Author: Richard

Richard is Founder and Editor at www.FasterFounders.com. Richard has extensively researched the key aspects of getting you from idea to business faster. Everyone has an idea but Richard is focussed on moving and motivating people to execute on that idea and bring it to life....faster.

About Richard

Richard is Founder and Editor at www.FasterFounders.com. Richard has extensively researched the key aspects of getting you from idea to business faster. Everyone has an idea but Richard is focussed on moving and motivating people to execute on that idea and bring it to life....faster.

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Here are my most recent posts

New Business Ideas for Beginners

Business Ideas for BeginnersHow do you get new business ideas for beginners to business fast as a newbie?

So you have an idea that is exciting you but how do you know if that idea is really one of the greatest business ideas for beginners?

The first things to test are:

  • Explain the value: Can I explain easily how it will help someone?
  • Marketability: Would I buy this if I saw it?
  • Competition: Is anyone else doing it and can my idea do it better?

Explain the value

If it’s easy to explain (meaning you can get it across to someone within 5 minutes) how it will help someone then you’ve got the seed of a potential offering that may be a business. If there’s a problem out there that will be solved by this idea then you’ve potentially identified a target ‘market’ or ‘audience’ for your eventual offering.

If you’re struggling to easily define the problem that your offering fixes, then the value proposition isn’t yet clear and needs further work, because if you don’t ‘get it’ then it will be very difficult to make others see the value in your idea. Don’t give up on it until you’ve read the ‘Value Proposition‘ article here for some help with this.

Marketability

It is one thing to be convinced that your offering adds value but that’s not always the end point. If you want to make an income from your offering (and there are people who do not – their offering may just be to generate interest or profile) then you need to know if people will part with money to get it. There are cheap strategies to testing the market that will follow in a later article that enable a degree of analysis into whether the offering could be marketable to the target audience.

The ‘price’ you charge often is a key criteria in making your offering marketable and having a successful new business idea as a beginner. Reading the articles on ‘Buying Stuff‘ to get a feel for how your target audience might view a purchase of your offering, and the article on ‘Estimating‘ to help you understand how you might express the value in your offering in a suitable ‘price’ to your target market and audience.

Competition

A lot of new business ideas for beginners don’t get off the starting blocks because of fear of the competition.

It is true that entering a market with lots of competitors can be a challenge. But you need to ensure you are comparing apples with apples, i.e. the offerings of competitors can seem to be directly comparable with yours BUT, when you really begin to analyse the product features and components of what they are offering and the value it provides, you find that they have an orange when it is truly compared to your offering which is the apple (hopefully) of your target audience’s eye 🙂

By investigating in a bit more detail the characteristics of their value propositions you can carve out your own niche for your offering and more tightly align your value proposition to the people you are targeting to help with your offering. Don’ be disheartened and with a little more work you can still get your idea to business successfully.

Bottom Line on new Business Ideas for Beginners

If after testing the above you find your offering is not as exciting as you’d first thought – don’t worry. You have now learnt a new capability to identify the value proposition for new business ideas as a beginner. The next idea will benefit from this new skill that you have acquired and will be better and stronger as a result.

You have also learnt an important lesson that all successful entrepreneurs know, ‘fail early and fail fast’. Once you’ve made the decision that the idea isn’t going to make it then cut it loose before you expend your valuable thinking time and effort (or worse still – sacks of money) on developing an idea that doesn’t pass the tests above sufficiently to make it worthwhile.

To keep you motivated to take on the next idea read the article here on entrepreneur motivation and let me help keep you on the path to success.

Measure your side-project: Are you an Apple or an Orange?

Measure yourself in the right way every day for success
Measure yourself in the right way every day for success

I saw this quote and it got me thinking about how many of us are silently measuring ourselves each day against a yardstick that isn’t the right fit for ‘us’.

It is unavoidable, you will judge yourself on some level against something. I recall the Olympic sprinter, Michael Johnson once stating in an interview that he didn’t care what times the other athletes posted, his focus was always on his own times because that was what he could influence.

I really loved that outloook, it meant that he had laser focus on the things he could change and work on. For Michael that worked out very well and lead to Olympic Gold.

Einstein’s quote above applies ever more so to my audience here. There are a lot of people who are working away at the ‘day job’ and in the 5pm-9pm hours, weekends and any spare time are working away at building their side-projects or side-businesses to make them real.

