Thus far, we’ve brainstormed two business ideas including an adult mental and physical gym and tween / teen clothing line. We could keep using the four questions methodology to quickly evaluate ideas and narrow down to an idea that we want to pursue. This post focuses on what the next steps are to help you determine which idea you want to pursue.
We’ll assume that you have used the four questions to evaluate your idea and now you have 2-3 ideas that you are deciding between. What else do you need to consider in order to select an idea that you want to build a company around? Here are some criteria that you might want to use. Again, we are trying to combine strategy with your passion and enthusiasm.
1. Which idea gets you most excited? By excited, we mean the idea that you can’t stop thinking about, that you can visualize for the next 5-10 years, that you are always bringing up in conversation? In the evaluation stage, we focused on very rational, logical aspects of starting a business. However, we must remember
2. What is your time horizon? Now, of course! Seriously, are you ready to start working on this idea full-time tomorrow or are you going to try and keep your day job and start your bsuiness part time? Some businesses can be started part-time, while other will only realize their potential with full focus from the beginning. Therefore, your time horizon will impact which idea you should select.
3. Where is the capital? Do you have savings? Are you going to use credit cards or try to get a bank loan? Are you going to bootstrap or look for an investor? The questions surrounding money, just as those about time horizon, will have significant impact on which business you should pursue.
In going back to our two ideas, lets evaluate them assuming that we have the following answers to our three questions above:
1. We are most excited about the tween / teen clothing and accessories line. We think about it daily and have sketched out enough ideas to fill an entire notebook. We haven’t started but we already have expansion ideas for an online community, personalize clothing lines and more.
2. Although we are excited, we have a family and responsibilities to think about. We are going to need at least 8-9 months to ease into the business and we’ll have to do it part time (for time and money reasons).
3. We have about $5000 in savings and $2000 of it can be used for the business. That will get us some initial designs and a preliminary website. We think that well have another $200-$300 per month that we can build into the family budget. Beyond that, we’ll need to pay for expenses from sales.
While these criteria are just an example, they point to selecting the tween/teen clothing line over the adult mental and physical gym. When you evaluate your ideas, where is the most promising entrepreneurial arrow pointing?
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