iamtallpoppy.com

For my money, a good business idea needs the following:

1. A problem (a.k.a. a need)
2. For that problem to be common enough to create a market (i.e. there’s no point creating a product if you’re the only one who’ll ever use it – I find this is very rarely the case though)
3. For their to be a “choke point” in the market (i.e. who is the common person that people with the problem I’m trying to address would be talking to?)
4. For there to be a way to quickly communicate the benefit of your idea (I don’t mean the vehicle by which you communicate, I mean the message. Can you succinctly sum up your value proposition and get a potential customer onboard – The Twitter Challenge is to do it in less than 140 characters and not have it blend it with everything else.)

Anything else that I might have missed?

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I’ve been meeting up with some very cool people of late. One person in particular got me to thinking about the idea of venture capital and equity sharing.

I find myself in the position sometimes (in fact, often times) where I have more ideas than I have disposable resource to invest. Perhaps the answer is to find people who can execute for a share in the potential return?

One day I’d like the Tall Poppy group to be an organization that can identify brilliant ideas and seed fund them. Until that day, I think it’s time to become a client of my own goals.

NOTE: THIS, AND SOME OF MY RECENT POSTS, ARE REPRINTS FROM MY FACEBOOK NOTES. THEY WILL BE A FEW MORE OF THESE INTERSPERSED WITH NEW STUFF.

I often talk to people that are absolutely chomping at the bit to start their own business, and the number one pre-startup question I hear in conversation is this: What the heck am I going to sell?

Here’s a few ideas and examples of what’s worked for me. To sum it up in one line… The best way to identify a need in the market is to have a look at your own needs.

1. What interests you? There is little point deciding go into business selling something that bores you to tears…

2. What hobbies do you have? This is a key one… Most fledgling entrepreneurs sow the bulk of their time pre-startup into trying to conjure “the” idea that will generate the most profit for them in the shortest amount of time. Here’s the thing, if find that you’ll need invest a bunch of time and effort learning a whole new field in order to effectively target, market and sell the product you’re considering, consider this: you have hobbies, things that you love to do and know lots about. Wouldn’t it make more sense to leverage that knowledge instead? It would certainly save time…

e.g. I love audio engineering and music, and I set out about a year ago to build a home studio. I discovered that because of the strong Aussie dollar (R.I.P.) and and undervalued US retail market I could get audio equipment from the USA over eBay considerably cheaper than I could from local Australian merchants.

3. What opportunities exist in the field of your hobby? There is always a need to be found in any area… The key here is to avoid trying to create a “solution looking for a problem”.

e.g. After a while I realized I had too much gear and decided to sell some off. I eBayed a few pieces, and quickly noticed that what Australians and Europeans were paying for the goods was almost twice what I had bought them for…

4. Do your interests and hobbies make you a member of your potential target market? Ask yourself this… “Would what I am selling be something that I’d buy?” If you can answer yes to this, by being a member of your target you’ve automatically saved yourself from the tedium of initial market research. You’ll know what captures your interest when it comes to products and service in the field of your hobby, and chances are that you’ll already have amassed a fair bit of information about your competition and their offerings.

5. What market trends have you noticed in the field of your hobby? There will always be consistent cries for something… “I don’t know how to do x”, or “where the heck do I find a y”, or “does anything exist that would allow me to do z?” Internet forums are a GOLDMINE for market research like this, they paint a very good picture of what the general consensus is.

e.g. I noticed that different brands were very highly regarded and would fetch a disproportionate amount if imported and sold locally… Every second bulletin board or forum post was about either Neve, API, or Apogee. So that’s what I focused on.

6. What needs or gaps in the market have you identified in the field of your hobby? This is an extension of the above. e.g. Even though their economies were strong at the time and the people who ended up buying from me could have saved by buying overseas themselves, for some reason Aussies and Europeans seemed very timid about international purchases from the US…

7. How can you do it cheaper, and make it better than anyone else? This is assuming that you haven’t come up with something brand new… I minimized my import costs by never having a single shipment exceed $1000AUD in value (and therefore avoiding any customs duty fees), importing via USPS (by far the cheapest carrier out of the USA), looking for bundle deals and selling the contents separately locally (huge savings on shipping to be had here), and maintained a high-level of communication with my buyers which has got me to the point where today I have just under 500 eBay feedback comments and a rating of 99.7%.

TIP: If you are selling on eBay, your feedback sets you apart!

Obviously the global financial rollercoaster we are all on has made importing less attractive at the moment (although if you can find a good local product to sell exporting out of Oz is a VERY good idea right now), but what I wanted to try to illustrate here is this:

Don’t spend your time racking your brain trying to conjure up “the” product that’ll make you squillions… Go back to what you already know, and what you already love, already spend all of your spare time thinking about, and start there. You will find that “the” opportunity you have been looking for has been staring you in the face the whole time.

Cheers!
Casey

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This concept is pushed pretty hard in Tim Ferriss’ book the 4-Hour Work Week as well…

In a nutshell – you don’t want EVERYONE to be your client. You only want the GOOD clients. There’s no point having a great margin, smooth processes, and efficiency and profitability baked into all you do if 20% of your clients are consuming 80% of your effort for the same return.

The link is here… Great post. Give some really practical tips on what to look out for, and what to avoid.

Enjoy!

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It’s always interesting when things start to get a bit crazy. Here’s a couple of principals I use I manage my tasks and time for when things get a little hectic (and for when it’s normal too… time management helps getting things done regardless of your load.)

1. Find a task management system that works for you. We use Toodledo which is free for single users, and quite cheap for collaborative use. Main reason we went with Toodledo was it’s layout, the fact that you can nest tasks under projects, the options for sharing, the fact that its web based and accessible from anywhere, and the nifty iPhone app that lets you do it all on the hop.

2. Organize your tasks into the different responsibilities you have WITH YOUR TIME. So for me personally, when I am on a job that is paying by the hour I only want to see tasks for that job. This is more of an integrity thing than anything else, I want to maximize what my clients are getting for my time.

3. When the load is really one, take time to visit the list a re-prioritize if necessary. I find that this is good to do before things get really hectic – if you are flustered with a workload you’ll tend to be a bit reckless with the priority you give other tasks.

4. I prioritize based on one question – “which tasks get me closest to my main goal (which is to be able to invoice a client and get paid… i.e. cashflow)”.

5. This is where some theory comes in. I like to use what’s called the Merrill Covey Matrix, discussed in Steve Covey’s book First Things First. The tasks which contribute the best and the most quickly to my main goal are the “urgent/important” tasks, and they always get my attention first. The “non-urgent/important” tasks, which are the ones that are still focused towards the main goal but may take longer actually contribute, are the ones where I like to spend the majority of my time – but they will always take a back seat to the urgent tasks.

MerrillCoveyMatrix.png Time management matrix as described in Merrill and Covey 1994 book "First Things First," showing "quadrant two" items that are important but not urgent and so require greater attention for effective time management

5. If you find that the urgent/important tasks are getting all of your attention, and not enough time is going towards tasks with a strategic and longer term goal, then it’s time to look at either a) the efficiency of your processes (i.e. are there things you could do more efficiently?), b) looking into partnerships to share the work, or c) looking into getting a Virtual Assistant or something similar so you can delegate out the tasks that are repeatable, easy, or otherwise don’t really need YOU to be the one who does them.

I hope this is helpful… It’s not a perfect system, but sticking to it seems to always make the difference between sinking and swimming when things get a little busy.

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