So what measure do these guys apply?

So what do you measure yourself against?

There’s the daily measure of the ‘day job’. This doesn’t go away and might be a fantastic job that you’re really great at and love.

OR….it might be the pits and you can’t wait to do something better with your life.

It matters not which because at some level you need to measure your success at the day job, if for no other reason than to ensure you’re still in it to help fund your side-work!

Measuring your side-business

There is also the measure of the ‘side-project’ or ‘side-business’ to consider.

It’s not ‘really’ a job yet, and it’s yours to push along and make happen. So in effect – you’re the boss!! YAY!

STOP – it’s not a YAY for everyone.

The danger with the ‘side-anything’ is that you continually treat it as a ‘side-thing’ and that usually means it’s the poor cousin when it comes to being measured and monitored for progress.

How many of you have ‘side-stuff’ that has been a side-thing for more than 6months…..12months……24months…!!!

The measuring of your side-projects is MORE IMPORTANT than your day job if you want to make it happen.

So…

To make sure you’re MEASURING THE RIGHT THING for you and are able to bring your idea to business faster you need to get practical with yourself.

Practical Measurement

Because the side-projects don’t always have finely tuned project work breakdowns and plans I’m going to propose the simple tool of ‘journaling’ to help you focus and keep track of where you’re going each week.

I recently wrote a post called Use Journal Power-how looking back will power you ahead that talks about the power of the Journal, so I’m not going to repeat myself here – go take a read.

But the Value in this approach is…

The value comes from taking a look at what you want to achieve with your ‘side’ thing over the next 7 days, the next week is your biggest hurdle to your future success – it always is! Without making stuff happen in the ‘next week’ you’ll NEVER get where you want to go.

So very simply, the idea is to:

  1. Write down the top 5 things that you will achieve this next week to get you towards your goal.
  2. Each morning take a look at your list and review what you’re focussing on this week.
  3. Each night – wrote down what you have done towards achieving these TOP 5 PRIORITIES for the week.

SIMPLE!

Then at the end of the 7 days, read through what you achieved against what you set out to achieve and take 5 mins to assess what worked, what didn’t and what you can do next week to make better progress.

Doing this consistently sharpens your priority setting muscle, and keeps you laser focussed on what you can do EVERY day to get you closer to your goal.

End of Practical Session – just go do it 🙂

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Use Journal Power-how looking back will power you ahead

Journal PowerSo I studied quite a bit…

I got a Diploma, a BSc Degree, a Certificate and Diploma in Management (only ‘cos I was too young to do the MBA) and finally a Masters.

So when I first came across a journal it was in the context of shelves and shelves of a library with little cardboard racks filled with volumes of journals from obscure Organisations and Bodies.

These things contained articles written by distinguished and interesting people. One particular assignment on ‘Can an Artificial Intelligence have Ethics’  led me spend a whole afternoon in the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) volumes of journals on Computer Ethics….!!

…anyway I digress.

The point is that my early feelings towards ‘journals’ was boring, dusty and little stinky – old paper doesn’t keep fresh!

Your own Journal Power

Fortunately Journal Power does not require the use of old dusty papers.

It also will not require you to visit anywhere with lots of books and papers on many shelves.

No! The Journal Power I am going to share with you is something you

…already have…

…can do anywhere that works for you…

…and…

…you can start using this new power today!

How does Journal Power work?

As enterpreneurs, wannapreneurs, sidepreneurs or just cube-monkeys we all get through a ton of “stuff” every day of every week of every year.

Now granted for some us the “stuff” can be of higher value than others. Rocking the XBox for 30hrs a week is possibly of less value to your average Sidepreneur than putting in those hours getting their eCommerce site up and working.

The point is that there’s a whole lot of time spent doing things that ‘could’ be moving you towards your goals and success.

Looking ahead while looking back

Yes, that’s a weird headline and I’m not talking about having eyes in the back of your head (although a recent R&D innovation client – Mark – can give you that in the shape of a motorcycle helmet with a rearview camera built in – see REEVU for more details).

What I’m talking about is having the ability to look forward and ahead at what you’re going to do with your time setting actions and goals for the week ahead…

…and then at the end of each day looking back at how you’ve spent the day, the achievements you’ve made and the challenges you’ve faced.

