When you’re stuck in between an excellent idea for a business and the anxiety of how to take it forward to become something great, the momentum to start your business can quickly become stunted. What you need is the direction and a plan to make sure you’re making some progress with your idea. Moreover, with each step you take, your confidence in your abilities, and your business idea shall begin to gain more power. Let’s start where all successful businesses start - research.

Research

Despite the saying ‘if you build it, they will come’ it's a bit too risky to apply this way of thinking to your business idea. To give it the best shot of succeeding, you shall need to commit first and foremost to some primary and secondary research.

Your primary research shall include raw data and details that you collate that will be helpful to your business. For instance, you might create a questionnaire for people to answer, asking about something concerning the product or service you are hoping to offer. For example, if you want to start a farming business, you may ask people at the local's farmers markets what food vegetables they would like to see more of, and where they tend to buy their food. Alternatively, if you’re creating a clothing line for curvy women, you may ask women what they think about current fashion trends, what they would like to see more of, and whether they find the current sizes in the shops for women provide a good fit. Other primary research could be you observing how many customers use a particular business, such as a car wash or a beauty salon. In turn, this information could give you an idea of the scope of business you might expect in a particular field.

Secondary research entails searching for existing information either online or in the library. It’s important to use reputable sources from successful businesses, research facilities, and government statistics so that you don’t use inaccurate information. An example of secondary research might be, you might want to search how many people within your city are your current target audience. Such as you may want to see how many men there are from age 20 - 35 to attend a boot camp. Alternatively, if you find your local area is predominantly retired persons, you may wish to create a service that caters to them instead. Otherwise, if you are thinking of creating and managing an online business. You’ll want to research who appears in the top of the rankings and why.

When conducting your research, you shall mainly want to find if there is a gap in the market for your idea. Who your competitors are. Who will buy your product or service. Also, the cost people are prepared to pay for a particular service or product.

Experience

You can’t beat hands-on experience if you’re hoping to tackle a particular sector. Whether you’re hoping to create a dog grooming salon or a manufacturing company, first-hand experience can give you insight into how things work within the company. It can also give you inside knowledge into how a business operates, such as how they interact with their customers, and how they market their product. Gaining experience is valuable for helping you to gain confidence and knowledge to form your own successful company. You can obtain a better understanding of the elements you like from different businesses and parts that you think you can do better.

Funding

If you’re happy about the research you’ve conducted and you've looked for opportunities to gain experience, it’s time to think about your funding options. The amount and type of funding you'll need largely depends on the type of business you’re hoping to set up. So what you shall want to do initially is cost up everything our company will need. When doing this include the cost of renting premises or if it’s an online business, the cost of buying a website domain, host and builder (or website designer). You’ll also want to think about the equipment you’ll need. For instance, for a medical practice, you will need desks, chairs, and medical equipment such as a stethoscope, needles, a vaccine fridge, and patient beds. Once you’ve created a figure of how much you’ll need to spend from the offset, and how much you’ll need to pay per month (e.g., utility bills, rent, and wages), you’ll have a good indication of how much funding you'll need to launch. However, also how much you will need to make per month to cover your outgoings.

For a few funding options you might want to consider, here are 6;

*  Business loan
*  Bootstrapping
*  Own savings
*  Credit cards
*  Investor
*  Crowdfunding

Working out how much funding you’ll need and where you will get it from will enable you to think about whether your business idea is financially viable. Also, if you don't have the funds to create the business yourself, whether or not you're willing to take the risk of borrowing from a bank.

Delegate

There are some areas of your business that at this point, you don’t have the skills or knowledge to do. However, this doesn’t make you a lousy entrepreneur; it makes you a real person. We can’t all know how to design a website, design a compelling brand, and manage our social media channels successfully. So, when you reach these points, you need professional help. By delegating tasks that you’re not sure of how to do, you can get on with other areas of the business. So whether you need to hire a website designer, an accountant to handle your money and tax returns or a recruiter to headhunt a team for you, there are plenty of businesses out there offering services to fill the gaps.

Persevere

Deciding to become an entrepreneur is no easy task. Namely, because the amount of failure that will arise during your journey can for most people stunt them from taking steps further. It’s important to know when you’re a business owner, problems, and failure at some point or another should be expected. Therefore, rather than dwelling on them, learn from your mistakes. Then change the course of your business to prevent the same or similar issues from arising again.

Failures, repeated failures, are finger posts on the road to achievement. One fails forward toward success. C. S. Lewis

Beyond the five steps above, what’s necessary most of all is for you to get stuck in there and give it your best shot. Without taking action, you will never know the true potential of what you can achieve in your career as an entrepreneur.

Picture by TeroVasalainen from Pixabay - CC0 Licence