Look
For Opportunities
How do you find a new product or service, recognizing that 80
percent or more will be new in five years? Here's a series of
ideas. Number one, begin with yourself. Begin with your own
talents, your abilities, your experience,
knowledge, interest, background, education, and so on. Look
carefully at your current work, your current business, your
current position, or your current product or service. Seek for
what is called your own acres of diamonds. Look under your own
feet.
Look Into Yourself
Here's a question. What qualities account for your greatest
successes in life so far? What personal qualities and abilities
have gotten you to where you are? And how could you apply those
qualities and abilities to
starting and building a new business?
If you already have a company, ask what are your companies'
talents, abilities, experience, knowledge, interest, background,
and so on. What qualities and talents and
abilities have enabled your company to succeed up to now?
Where can you specialize? Where can you
make a difference?
Identify What You Really Enjoy
Number two is look for a product or service about which you can
really
become enthusiastic. Sometimes people become wealthy by
translating or transforming their hobbies into a business. You
will be most successful doing something or marketing
something that you really love.
Every
product must have a champion. Every product or service must have
someone in the business who really, really loves the product or
service and is eager to get out and tell other people about it.
Improve On Something Else
Number three, look for something that is an improvement on an
existing product or service, not something brand new. Look for
something that's cheaper or better quality. Or that has
additional features or functions. Look for something that's an
improvement. Remember
improving an existing successful product or service is the
fastest and surest way to build a
successful business. An idea only needs to be ten percent
new and better to capture substantial market share.
Brand new products or services are very risky.
Be Willing to Work Hard
The fourth key to finding a new product or service is this.
Don't look for easy money. Don't look for gimmicks or useless
knickknacks. Don't look for get-rich-quick schemes or rewards
without working, because they're aren't any.
More people have wasted more time and more life and more money
trying to find quick ways to make easy money than you can
possibly imagine. So be willing to put in a lot of hard work
before you start making real money in a business.
Success Takes Time
It takes two years to break even in the average business. It
takes four years to show a profit. It takes maybe eight to ten
years before it starts to generate real cash flow. So you have
to be patient. If you're impatient, what will happen is you'll
end up setting yourself further back than you can imagine.
Action
Exercises
-
Be
prepared to research a lot of business ideas before you make
a final decision. The first 10% of time that you spend doing
your homework will save you 90% of the effort in getting
results later on.
-
Look
for something that you can make an improvement upon rather
than something brand new. You are surrounded by ideas and
opportunities for improvement if you can just identify them.
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