Creating Your Dream Business
Behind every successful company is a founder who had a dream that eventually became a reality.  Examine any of today’s prominent entrepreneurs and you will discover a shared thread of traits.  These are talent, vision, and perseverance in the face of all obstacles.  If you possess an idea that you believe would make a great business, there’s no time like the present to make that move.  Innovative business ideas are spun off into new enterprises all the time - both in good financial times and bad - so don’t abandon the fight due to a perceived weak economy.

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What Is an Entrepreneur?
The conventional definition of “entrepreneur” goes something like this: “A person who innovates while taking a risk in developing a product, service, or business.”  Another definition, a bit less precise but equally effective: “Someone who identifies an opportunity and creates a means to pursue it.”  Either way you look at it, the concept of entrepreneurship encompasses several traits.  Entrepreneurs want to create something of their own to bolster their feeling of personal achievement, and they do so with the knowledge that risk can sometimes equal failure.  For the new entrepreneur, he or she should concentrate on minimizing risk while maximizing opportunity.  How is this done?  The best way for new entrepreneurs to succeed is by following the life lessons laid out by those who have gone before.

Are You a New Business Entrepreneur?
Running your own business imparts great responsibility.  You will have employees who rely on you to provide a stable work environment.  You will have customers who expect you to deliver exactly as promised.  Suppliers want to be paid on time, and investors look to you as a source of profit for the money they have put into your company.  The successful entrepreneur takes calculated risks, not crazy ones.  By following the fifteen lessons below, you will have a leg up on the competition.

Fifteen Dynamic New Entrepreneur Ideas

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The Crux of an Idea
There is an old saying that goes, “The world will beat a pathway to your door to buy a better mousetrap.”  The opportunity to cash in on an invention is one of the top dreams an entrepreneur can have.  All it takes is thinking up something useful that no one else has built.  But having an idea is a far cry from earning big bucks from its sale.  There are a number of steps one must follow to reach that goal.

What is a Patent?
A patent is defined as the exclusive right to control an invention.  Once a patent has been issued, the owner can prevent anyone else from using it, manufacturing it, or copying it without permission.  There are three basic patent types - utility patent, design patent, and plant patent - with each covering different methods and lasting for different lengths of time.  A utility patent is usually good for 20 years and covers machinery and processes.  A design patent is usually good for 14 years and covers a particular design that does not fall under the previous description.  A plant patent is usually good for 17 years and refers specifically to an inventor who has developed a new type of vegetation.  Generally speaking, once the period of a patent has expired, the item becomes public property.

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One question I get asked a lot goes something like “I’ve got an idea for a business. I need to get finance from the bank, buy stationery and equipment and do some research. I’m not sure how to plan everything that I need to do.” Do you feel like this? Do you have a business idea and so much to do to get it up and running, that you feel overwhelmed and don’t know where to start?  If so, you’re not alone. Thousands of new business owners feel like this and that’s why it’s vital to put down on paper what you need to do. Here’s how: 

Take a big piece of paper and then write down everything that comes into your head that you’ll need to do to set up your business. Don’t worry if it sounds silly – just get it down. You might want to carry this piece of paper round with you for a couple of days just in case you think of anything else you need to do. Once you’ve got down the vast majority of all the things you’ll need to do, now is the time to start organising them. The first thing to do is group them. For example, anything to do with finance, group them all together (you could do this using a highlighter pen or writing them in groups on a separate sheet of paper); anything to do with getting a loan, group this too. Keep grouping the categories until you have five or six main headings to do. With grouping, what you’re trying to do is firstly realise that a lot of the tasks you need to do are related and can be done together and secondly reduce the number of things you need to do into five or six areas. As such, if when you do this exercise, you find that some things don’t quite fit into a category, that’s fine – feel free to break them out into another heading. 

When you’ve got your groups, take a good long look at them. Is there a logical order in which they need to be done?

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Business Knowledge Test

What does UPS do?

1. Delivers Packages
2. Provides Logistics Services
3. Drives fashionistas crazy with the never-trendy brown
4. Repairs laptops for Toshiba
5. All of the Above

In order to reduce costs and speed up repairs, Toshiba handed over its laptop repairs in North America to UPS.  Now when a Toshiba laptop malfunctions, a UPS truck picks it up and delivers it to the computer repair depot at the nearest UPS hub that same day.  The computer is repaired the next day and returned the following.  Faster and cheaper.

What does CGI do?