How does Looking Back power you Ahead?

Fair question…and looking back at how you’ve spent your hours is, believe it or not, a really powerful way to ensure that when you look ahead you get greater success out of the hours ahead of you.

Related article: How to get more time for your idea

Believe me when I say that when you start to take the time each day to look back at what “stuff” you’ve done and what you’ve achieved it will REALLY open your eyes.

Now, for some of us it won’t open our eyes in a good way, we’ll see how we’ve spent all those hours and realise that they weren’t really spent moving us towards our goals in any meaningful way.

For others it will be a motivational boost to realise that actually, they’ve got through more than they thought they did in those hours and with it will bring the realisation that they can do more than they thought they could.

Writing it Down – your extended memory

A crucial piece of the jigsaw is to take the time to write the things down that you’ve achieved each day in your ‘journal’ so that you can come back to them at the end of the week / month.

Taking a leaf out of the Dave Allen GTD book, taking stuff out of your brain and putting it down somewhere (i.e. in your Journal) so that you don’t need to keep it in your brain clouding it from the focused activities you need it to work on…is a good thing. It’s like having a second memory!

Now your journal doesn’t need to be leather-bound and come from the pages of Harry Potter. It can be anything you’re comfortable keeping to hand so that you can write in it every day. It can be a Word Document on a computer or an app on your Mac, iPad or Tablet (Day One is particularly good).

It just needs to be something that is with you and on-hand when you’re ready to record your progress – frictionless and available.

Successes Every Week

After you’ve been doing this for a couple of weeks you’ll start to see how your successes add up. The magic happens through applying these practical steps:

  1. You ‘write ahead’ in your journal at the start of the week setting out the top 5 things you want to get done
  2. At the end of each day you ‘look back’ at how you’ve spent those hours and what achievements or blockers you’ve had
  3. At the end of the week you take-stock of what you said you would look to get done, and what you’ve actually got done
  4. You learn what worked and what didn’t this week and use that to make next week better

Simples eh! I said building your future was Simple but Hard right here didn’t I 🙂

JUST TEN MINUTES A DAY of practical action is all it takes to get this JOURNAL POWER working for you.

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How to Choose to DO IT

Flex your Choosing MuscleIt’s a Monday, it’s dark, miserable….

Been there, done that and know it’s coming again.

The alarm sounds and you’re in that nice warm bed, enjoying the comfort and not looking forwards to the trip outside that front door.

YOU have a choice:

  1. Press the ‘SNOOZE’ button and have another few ZZZZzzzzzzs
  2. Seize the day and get right into the FIGHT

There’s a lot more of us that go for option 1 over option 2 for sure.

Only YOU Choose

Now the thing about choice is that it’s down to you – YOU! It’s only you that makes choices – no-one else!

The circumstances around you can stack up anyway they like, but it’s in your head that the decision gets played out. Whether it’s a decision about answering the alarm clock, heading out into the cold Monday morning, making that cold-call to get a new client or how to react to the client in front of you that isn’t seeing things quite your way. It’s ALL YOU – You are master of you!!

Tough Love huh! Sorry about that, but get over it.

ACTION versus REACTION

The choice of how you react to things is always in your hands, it’s just not always easy to do the ‘right’ thing when you’re in the moment.

I’ve already told you that the decision is yours, and yours alone – right.

Well now let me explain how you can make that decision always count in your favour, regardless of how the scene is set.

There is a ‘golden gap’ that gives you the opportunity to think through the choices and your decision on which to choose. It’s the gap between ‘ACTION’ (the thing that’s happened to force a choice) and the ‘REACTION’ (which of those choices you go for).

You don’t have to ‘knee-jerk’ your decision on which of those choices you go for.

LIVE IN THE GAP

It was a revelation to me that this gap between my reactions to actions existed, I had to make a lot of wrong choices before I caught on.believe me

I now ‘LIVE in the GAP’ whenever I can. It’s not easy but I try and spot each and every opportunity to get into that gap and use it for my benefit.

When something happens that forces me to make a choice, I stop myself and just take a moment to consider and play back in my own mind what is before me.

