Once you have a so-called brilliant idea, it is worthless until you can prove that potential customers find it useful. This brings me to the point that true business practice has a lot in common with engineering. The reason I say that is in the process of developing a business, the ideal approach is to test and make changes as you discover. This is basically how the scientific side of engineering works; You have an hypothesis which you test out and based on those results, you improve, discard or make any worthwhile adjustments.

The term use mainly at the Stanford University business school is Customer Development. This involves customer discovery, validation and so on.  The philosophy is that you discover an idea then you make some assumptions on the value it would create for a specific group of potential customers then you test out those assumptions. The idea of testing has the benefit of ensuring that the customers really have an interest or whether you need to make changes to the initial product idea.

In general language, you find an idea, then perform market research to establish whether there is any need for the idea.  Once you have sufficient data from the research phase, you need to validate whether that is indeed true. One simple way could be doing surveys with potential customers or preferably interviewing people to get a proper feel on the interest level for your solution. In the end, your goal is to solve an existing problem out there. A simple example of solving a problem is to make an battery only car. Does the car running on battery has any real benefit to the average consumer? Maybe not in the short term but for those whom are more environmentally conscious, they would jump at the idea immediately.

The moral of the story is that you can have a very successful business life but you have to focus on how to deliver value to the market place. This process is actually the most critical to have a business in the first place and this means you have to be willing to test and make adjustments in an agile fashion.

The next book I will review here, covers many of these points and its called “The Lean Start-up”

Here are a list of things you can do to setup your business Internet presence, the aim here is to keep it very low cost.

1. Domain Name – Its highly recommended that you get a domain name for your business. Typically, this would be <companyname.com>. The cost for this is about $10/year to maintain. Alternatively, you could get a free site from wordpress.com or blogger.com. The disadvantage to those is that you would naturally have a longer domain name and less control over your site in terms of content. Check out godaddy.com or similar company for domain name registration.

2. Hosting – Once you have a domain name, you would need to have hosting in place to run your site. Nowadays, you can get hosting from about $5.00/month with lots of extras. Alternatively, you could connect your domain name to the free sites mentioned above and eliminate the basic monthly charge but you would have limitations in doing so. Hostgator.com is a great hosting company to consider.

3. E-mail – The next important thing would be an e-mail address that is professional. If you got the paid domain name your e-mail address could be like yourname@companyname.com. This is very good for interacting in the business world instead of using @gmail.com or @yahoo.com. You can get a very good service to manage your e-mail called Google Apps for small business. The basic service is free but you can upgrade to others later.

4. Social Networking – This can be open ended as there are so much options you could consider. The main sites to consider are facebook.com, twitter.com and linkedin.com. The use of these sites will depend on the type of business that you. In terms of facebook.com, you will not need a new account for the business, you would just need to create a page for the business on your existing account.

5. Site Setup – With the basic infrastructure in place, you now need to setup your site and add content in respect to your business. This site becomes like an online brochure which could be use to promote the business as well. If you are not too technically oriented, you could outsource the entire process to a local web company or go to elance.com or guru.com to find a qualified person. Make sure you list out all the requirements you have for the site to ensure speedy satisfaction.

6. E-mail List – Anyone providing services should seriously consider having a mailing list. You could use twitter.com for this but not all persons are up to date on this technology, so you will need to have a traditional e-mail list service to get this done. There are several companies such as aweber.com that offers such service for about $20.00/month but you could get cheaper services if you shop around. Be careful on which provider you use as your mail could end up in someones spam folder which does not help you.

Conclusion

This is a basic skeleton of what could make you a reasonable web presence. As mentioned earlier, consider getting business cards with this information on there. It could help with the information flow especially when you attend meetings and conferences.

Now to the book “The Idea Hunter”. This book has some very important factors that will put you on the right track. It does not present a lot of formulas that you can use to come with a million dollar idea but it lays the foundation on how you could uncover many new ideas. They actually presented a simplified system called “IDEA” which I will explain below.

1. Focus – Before we jump into the IDEA steps, you need to have a focus area that you want to pursue. In other words you need to pick an industry then pick a mission within that industry. For example, you like a clean environment but in doing so you feel that renewable energy is one important area to pursue. Within renewable energy, you could break things down even further based on your specific interest.

2. Interested – The first step in the IDEA formula is the concept of being interested. You have your focus area ready, so now you need to really seek out and be aware of things happening in this field of choice. Always be taking notes on the topic. This basically means to take initiative to find new ideas.