1. Provides computing services for large corporations
2. Charges lots of money for consulting
3. Provides insurance adjustment and evaluation services
4. All of the above

CGI started life off creating and managing large computer systems for large companies.  As they grew and expanded they started managing the data entry for these companies.  At that point they realized that in fact they could also handle the data collection for their clients.

If you answered all of the above to both questions then you know that Insourcing exists.

Now the next big questions:

1. What is insourcing
2. Why are companies doing this
3. How can I participate

Insourcing Defined

Insourcing is when Company B entirely takes over a complete process in Company A and fully integrates its staff and processes into that of Company A so that no one knows the difference.

Why Insourcing

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One of the things that new business owners tend to be very scared of is someone else stealing their business idea. After all, they’ve spent a lot of time, effort, energy and money developing the idea and the last thing they want is someone stealing the business idea and developing it instead.

I’ve even known a new business owner who completely abandoned his idea when he found out that a competitor had started more or less the same idea as him a couple of months before – what a shame!

Let’s break this down a bit and look at some facts and then I’ll explain how to protect your business idea, but also why you shouldn’t be too afraid of other people finding out what it is.

Right now, at this moment, about 60% of the working population are sat in businesses all around the country dreaming about starting your own business. However, only about 3% of people actually will start their own business. Why is this?

Well the most common reason that people don’t start their own business is risk and fear of failure. It’s hard work and risky to develop a business idea and have the confidence to actually start up. And, I believe it takes a special type of person to actually have the courage to go for it.

So, don’t worry too much about other people finding out. Even if they think your idea is fantastic and the best thing since sliced bread, it would take someone in the 3% of the population to actually go for it. Chances are that the people who find out are in the 60% of people who dream about starting their own business, but never will or in the 37% of people who don’t have any aspirations at all to start their own business.

OK, I hear you cry – but what if I tell someone and they happen to be in the 3% of people who really want to start their own business and they steal my idea?

Well, yes there is a small possibility.

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Over the past several decades, the marketing function has undergone evolutionary change.    During the 1950’s and 1960’s, marketing was fairly simple.  There were fewer product categories and fewer products.  There were few media vehicles: television was just coming of age, there were only a few major weekly magazines, and FM radio had yet to be heard. In the 1970’s, alternative radio, UHF television, special interest magazines, and the growing sophistication of direct mail brought greater diversity to the marketing mix.  Marketers began to focus on niche markets.  Successful products spawned product extensions.  New categories developed almost overnight as consumers demanding social change also sought more diversity and uniqueness in their lives. The 1980’s saw the conglomeration of the marketing industry with the advent of mega-agencies such as McCann Worldwide and Saachi & Saachi.  As a result, many skilled executives who were “downsized” formed “boutique” agencies and began specializing in their particular promotional forte.  Niche marketing became more focused.

The 1990’s offered an even more perplexing set of marketing and promotional options:  hundreds of cable television channels; radio stations featuring shock jocks and Christian Coalitions; magazines for every pursuit, profession, or perversion.  And most startling of all, the Internet!

The 21st Century has proven to be even more perplexing.  Today, the challenge to advertisers is: 

“How do you go from interrupting people because you want to, to interrupting people because they want to be interrupted?”

This represents a fundamental shift in the way marketers must look at their customers.  And it represents a fundamental shift in the way the media reaches their readers, listeners, or viewers.

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If you are considering starting a new business in the near future then you either have aspirations to be your own boss or you have viable small business ideas. It may be that you have both. However, without good business ideas that have the potential to fulfill a need your business will struggle to take off. To avoid failure, it is essential that you learn how to evaluate your business ideas honestly and effectively.

Have You Done Your Homework?

In order to evaluate your small business ideas effectively then you will need to put in a lot of time and effort. Research is the key to ensuring that you get off on the best possible foot. However, many individuals fail to do enough research when starting their own business. In an ideal world all business owners would research their business idea fully. They would evaluate them when they have a list of a few possible products or services. However, many wait until they have decided what they want to do before completing cursory research.

In order to evaluate your small business ideas effectively, you need to primarily research the competition in the local area. If there is a lot of competition to an idea and the businesses are well established, then it may be best to move onto another idea. However, if there is only one company to compete with and you have factored improvements upon their service into your business plan then you may decide to continue. You need to create or satisfy a market need so your small business ideas need to pass this stage of the evaluation.

Do You Have A Clear Business Idea?

Another area you will need to research to be able to evaluate your ideas is whether or not your product or service is faddy and will become redundant in a few years.

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