  • The Choices – those that I am presented with by the scene
  • The Causes – what has made this situation happen
  • The Factors – what’s limiting my options and therefore what decision I can make

Now this doesn’t need to take a long time – I’ve even raced through this process within 60 secs when I’ve had to – “the GAP” can be minutes, days or weeks. Either way knowing it exists is the important part.

And then – I make my decision!!

Yep – in my head with the choices I have (and the new ones I may come up with in the GAP) and I then take action.

TAKING ACTION

Heading back to the alarm clock on Monday morning…

Knowing about ‘the GAP’ and ‘your ability to make a choice your own’ and DECIDE is not necessarily going to give you that bed of roses. You see, armed with this you can still take that decision to ‘PRESS SNOOZE’.

No, the last piece of the puzzle is for you to ALWAYS want to and strive to TAKE ACTION.

You see, whatever it is that you’re aiming for whether it’s a new job, a new personal best, a new idea or invention or nailing that great new client…

…YOU NEED TO TAKE POSITIVE ACTION TOWARDS IT EACH AND EVERY DAY.

So the puzzle piece missing is to face the choices before you and DECIDE to go with the choice that makes you TAKE ACTION and move closer to your goal and success.

THAT’S IT – JUST DO IT!

P.S. Sometimes it’s just not that easy to see the choices that will move you towards your goal because it’s just too big and you can’t figure out how to get there! Well small-steps lead to HUGE things, check out this piece on motivation to keep you going.

 

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How to get more time for your idea

 

Post it with How to Get More Time
How to get more time out of your day

 

A common cry from those that haven’t yet started to take their idea to business is that…
“I don’t have enough time to…”

And it’s not necessarily a lie or an untruth, it’s a perception that that person has and it’s as real to them as the sky is to you.

Are you Frozen in the No Time Trap

This ‘belief’ that you have no time can get in the way of a positive approach to the perception problem and leave you frozen in the no-time trap.

If all you can see is that you have no time, and you maintain that perception as a core belief, then it makes it very difficult for you to work out…

How to get MORE time

The positive approach to the perceived belief that you have no time is to turn the question on it’s head and ask yourself How can I get more time.

Staying true to the Faster Founders tagline of practical tools and motivation, let me help by bringing to the fore several practical approaches to magically creating more from the little you have.

Practical Tools to get more time

The scarce resource you are battling with is something called time. It’s true that it’s finite, there’s only so much of it at your disposal – so what you do with it is the important question.

With 24 hrs in a day and 7 days in a week you have 168 hrs available to you

Take out your sleeping hours – 8hrs a night removes 54 hrs

Take out your day job time – 37.5 hrs (7.5hrs x 5 days a week) removes another 37.5 hrs

We’re left with 76.5 hrs remaining after sleep and work

So let’s take out 1hr each night for Dinner, 1hr each morning for getting ready in the morning 1hr each day travel time and 1hr each night for putting kids to bed – a further 28 hrs gone

We STILL have 48.5hrs LEFTOVER – more than a ‘standard’ week at the day job!

Yes, I know there’s still the soap operas you watch, there’s going to the supermarket and washing and chores to be done…I get it.

But REALLY…are you telling me you can’t find a little more time to make your idea become real?? Hey, it’s your idea and your life…but if you REALLY want to make it happen please keep reading.

 

Create more Hours in your Day

So you’ve looked at your day and there’s no ‘slack’ time in it that you can plunder.

So the only answer is to create more hours – right?

Now this is not something to take lightly, and you need to have a strong belief system to pick up this option – but it has worked for thousands of people around the World already.

The Miracle Morning

The principle is called ‘The Miracle Morning’ and it’s a way for you to build a better belief in what’s possible and to buy back a couple of hours a day to work on your ideas.

The practical side of it revolves around starting your day earlier at about 05:30am, and by doing this you re-claim a couple of hours each day when you won’t be distracted and can make progress on your own ideas and agenda.

It sounds a lot worse than it is, and once you start trying it you’ll find that this is golden time for thinking and doing, that you just don’t get at any other point in the day or week.

If this is something that you think can help then click on my affiliate link and go take a look at The Miracle Morning

Make Better Use of the Hours you’ve got

So let’s just say you really are time-starved, or you really need your sleep and rest to be able to function through the day.

That’s not a problem, here are some more practical approaches that can help you maximise what you get out of every hour.