3. Diversify – While you have a focus area of where you want to develop ideas, you need to look into how things are done in other fields as well as look at multiple sources to get ideas. It could mean to meet with experts but also talk to the common consumer as well. Do not rely on any single means to find good ideas.

4. Exercised – To be a good idea hunter, you need to practice the craft. Meaning you need to be always out there looking for ideas and observing things. The more you do this just like an athlete, its the more you become proficient as an idea hunter and developer

5. Agile – Once you collect ideas on the go, you need to be active in bringing them to fruition. An idea may not be great initially but by exploring and mixing things up, its very likely that a better idea could emerge in the whole process. Basically, it means you have to be active and continuously brainstorming what you find to develop further.

Conclusion:

While this book is not glamorous, it does give you a system to become a serious idea hunter and developer. It focuses a lot on developing an mindset of idea seeking and refinement which in the end will get you that break through. In the end, the best point for me, is the concept of focusing on a cause in order to be successful. If you are too scatter as I have been to be honest, you will get stuck at the start all the time.

Always have a system record new ideas whether its a smartphone, postit or small note book.

Think about the potential of this. You could do this to generate income or just to build your credibility in whatever field you want to pursue. Here are some tips I would share on how you can do this.

1. Blogging – If you don’t have content on hand, then go sites like wordpress.com, blogger.com, weebly.com or pbwiki.com and create a free blog. Then you would blog on different aspects of your topic say once a week or even more frequent. Once you have a decent amount of content, you can dump this into a document and edit to ensure proper flow and you are ready to go.

2. Outsourcing – This can be done in two basic ways. A. you could hire a ghostwriter to generate the entire book at a fixed cost. Of course you would provide some guidance on how to write and all those things. B. You can buy a set of articles from an article writer for about $5 each or less. Lets say you buy about 20 or more articles, you take those and format in a book fashion and again have a nice e-book to sell.

3. Promotion – Generally, the book is on Amazon.com, people will find it by search and if it comes related to other books. You also have the option to take the listing on amazon.com and promote directly on a website or send out on Facebook etc. Lots of possibilities there.

In any case, this is a really good facility to look at if you want to create books and its an innovative approach to empower people.

The Problem

Wealth is highly bias towards 10% of the population while the rest struggles to survive and make ends meet. The Government is overly indebted which means debt servicing is probably higher than most other expenditures combined. This mean government has limited ability to provide any help to create real economic Growth.

The Challenge

How do you skew wealth towards the majority? Most societies are setup this way actually. It’s only that in Develop countries some degree of trade union activities, socialist style governments and to some degree the spin off from education that creates a better environment for upward mobility and reasonable living standards.

In developing countries like Jamaica a big part of the problem is poverty within inner city communities and general neglect for rural development. What this mean is considerably urban migration which creates squatting communities that leads to crime and other social issues.

Most of the people of the lower side of the economic ladder did not focus too much on education so they do not have much to offer in terms real gainful employment. Again the government is over its head in debt so the ability to drive projects for solving these problems are very limited.

Solution Options

There are several ways these problems could be solved over time, so lets examine some key ones.

- Individual Motivation

People need to feel that they deserve better and demand better in the first place. They need to decouple themselves from expecting the government to solve all problems. Seek out the opportunities that exist, work together and you would be surprise on the outcomes.

- Education

Even without natural resources, any country can be prosperous if they create the means to create value. This means education at all levels need to be the highest priority. Since government has limited resources, the private sector and others should play a part in pushing such an agenda. To reach those already out of the system they need to look at ways to innovate at minimal cost by reaching as much people as possible. Ideas such as the One laptop Per Child (OLPC) is a good concept to use for adults as well. Apart from basic education, focus on developing key skills that will help the country on a whole move forward. People will migrate but with good incentives they would stay home. Following the recession migration is not the most attractive option anymore. Last but not least is the education of hope and determination. People need to feel that they can make a difference given the right facilities. The Tony Robbins type of motivation would be a good vibes to propagate.

- Research

When you look at most developed countries, they have areas in which they add value and you need those values to make your life better. Take Japan as an example; how much natural resource do they have? This means research around your unique capabilities is key to long term development. This again probably need some government leadership but the private sector can be a big player in this approach. For example, look at the National Science Foundation (NSF) in the US, they could develop similar bodies to target areas of development.

