FROM IDEA TO BUSINESS

Idea rules the world; everything starts as an idea in someone’s mind before it becomes a reality. For every great company, business, inventions and initiatives you see out there, it begin as an idea in the mind of someone. Everyone has ideas, when you are brushing your teeth, when you are driving to work, when you are at your desk reading this article. 

What was the last great business idea you had? Can you remember it? What did you do with it? Did you write it down? Its not that the idea cannot be converted into Billion Naira businesses, but you may simply not be driven enough to see those particular ideas through to that milestone.

If you are like most people, who had a great idea and you never wrote it down, or told a couple of co-workers or your spouse, and let the idea fade away without taking any meaningful action to pursue it.  Or maybe you were worried about other people stealing your idea, so you kept it to yourself thinking you will pursue it later, for most people that someday never come.

According to sales expert and personal development guru Brian Tracy, “The average person has four ideas a year, which if any one is acted on, would make them a millionaire.” Whether you are a seasoned entrepreneur or someone who has been eyeing a start-up or side project to generate some additional income, good ideas often comes and go like seasons; it is therefore important to take steps to pursue your ideas and see if they were good.

If you want to start a business and make a go of it, you need more than just an idea. To begin turning start-up dream into a business, consider the following.

·         Settle on One Business Idea at a Time

Starting all kind of idea you thought of will on make you vulnerable to frustration and quit.  Skimming through different ideas every day and figuring out whether they motivate you or whether they will work won't get you anywhere. The amount of time you are spending on them will likely be insufficient, so take one idea that moves you, which you feel most passionate about and stay with it. Stay with one till you can not go any further. Until you have given it your all. Only then will you know whether or not that business idea is worth a billion naira. There is no idea that can not work; all you need to do is identify how you can make it work. Sometime it may take modifying it or to re-conceptualize it. You must also believe in your idea before all of you can be committed to it.

·         Validate Your Idea

Your idea is absolutely worthless if you keep it to yourself and do not put it to test in the actual world. Writing a business plan with projections through market research is a sure-shot way to start. Nothing beats an actual customer using your product or service. So how do you get to customers when you are at the idea stage and you do not want to build a minimum viable product or a prototype. The idea is to put out something that offers the main value of your start-up or that solves the core problem of your customers. The prototype could be a PowerPoint slide, a dialogue box or just a landing page. This is something that you can often build it in a day or a week. A prototype can be an actual functioning product with the core features offered. Share this with your network and see the response. Are people excited to use it? Do they feel their needs or problems are resolved by using your product? This will be the determinant of your next step.

·         Execute

There is no such thing as a million-dollar idea until it been executed. Facebook was not a million- (or billion) dollar idea until it saw the light of the day, until it was executed. Ideas evolve into products which themselves evolve over a period of time through constant customer feedback and use. You must build a prototype, beta or a minimum viable product and get it out in the hands of the customer. Let your customer decide whether the idea is of value or not. Most people just don’t get their products out in time and spend most of their resources in trying to build that one perfect product. Save yourself some grief, time and, most of all, cash, and build on a product that your customers want.

·         Find a Large Market

Do not waste your time on an idea that does not cater to a marketable audience. Sure, you can start local and expand later, but is your idea solving the needs of a few hundreds? Can your idea be scaled to solve the need of hundred thousand of potential customers? If not, you are not building a business. Validate whether the problem that you are trying to solve is truly the problem of the masses and not just yours, few neighbors and friends or your network. Base your idea on a large audience and you have got yourself a product with the potential to grow into a larger and a more successful business. Just think big, think global, and start locally if you can.

·         make it a must-have, not a nice-to-have

A lot of ideas are utter nonsense. These can surely be turned into selling products, but you would not end up building a business out of them. These are the nice-to-have ideas. You must spend time getting to know from the market whether your idea or product is a nice-to-have or a must-have. Nice-to-have products are mostly in the novelty domain or are not compelling enough for customers to buy or own. If you want your ideas to develop into successful products that help you create and sustain a business, then go after must-have ideas. So, decide what is important to you: the figment of your imagination that tells you your idea is a million-dollar one or validating it to build something that can get you the actual million dollars.