When the only option is to get more out of each hour available then there are other approaches that you can deploy to help you achieve what you need each day.

Getting Things Done (aka GTD)

The Getting Things Done method is an approach to organising your thoughts and actions into ‘lists’ that you categorise and regularly review. The big benefit is that you de-clutter your head and so can focus on the tasks that you need to when you need to, thereby making the most efficient and effective use of the limited hours you have available.

It was created by a guy called David Allen in 2002 and quickly became a top management and self-help tool. The idea has gotten a strong foothold with a lots of the technical and self-help fraternity as a practical approach to dealing with the ever-increasing work demands of our busy lives.

If GTD sounds promising for you then hop over to the link to the GTD book.

Pomodoro

The Pomodoro Technique is a pretty simple approach to helping you focus your mind on a single task at a time and apply all that intensity to the work in hand.

It comes from the Pomodoro tomato and is so called because at the heart of the technique is a timer…that is shaped like a tomato!

Yes, it’s as obvious as that – a kitchen timer. You basically set the time for 20mins before you begin your task. Be clear on what it is you will be actioning for that 20mins period and once you start the timer then nothing must distract you and you stay focussed on the task in-hand until the timer goes off.

It has proved to be a surprisingly powerful technique for many people and yet it’s so simple. If this is something you think may help you make more of every day that you have to get your idea to business then take a look at the link below.

 I have no time – I need to clone myself

Okay so we’ve hit the end of the line and the practical tools suggested so far are not suitable.

So we can’t gain you a few extra hours through The Miracle Morning and getting up early. We can’t get you to squeeze out a little more productivity of the hours you do have through the GTD method or the Pomodoro Technique…So the  only answer we have left is to ‘clone’ you so that there’s more than one of you!!

No, I’m not talking about pinching some of your DNA and automagically re-generating another you from a test-tube. But there is a way to achieve the same effect…

Virtual Assistance (aka VA)

More and more of today’s entrepreneurs are realising that trying to do it all yourself is just too tall an ask. It increases the time needed to complete things and piles on the pressure and fatigue, increasing the risk of burnout or injury.

With the power of the internet connecting more and more people and more and more markets around the world, it is now easier than ever to find great people who can offer services to help bring your idea to reality.

Whether you need some logos created, a business plan drafted, some copywriting, widget manufacturing or some marketing work to find customers, there is someone out there that can help.

As the world has shrunk the costs of using virtual assistants (Vas) has also become a lot more reasonable. You can call on people in other countries with experience and qualifications that match your needs and possibly for a much more competitive rate than you can source locally.

Also, by working with staff from overseas you can find people who can work when you work. So if your idea is being hatched in the hours of 5pm to 9pm your local time, then maybe sourcing a VA in a different timezone would enable your idea to continue to be worked on while you sleep.

If cloning yourself is an option for developing your idea then head on over to the the Outsource and Virtual Assistant links below and check out the services and staff available.

eLance – for freelancers

Odesk – freelancers

Virtual Staff Finder

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Stress – how it can be good for you

Make Stress your FriendAs Founders it’s inevitable that you will ride the roller coaster of emotions, the incredible highs when you gain a customer or increase your monthly revenue, and the shattering lows when that deal doesn’t quite get done, or the product you thought was a sure thing doesn’t land that well.

There is an element of stress that comes with lots of things we do as Founders and while the physical manifestation is often deemed as ‘bad’, I watched a TED talk recently that talks of the stress response in a different way.

The talk is by Kelly McGonigal who is a Health Psychologist and it’s titled ‘How to make stress your friend‘. This sounds a little twee as a title I’ll grant you, but it’s a short talk and the research that Kelly quotes helps support her view.

And from our side of the fence if it helps then it’s valuable – right!

Practical Perseverance and how to develop it

Challenge yourself to Persevere
PERSEVERANCE – Persistence in doing something despite difficulty or delay in achieving success

I have studied many books around success and achieving your goals in business, I have listened to lots of authors and success coaches in audio books and podcasts explain how success can be yours….if only you keep  at it.

The word ‘PERSEVERANCE’ is used time and again as a key trait that has helped many achieve success in their lives. The example that sticks out for me is Anthony Robbins when he mentions Colonel Sanders and his Kentucky Fried Chicken recipe. At age 65 he decided he would add more value to the World and he started selling his recipe. He pitched the recipe to 1,009 restaurant owners before he got a ‘YES’, and the rest is history.  He had perseverance to keep going.