The other side to research is to understand location based capabilities and just general break down of economic statistics. How much of a specific product did we import and at what value? An example is that some areas could do well with certain agriculture crops and activities around that. This means you could provide this data for individuals or investors to jump on which creates employment right away. This data could be provided by the government to foster better planning and get people to know where real opportunities are.

- Small Businesses

I have gotten to a point where I almost hate big business but not totally. I think in developing countries, these guys get away with murder. They pay small wages and does not seem to give back enough to the country in general. A good example is Tourism in Jamaica. How much small people really live well off tourism?

The view I have here is the concept of co-operatives where people can form a group to start a business. This mean they would all work in the business and share the benefits or returns. This concept could go very far if they are well structured and you have the right skill set available within each group. This is where the government could have an organization similar to the Small Business Administration (SBA) in the US to provide guidance and technical assistance as needed.

- Business Financing

People always say that having a good idea you need some degree of funding to make things happen. This is where I think in the short term government (SBA concept) should provide facilities for people to develop their business plans then give guarantees to help with getting bank loans or other equity financing.

- Law Enforcement

We will need to pay more attention to enforce the law in general. Bulldoze squatting communities if needed but do not allow people to live in substandard housing which is bad for them and their children. In doing this you work with them to find somewhere decent to live where they can be productive. Somehow, I think for some countries to move forward, they need a dictatorship in a positive way. One that is focused on uplifting national pride and development.

Summary

This is just the beginning of this discussion but it could go on and on. To summarize, I would say the focus should be on individual business ownership. Not just for people to become street vendors but do develop real ideas that could generate exports, save on the import bill or have more tourist visitors coming to the country. Investment by one big enterprise will not solve poverty the right way, therefore getting to take the bull by the horn is the way to go. This means to empower the small man to be creative and fuel economic growth.

Prospects – This comes in two stages. The first step is researching the market to determine what is the real demand like for the product and service. You will need this information to get things going in the first place. The next step is to actually reach your prospect and this is the bread and butter of the business for starts. This is where you advertise, use referrals and focus your business to grow its contact base. The important thing here is to know your ideal customer and where to find them.

Conversion – Once you get people to look at what you have to offer, you need them to take action in giving you money for products or services. In this case, you need to make the offer compelling relative to the market place, competition and value offered. The next step in the conversion process is to ensure repeat sales with existing customers.

Bear in mind also for conversion is the support aspects of things, now with the Internet if you have lousy support in place, new and existing customers will find out and your business is toast. It therefore means, you need to have good support as part of your business process.

All of these can be measured and tracked to see where your business is heading and how to optimize each process along the way. In terms of conversion, there is always the benefit to up-sell to previous buyers to improve your profitability long term.

Despite how complex and challenging the business world may seem, it always come down to these two factors of getting prospects and converting them to buyers regardless of the business type.

If you want to give the appearance of working for yourself, the simplest thing to do is incorporate a business, call yourself President/CEO then look for work as a contractor doing the same work as a full time employee. While you could probably get a better salary with this, it will be very difficult to ensure you will always get work. The frustration here is that when you get work, you would probably get several offers. However, when that contract is over, you run the risk of waiting for awhile before more work is available.

A few simple twist to the contracting model above. Focus on being a consultant that focuses on solving specific project problems. You can charge a lot more this way and you could take on multiple projects at the same time. Another twist is to get full time contracts but get other specialist to place on contract under your company. This way, you will get some income when you are not working directly. Long term you could convert the company into a consulting firm if things are in high demand.

Now, lets get into the mechanics of real business, still assuming its around your professional area.

Lets use the example of a good software developer for this case. The assumption here is that you know how to develop code for some type of products and you would prefer to do this on your own.

1. Try to think about what you want to accomplish for your life and how the business will help you achieve it. Then think about how you want the business to be. How big and what type of revenue ideas you have in mind. This process is important to set context of where you want to go long term.

2. You need to find a market problem to solve. Actually, anyone can write software if they really want to do this. Thus its not your ability to write software that will make money. Its solving real problems for businesses or consumers. This means you need to brainstorm on what problem you want to solve. This could be as simple as training other programmers or implement some patentable technology that you develop.

3. Do market research on the problem and existing solutions. Also look into how you would deliver your solution. Actually, a good way to do market research is to speak directly with potential customers to validate the idea.  Get as much data from established sources as possible before you move forward to build the solution.

