Entrepreneurship is great when it comes off. All the success stories, glamour, and money look so bedazzling that your entrepreneurial aspirations brighten up even more than they were previously.
We all know that running a business is hard and requires lots of persistence and dedication to pull an idea off successfully but there is something before that which you need to address at the initial stages of the idea. This is your business plan, which explains the hows and whys and makes you think more clearly.
Your success as an entrepreneur lies in making your business a viable proposition that guarantees eventual growth and returns if a lot of hard work goes into it but if there are flaws in your ideas initially, then no matter how hard you work or how much funding you secure, your business is bound to fail. So before treading the path of entrepreneurship, you need to check that your initial business plan answers these questions:
1. Uniqueness of Product
When you are going to start off a business, it revolves around a core product offering which will generate the revenue for your business. To do that successfully, your product needs to have a point of differentiation or be unique from other similar offerings in the market to have any chance of successfully acquiring a niche market for itself.
The first and foremost thing your business plan needs to answer is that how useful your product is to the market you are trying to target or is there any need for a product like this in the current market.
Even if it’s a unique offering and it’s not been there before, you still need to identify how you will place the ideology of need fulfillment before your final consumer to have any chance of proceeding any further.
2. Your Target Market
After the product comes your target market which together will join to formulate your core business strategy. Speaking in strict business terminology, your target market is like a pie where every single person is a potential buyer but the segregation happens when you calculate just how many people within that target market would not have the resources that identify your price range and then there are those that won’t be persuaded by the marketing efforts.
Minus all of that and see the Pie again, is there enough opportunity to indulge in this and make substantial revenue that will keep the business operating in the long run?
3. Protecting your Product
If your product is good, be rest assured that it will get copied very soon if you don’t chart out a strategy on how you are going to stop that from happening at that start.
Even big businesses have been known to copy products that were good and with their financial might, they took the small startup out of the business by indulging in competitive tactics.
Make it a point to secure your product before you offer it to the market. Patents, copyrights or even intellectual property are some ways the law allows you to secure your product behind your name till as long as you want that to stay it that way.
4. Supporting your Product
Marketing is what brings the product and the consumer together. It’s the power of the punch you pack in your message to the dedicated audience which will determine the strength of the relationship in your future.
It’s ideal to have a marketing plan developed before the business starts running because that will allow you to indulge in promoting your product as soon as it is ready to be sold, making it easier for your startup.
Another thing to keep in mind is the cost of acquisition per consumer which should be lower than the money you are intending to make of consumer as it’s no use spending a higher amount of money if you do get back higher returns.
5. Your Own Personal Self
Most people would question this assumption that your personal self should be included in the business plan. What is that supposed to be doing here and what is its importance?
Well, perhaps the biggest importance lies in the fact that you are the person behind it, just like an engine, which should be given its due consideration to keep the motivation, passion, and persistence high throughout the journey forward.
You should consider how much money you will make from the business initially and do not go with any false ideology or carelessness that will hurt you in the long run. Do not do anything that hurts your personal self in it.
You are as important as the business itself, your issues matter also. Don’t think that your defaulted student loan has any lesser importance than a defaulted business loan. The business might get closed, but you will live on, which makes it all the more important to take care of yourself during the journey because a happy you will lead to a greater business.