As a citizen of the United States, you have every right to start your own business. And, if you are like many Americans, you have always wanted to open your own business. Creating your own venture lets you be your own boss. You can also decide for yourself how to do business. You can employ the workers that you want to hire and set up the rules you want to have followed, establish your own policies and business community.
Your business can benefit not only you, but also your community with the new service or products you offer. You will strengthen the local economy as your business thrives and you purchase supplies from other businesspeople in your area.
What do you need to get started in a venture of your own making? There are two key factors: A good idea and some entrepreneurial drive to become a successful business owner and operator.
Entrepreneurial drive: Motivation for success
Entrepreneurial drive? What does that mean? Let’s unpack the concept.
The urge to create something new, the flash of idea on how to improve a business system currently in place, and a motivation to report to no one but yourself and your own customers are the sparks in the engine of your entrepreneurial drive. But to truly be an entrepreneur, you need to fire up that engine. You have to go beyond turning the key and put the car into drive.
The first stop on this journey is to evaluate the opportunity. Will your idea fill a need or solve a problem in the community? If it won’t, no one will buy it. Will my product or service fill a need in my community? should be the first question you ask yourself.
Take a look around your local community and decide whether your customer base will be the general vicinity around where you live or if it will also include a virtual community, because you plan for your business to have a web-based presence. You can choose to stay small and serve a local base very well, developing loyal customers who return again and again, or you may go global with online customers everywhere. The point is to look for an obvious niche – something that is missing for people in your locale – and figure out how to fill it.
Once you have figured out a valid need that you have the technique, skills, or ability to fill, designing a marketing plan will be your next step. You may have a great idea, but you still won’t have any customers if no one knows about your business. You also need to find out who your competitors are and figure out how you can make your venture stand out among the crowd.
Evaluating the competition
If you have a great idea for filling a need, and you know you can implement it well, that still may not be enough to give you success if there are too many others serving your same customer base. You need to honestly evaluate whether or not there is space in the marketplace for your business. How are you unique? Will you offer a higher level of customer service, a better quality product, cutting-edge equipment, or items that no one else has yet?
As you closely examine your competition, you can determine what they do well and where they fall short. Then you can make an informed decision as to whether you can truly compete – and win. Here are some questions to ask yourself as you visit other businesses:
- What is this business doing well?
- What do I do better than this business?
- What can I do less expensively? Can I offer a lower price and still have a healthy profit margin?
- What additional services or bonuses can I offer to entice customers my way?
If you pay attention to your competitors, you will learn a lot.
Tags: business owner, competition, entrepreneur, startup