Business Ideas - Is Your Business Opportunity Worth Pursuing?

Business ideas are a dime a dozen! Read on to discover what separates real business ideas from mere "shower" ideas ...

Business ideas are everywhere. As a professional business consultant specializing in helping clients take their business ideas from concept to completion, it seems like some days I can't even take two steps outside my home office and go for a relaxing walk, without a neighbor wanting to pick my brains about how to get their business ideas off the ground.

I don't mean to sound cynical here, and I would never dismiss someone else's business ideas (can you imagine someone telling Bill Gates that his business ideas for starting a company called Microsoft would never work?) -- but let me be very blunt on the subject of business ideas.

Most business ideas are nothing but "shower ideas" that will never get to see the light of day for a couple of very simple reasons. Businesses require either an investment of time, or an investment of money, or both to get started. From my personal experience, most people are simply not prepared to invest their time, or their money into getting their business ideas off the ground. Their ideas remain simply that ... ideas!

I remember sharing a house once with a friend who was always full of business ideas that never amounted to anything. One day my wife walked into the kitchen and saw my friend just staring at a carton of eggs on the kitchen counter. She picked up the carton, opened the fridge door and proceeded to transfer the contents from the carton to the shelf in the fridge. My friend said to my wife "I was just thinking about doing that," to which she immediately replied, "well, this is the difference between doing it and just thinking about it!"

So, does this mean that if you have a business idea you should stop thinking about it and start "doing" something about it?

Kind of ... sort of ... but not quite.

Let me explain something to you. I have listened to many people's business ideas and I have worked with many business owners for more than a decade now. Some people get a business idea and just want to "run with it," preferring to work things out as they go along. This approach can work if you're persistent and motivated enough, but it can also lead to many costly "dead ends" that ultimately waste a lot of time, money and energy, as the business owner or entrepreneur is continually forced to back up, turn around and start in a new direction. This happens because they really did not start with the "end in mind". They may say and think they did, but generally what this turns out to be, is a "vague" idea of where they generally want to get to. Look deeper and you'll see that there really was no planning involved at all, or at best, extremely poor planning.

On the other extreme, you have a person who has a great business idea, but simply does not know how or where to start. Taking a business idea from concept to reality is no small task. Even just getting started in the process of taking the next step after you've had your "Eureka" experience requires enormous planning and organization skills, which is something that many people simply lack, for they were simply never taught this either at school or at home.

Assuming that you have one or more great business ideas you're serious about developing further, that you have the right reasons for wanting to start a business, and that you have a genuine and unwavering commitment to invest the time and/or the money required to get your business idea off the ground, what, then, is the next step you should take? How do you move from the realm of the conceptual and the abstract to where you can start materializing your business ideas and seeing something more concrete start to take shape?

Pay very close attention now, for what I am about to tell you can make you hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars and save you months or years of wasted effort.

The first step you must take after getting inspired with a great business idea, is not to sit down and write a business plan, or start to figure out ways to manufacture the product, or work out the logistics of how you're going to deliver the service.

The first step is to ask yourself this one simple, yet extremely powerful question:

"Is my business idea worth pursuing?"

Do not dismiss what I have just told you. Especially if you are serious about taking your business ideas forward. In a moment, I'll show you exactly how to answer this question properly. But first, let's examine the question for a moment.

It is beyond the scope of this article to give you more than a brief and simple explanation of the complex chain of events and consequences that begin to unfold when you ask the above question in earnestness.

If your business idea is worth pursuing, then it must be aligned with your purpose, your principles and your values (or, what Michael Gerber, author of the best-selling business book "The e-Myth: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work And What To Do About It" calls, your 'Primary Purpose'). Why? Simple! Because if your business idea really is worth pursuing, you are going to trade a significant part of your life for it. As stated earlier, to get any business idea off the ground, especially when starting out, you will either need to trade your time, your money or both to make your project a reality, let alone a success. Your business idea better be worth pursuing, then, or you will deplete yourself of valuable resources on wild goose chases and pipe dreams (and haven't we all done plenty of these before?).

Now, the problem is that most people have never really invested the time required into giving serious consideration to their life's purpose, their principles and their values. They're too busy focused on what they are "doing" to pay any attention to who they are "being." If you lack a grand, motivating "life vision" to keep you going, your business ideas will more than likely turn out to be nothing more than mere "shower ideas" - impulsive, short-lived flashes of momentary desire that have no solid foundation, no logical basis and little to no impetus to guarantee its long-term survival. As hard as what I'm about to say may sound, I have had to raise my hourly rates significantly and start letting my neighbors and acquaintances know that I will charge them to listen to their business ideas in order to stop them from wasting my time. I will help them work out whether their business ideas are worth pursuing for a price, but I simply don't have time to go around dispensing free advice to people who are merely curious and not serious.

If your business idea is indeed worth pursuing, then and only then do you start the business planning process. And if your business idea is not worth pursuing, then don't go any further. Simple. You've just saved yourself years of heartache and frustration, a ton of money and time that can be better spent pursuing other activities.

Now, the real question to ask yourself is "how can I tell whether my business idea is worth pursuing"?

To help you answer this question properly, I have created a free step-by-step tutorial for you. To access the tutorial, simply complete the form below and click the submit button. You'll then be sent an email asking you to confirm your registration and a link to the web site with the tutorial. Just so you know, the reason I'm asking you for your details is so that I can send you follow up material that will help you develop your business ideas further.

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About the Author:

Martin Aranovitch is a successful SME (small to medium enterprise) business coach and entrepreneur. He has helped many businesses crystallize their vision, improve their efficiency and productivity, and has implemented sales workflow systems that have increased business profitability for their owners by over 300%. Martin is currently working on making his products and services available to other business owners via the internet.

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