Self-Analysis

Evaluate your own talents, desires and goals.

Consider your willingness to calculate risks as well as the amount of time and energy needed to make
the business a success.

Review your financial, personnel and marketing skills as well to ensure you have the necessary
background to make a success of your new venture.

Financial Components

After learning about the investment required to purchase the existing business or franchise or the start-
up costs you’ll need initially, evaluate your own resources.

Part of a financial assessment includes the amount you have in personal savings to add to the initial
investment.

Assess the financing available through the seller, investors and lenders when evaluating your chances of
succeeding.

Market Research

Perform an extensive market research project to determine the feasibility of your business.

Recognize opportunities by:

1. Listening to your potential clients and past leads

2. Listening to your customers

3. Looking at your competitors

4. Looking at industry trends and insights

In addition to gleaning statistics of trends and current customer buying patterns, you need to know who
your customers are, where they are located and what kind of competition exists in your area.

Find creative business ideas by:

1. Solving a Problem for a Niche Audience

2. Analysing Trends

3. Building on your Strengths

Risk Assessment

An honest appraisal of the potential risks inherent in your new business can help you prepare for
possible problems and decide whether the risks are worth the investment.

Internal considerations should include your own health, the level of credit available to you and the
number and type of employees you’ll need to hire to run the business efficiently.

Support

Evaluate the amount of support you expect to receive from your family and the community.

Opportunity evaluation requires professional and personal considerations.

Evaluate your standing on all fronts to ensure you’ve got the necessary support to be successful.

Process 1:

Identifying Market Problems and Market Needs to be Met

Step 1: Be aware of your customers perception of your brand as a business

Step 2: Analyze the characteristics of your target market

Step 3: Derive an estimate of your business' potential profit

Step 4: Compare and contrast your percent of sales to your competitor's

Process 2: Solving Market Problems and Market Needs to be Met

Step 1: After gathering data from market research, highlight the points that need to be addressed

Step 2: Identify which kind of research is needed to address the points

Step 3: Plan according to the results of careful research

Step 4: Communicate the plan and processes undergone to professionals

Step 5: Prepare and polish final strategies to be executed

1. Cash flow management

The solution: Proper budgeting and planning are critical to maintaining cash flow, but even these won’t
always save you from stressing over bills. One way to improve cash flow is to require a down payment for
your products and services. Your down payment should cover all expenses associated with a given
project or sale as well as some profit for you. By requiring a down payment, you can at least rest assured
you won’t be left paying others’ bills; by padding the down payment with some profit, you can pay your
own.

2. Hiring employees

The solution: Be exclusive. Far too many help wanted ads are incredibly vague in terms of what
qualifications candidates must have, what the job duties are, what days and hours will be worked, and
what wages and benefits will be paid

3. Time management

The solution: Make time.

Create goal lists: You should have a list of lifetime goals, broken down into annual goals, broken down
into monthly goals, then broken down into weekly goals. Your weekly goals, then will be broken down
into specific tasks by day. In this manner, what is on your task list in any given day is all you need to do to
stay on track with your lifetime goals

If any tasks do not mesh with your goals, eliminate them

If any tasks do not absolutely have to be completed by you, delegate them

Consistently ask yourself: “Is what I’m doing right now the absolute best use of my time?”

4. Choosing what to sell

The solution: Conduct market research and create a report with suggested niches, backed by potential
profit margins and a complete SWOT analysis: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats.

5. Marketing strategy

The solution: Again, if you’re not adept at creating marketing plans and placing ads, it’s a good idea to
outsource your marketing strategy to someone who is.

6. Loss of creativity

The solution: Be aware of obstacles to creativity and overcome them. Here are the qualities you must
acquire:

Fluency: the ability to generate unique ideas

Flexibility: the ability to tolerate ambiguity and think laterally

Abstraction: the ability to think and reflect on an idea through speech and thoughts

Elaboration: the ability to give details and follow up on an idea

Originality: distinctiveness of ideas