4. Plan out your business implementation path. Now with some market validation, you need to plan how the business will look for delivering the production. This business will be in phases, so you want to focus in on what exactly is required at each stage. This is where you need to step out from just being a specialist and look at the big picture of each business function and when you need them. Most experts will say you need marketing and sales right upfront. All of this can be captured in a business plan. You also need this plan now, so in case things are really successful, you have plan to deal with that right away.

5. Focus on selling the solution. Most engineers and specialist hate sales but no business can survive without selling, so you need to focus on getting people interested in your product and gauge the interest. This could save you time down the road from building something people don’t want. Even if its a software product, you could start a website or information sessions around what the solution intention is. Get people to sign up and share ideas with them.

6. Hire the needed talent. You need to acknowledge again that you can’t do everything in a real business, so you will need to get help. This could be outsourced partners or part time employees initially but at least get help in some ways.  If you can find partners that will share the load that can be useful depending on how you want to pursue the ownership part of things. If you are planning to spend over a $1M in this early stage you may want to consider a CEO or someone that can take care of operational issues. Definitely, hire sales and marketing in some ways early.

7. Build and Deliver the product. Now its time to build the solution and get it to your customers. You will be good at this from experience, so now you want try to be more of an architect in your approach as oppose to just being a developer. yes, you will do lots of the work but you need to look at the big picture in getting this done. Work with your sales team to get the product to market as soon as its ready.

8. Grow the business.  This is the stage where you have your own product and its selling based on your early work to test the market out. At this stage, you really want to consider how organize you are to deal with customers and growing. Customer Support will be critical at this stage as well as all the other simple issues with running a business.

I will have more on this topic soon. A good book to read on the stages of business growth is “Ready Fire Aim” get it here – Ready, Fire, Aim: Zero to 00 Million in No Time Flat (Agora Series)

In the world of internet marketing, this is actually easier process as you can look at keywords, setup test pages or even design a quick survey and put it on pay per click or other platforms. If your product is B2B then you may not get much help from the Internet, you will need to find businesses that could be customers and ask them how they think a specific problem could be solved or present your idea and ask for feedback.

As the article says, when you have good feedback, then getting funding is way easier as now you have lots of interest out there in the market place. Take a simple example, you run a survey online for a product that would sell for $1400.00 and you get up to 20,000 responses with an affirmative interest in this product, do you think it would be hard to get someone to help you pull this off?

The issue in this article is not that you should not do a business plan as that is important to write down what needs to be done. Instead the writer is saying that you should look at how to increase your success factor closer to 100% by knowing what you need to be doing from your potential customers.

You can read the full article here at Business Model versus Business Plan

Coaching, life or business is an interesting field and can apply to any specific area of specialty. It could be an Engineer who would like to be a Manager or Someone that wants to achieve a certain level of wealth or even to lose weight. The coach is basically not necessarily the expert in the profession but that person will help an individual to set goals and actions to achieve them. The coach would also follow up on milestones and ensure that the individual stays on track or recommend recovery options.

Now, lets look at how this could work for you.  Here are the points I recommend to decide on this.

1. Interest – Do you like working with people and help them to succeed at whatever? do you have an area in life that you are passionate about? Then life coaching could be good for you in that context.

2. Research – Do some research on what life coaching really is. I am sure there are both books and lots of blogs and websites about this. Try to understand whats going on in the industry for your education.

3. Certification – Once you have an idea that you really want to do this, the best option is to pick a Certification program. My personal approach is to put them into a comparative spreadsheet then make a decision based on your comfort level. As mentioned earlier, there are several for less than US$1000.00 out there that looks rather reputable. This will also help with your marketing as well.

4. Business Setup – Once you complete the course and exam or even during that process, you could form a business entity to manage this overall business. You can look at several options such as LLC, C-Corp, S-Corp or a Non-Profit Structure. I personally believe once you start to deal with the public its good to formalize a business entity for many reasons. This should cost no more than $500 in most states with the required elements.

5. Marketing – Most of the certification programs do offer help in this arena and in fact some of them have memberships so you can ask for advice along the way. The best approach is to start with friends and you can even do it for free in order to build your reputation. Make out time per week to meet potential clients and other related activities. You would also need to have a pricing structure depending on how you plan to offer the service. For example you could do one-on-one approach or use group options. With the Internet, you could offer your service anywhere and have sessions online with free tools like Skype and others.

Overall, I think life coaching is a good low cost business venture to look at for anyone at any level. You could be seen as someones personal assistant at the low end or at the high end being the expert in the profession of choice to really help others to reach the top of their potential.