Is it necessary to work within strict moral guidelines?
- Must you solve pressing social or moral issues?
- Is free time important?
- Do you need to work with your hands?
- Do you need to connect deeply with the earth, with others?
Best Small Business To Start - Your Environmental Requirements
- Do you blossom in a tranquil environment, in a competitive environment?
- Do you have patience with people, with bureaucracies?
- What annoys you with daily life?
- Do you think that you can make small improvements in the "daily grind of life" ?
- Must your work location must reflect your personality?
- Do you enjoy the stability of bureaucracy, size or franchise company?
- Is privacy important?
- Do you need recognition, publicly, privately?
- Do you need documented advancement over others?
- Is independence crucial?
- Do you need to show your expertise?
- Do you love challenging problems or using leading edge technology?
- You don't need supervision?
- Do time deadlines bring out your best?
- Do you like to supervise?
- You enjoy detailed or precision work?
- Are high earnings a must?
- Is supplemental income your goal?
- Do you need authority and responsibility?
Best Small Business To Start - Identify Your Skill Requirements
- Speaking
- Writing
- Reading with understanding
- Listening and understanding
- Summarizing
- Group facilitating
- Negotiating
- Observing people, places, and things
- Persuading
- Analyzing - scientific, statistical
- Editing
- Identifying problems
- Interviewing people
- Setting goals
- Dreaming
- Predicting or forecasting
- Counseling and sharing feelings
- Teaching
- Motivating
- Resolving conflict
- Making tough decisions (someone will be hurt)
For more ideas click on the link below titled "Brainstorming Software". After entering a phrase like "reduce stress" this tool will bring back related words in meaning, and phrases which contain the entered word, from Google, Yahoo and MSN search data bases. Many times word lists such as these, open up unrelated ways of thinking.
Use Brainstorming Software Online for Free - Click Here
Do not proceed with the business analysis section below until you have completed the requirements sections above.
You should have a better understanding of your likes and dislikes. Now let's hone down your dreams and learn if what you enjoy will make you money.
Answers the following in free form over several days. Take your time. Print them out on paper so they are portable. Work on them during your daily commute or lunch break or after your put the kids to bed. The questions appear below or can be downloaded by clicking on the next line.
Does My Idea Make Sense - Free Worksheet
The Best Small Business To Start - Does It Make Sense?
- What is the need?
- Is the need temporary, sporadic, or cyclical?
- Is the need really worth solving, monetarily, or time spent away from your family?
- When did you first notice this need?
- Did it occur suddenly, or had it been developing for some time?
- What attempts, successful or not, have been tried to solve this problem, by you, by others?
- Are there reasonable people who say the need is not a problem, is a problem?
- What do you gain in profit and personal standing?
- Does this business provide a true, win-win for all involved?
- What is your criteria for success, $10,000/month, 10 hours/week free time with family?
- What are your personal and professional reasons for developing the best small business to start?
- How strong is your commitment, 10 hours per week, 50 hours per week?
- Will your family support your effort?
- Ask why, five times, to get to the crux of the problem?
- What benefits result from solving this problem, what pleasure is gained, what pain in relieved?
- Does the solution reduce fear, add pleasure?
- What would be the repercussions of partial failure, of total failure?
- How can these risks be reduced?
- Unintended Consequences - Could your solution cause an undesirable side effect for you, or for your customer?
- Who can give you a different perspective?
- What other needs precede or follow this problem?
- What are the absolutes, the givens, the generally accepted issues or conventional wisdom?
- What if they are not really absolutes?
- If accepted are not absolutes, does this bring to light new problems?
- What is the cost of trying the impossible?
- Who else is trying to solve this problem, a competitor or an ally?
- Could a competitor become an ally?
- What other people, groups, agencies, share your interest?
- Should you ask for their help?
- What skills need to be added to your project?
- What resources of time, people, skills, information, money, equipment, and supplies are necessary?
- Have you prioritized the problems and solutions?
- What is the cost/benefit equation, in terms of money, time and social benefit?
- Are you doing the right things and are you doing those things right? Translation - have you identified the correct problem and have you identified the correct solutions?
- KISS - Keep Its Solution Simple. Is the solution both simple and elegant? Is this the best small business to start for you?
- Is the timing right, should it be sporadic or cyclical?
- Is the solution what is needed or what you think is needed?
- Can you make money offering this solution, is the market too small?
- Murphy's Law - If if can, it will go wrong.
- Have you oversimplified the solution, the problem?
- If a customer asks, "Why should I buy from you?, can you describe your uniqueness, simply and with conviction?
For more ideas on the best small business to start using brainstorming software, click the following Brainstorming Ideas icon. After entering a phrase like "hardware store" this tool will bring back related words in meaning and phrases which contain the entered word from Google, Yahoo and MSN search data bases. Many times word lists such as these, open up unrelated ways of thinking about the best small business to start.
Use Brainstorming Software Online for Free - Click Here
Do not proceed with the taking steps analysis section below until you have completed the does it makes sense section above.
You should have a better understanding of the business market. Now let's continue with a punch list of items needing completion in order to operate a business.
Download Business Taking Steps Punch List
Best Small Business to Start - Taking Steps
- Write your punch list to get started
- Develop a budget, then triple it
- Get legal, establish business entity
- Purchase equipment, computers, software, desks chairs, paper goods
- Finalize resell and affiliate agreements, joint ventures, employment contracts
- Build optimized website
- Advertise internet
- Get testimonials
- Tell everyone, why your business is unique and why they should buy from you
- Outfit brick and mortar location
- Contract for products - both soft and hard goods
- Staffing
- Customer support - walk-ins, phone, internet, refunds and returns
- Bookkeeping
- GO
For more ideas on the best small business to start using brainstorming software, click the following Brainstorming Ideas icon. After entering a phrase like "retirement planning" this tool will bring back related words in meaning and phrases which contain the entered word from Google, Yahoo and MSN search data bases. Many times word lists such as these, open up unrelated ways of thinking about the best small business to start.
Use Brainstorming Software Online for Free - Click Here
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