Six Steps To Get Your Startup Business Off The Ground Want to validate your startup business idea?
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Want to validate your startup business idea? Here's how you can go about implementing this, as well as crush the market with your idea, in six steps:
Step 1: Believe in your idea
If you don't genuinely believe in what it is that you are doing, there is no way that your business idea can succeed. According to The Oxford Dictionary, the term belief is defined as "an acceptance that something exists or is true, especially one without proof." The importance of having belief in your startup idea is that it will reinforce your confidence throughout the times when the market won't accept your offer, which will then be a shield of defense towards your self-doubt. Belief in your startup idea will overthrow any form of external influenced self-doubt.
Self-doubt isn't something that comes with the initial thinking of the idea phase, it's something that comes later on, once the market starts to reject what it is that you offer. Understand that specific market segments will reject what you have to offer, but you need to persevere throughout the nonsense, and rely on your belief to then satisfy the market segment that needs your services, because they are out there.
Step 2: Find a solution to a current problem
When I started my sales training academy about two years ago, it was because I noticed one thing: there are so many startup companies out there who are struggling to sell their products, and the reason why is because they are not providing a solution to a current problem.
A lot of companies out there in this generation are struggling to generate new business, because their products are not being sold the way they should be. Throughout the corporate world, products are not being pitched properly, and psychology is not something that is being heavily focused on when it comes to training. Therefore, I created my sales training academy, which is an online sales course that trains individuals in any industry how to sell any product psychologically, whether it be a product or service priced at US$3, or a product or service at $1,000,000.
Whatever product or service it is that you're looking at entering the current market place with, make sure that the output is a solution to a current market problem. Once you release a product or a startup idea, the markets response will be based on your output, and how effective your product/service can be.
Step 3: Gather perspectives from people who have done it before
With any idea that comes to your mind, allow it to process. Don't immediately cancel it out, and think that it will not work. If it is a business idea in which you have not worked in, or a field that you do not have expertise in, keep an open mind, and do not be quick to judge. What you need to do is really simple: do not seek perspectives of people who have not done it before, seek the perspectives of individuals in that specific area, experts in that specific field/industry, or someone who has done it before.
What a lot of entrepreneurs do in the early stages is seek the wrong perspectives i.e. their friends, family, or other people that are not considered the correct credible and reliable to source information from. Nine out of 10 times, those individuals will give you the wrong advice, because they don't know that industry accurately enough to give you the correct feedback. When you seek the perspectives of individuals who have done it before, they will show you the upsides and downsides, as well as explain the challenges you will face as they would have faced them in the past, which will then lead to them explaining how they overcame those specific challenges.
Step 4: Develop a plan
I want you to picture two boats in a large ocean. One boat, say Boat A, has a captain, a full boat crew, and a specific destination in place. The other boat, Boat B, is empty, and does not have anyone in the ship. What do you think is going to happen? Boat A is going to arrive at its destination, because it has a captain steering it in the right direction, whilst the water will take Boat B to wherever the direction of the current is flowing.
Don't be Boat B- be Boat A. Have a direction, and develop a specific plan as to how you're going to achieve whatever it is that you want to achieve. It needs to be a specific step-by-step plan that documents your what's, why's, and most importantly, your how's. This will further reinforce your confidence in your idea, and this will always give you something to work on, on a daily basis, as you will be forced to work towards your specific goal, and your plan will dictate how you're going to achieve reaching your goal.
Step 5: Stay committed
If you are not committed, you may as well throw in the towel now. Commitment is key in any business, and when it comes to you starting a business, you need to put your blood, sweat, and tears into it. At the end of every tunnel, there is a light, but most people back out of an early startup, because they are influenced by what they see in that tunnel, which is pure darkness. You need to keep working, with the belief that you are going to see the light, and that it is going to happen.
I remember when I first was recording all my videos, and went about launching my sales training academy, there were many times when I said to myself that this is not going to succeed. All of this self-doubt was hitting me, but I did not allow anything to come between me and my goal, because one, I had solid belief in my product, and two, I stayed committed. Now, I have startup businesses all around the world working alongside me, doing the sales training course and increasing sales revenue in their business, strictly because I did not listen to my self-doubt and I stayed committed. If you do the same, nothing can stop you.
Step 6: Think big
Always think big- never think small. Albert Einstein once said, "Logic can take you from A to B, but imagination will take you to places in which you have never been before." In my book, Your Life Your Business, I wrote, "Don't be influenced by your surroundings, but be influenced by your imagination." Always remember that you are one human out of seven billion on this planet- just stop and think about that number. You may be one, but there are so many people out there that are busting for your services, so don't think about servicing the people within your city or your province, but be willing to service people on the other side of the planet! The internet has made international business so easy to do now- you can generate a sale from your phone in your bed at 4am, if you so wished!
In 1937, Nikola Tesla said, "When wireless is perfectly applied, the whole earth will be converted into a huge brain, which in fact is, all things being particles of a real and rhythmic whole. We shall be able to communicate with one another instantly, irrespective of distance. Not only this, but through television and telephony, we shall see and hear one another as perfectly as though we were face to face, despite intervening distances of thousands of miles; and the instruments through which we shall be able to do this will be amazingly simple compared to our present telephone. A man will be able to carry one in his vest pocket."
My fellow entrepreneurial friend, the day that Tesla predicted is here. Get up, change the world, and constantly aim high.