Practical Perseverance

I once shared a house in my University days with a guy who sold aerial photos to homeowners. It’s not the easiest sell to walk up and knock on people’s homes and tell them you’ve flown over and photographed their property and would they like a framed photo of it. I asked him how he kept going after getting many NOs each day – his answer was that each no was one closer to the next YES.

The example above illustrates that It’s finding the motivation that keeps you going is key to perseverance. He could have looked at each NO as evidence that the business model does not work, but instead he saw it as an indicator that he was getting closer to his next sale instead.

So what do you do to develop PERSEVERANCE?

The best solution I’ve come up with is to target the goal you want to achieve and then identify the individual tasks you need to complete to move you towards that goal.

If you’re a Sales guy and your goal is to be Top of the sales list of 100 team members this month, then a key task might be to make 20 prospect calls each day before 10am.

If you’re an author and your goal is to complete your 200 page book, then a key task might be to write 2 pages a day.

These examples illustrate some key tasks that break down the larger goal into real, tangible things you can take action on EACH DAY to move you towards your goal.

Taking ACTION enables PERSEVERANCE

The secret to perseverance is doing the small things EVERY DAY that keep you moving towards your goal. Don’t see the GOAL as a big scary thing that you can’t get your head around and it takes you too long to even consider taking action against. See it as a series of small tasks that you CAN take action on EVERY DAY that moves you forwards.

FOCUS – use the power of focus every day until you achieve success:

Follow
One
Course
Until
Success

Thanks to John Lee Dumas at Entrepreneur on Fire for the FOCUS acronym.

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Think you can’t do it?

can't do this
I can’t do this but I’m doing it anyway

 

There is an in-built chip that we all have that is programmed to give us the fear of not being able to achieve things. It’s in Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos exactly the same as you and I.

When you get that great assignment or you’ve just landed that great job you suddenly become overwhelmed and thing “I can’t do this….!”. Sound familiar?

This feeling is known as many things but I’m going to refer to is as Impostor Syndrome where you feel that somehow you’re not up-to the job and will be found out!

How to keep your idea on track and succeed

Here are several tactics that you can use to keep your idea on track and overcome this limiting belief:

1. Focus on where you’re going

Keep your eye on the prize and focus on where you’re going and the tasks you need to take to get there. This will help keep you grounded and focussed.

2. Don’t try to make things perfect at first

The danger is that because you’re worried you go into ‘planning’ mode and try to get everything perfect but end up in analysis paralysis. Don’t worry too much about getting it right first time – just get stuck in and it’ll work out as it progresses.

3. Ask for help

It sounds counter-intuitive but no great achiever gets there alone, the best achievements have been made with teams of people all supporting one another. So look to surround yourself with a support structure. Either reach out to friends and colleagues or find an on-line group to share your thoughts and ideas – this will soon help you find out whether you’re on the right track or need to tweak things a little. Don’t be afraid to ask for help….if you don’t you’ll isolate yourself and make things ten times more difficult.

4. Give yourself some room to make mistakes

Keep evaluating how your decision making is progressing. Are you making more good than bad, then you’re on the right track. It’s fine to make mistakes once in a while on your journey through.

5. Don’t worry about having not done this before

You don’t need to have done this thing or role before to be able to take it on. Having the confidence to tackle it and see it through is key, the skills and path through will come together but without the confidence that you ‘will’ do this thing then you are lost.

Help others with your own tactics – drop a comment below with your ideas for keeping your idea on track.

Level 2 – STARTED to take your idea to business

Green Get Started sign
You have Started already

You’ve worked through Level 1, some awareness building and you have started to transform the idea in your head into something more meaningful on paper or screen. That wasn’t too tough was it? Now onto the next level.

Next we will work to put some more detail to the activities and scope of the offering we’re looking to bring into reality.

Taking action:

  • Describe what specific actions you need to take to move forwards to the next level [task list]. Armed with the list of tasks we can start to work out the order and sequence [plan dates] – this will be our starter list which we will grow and flesh out as we proceed.

Skills needed:

  • Armed with the understanding of what Knowhow or Knowledge is needed to bring your offering to life, we will now build a [gap analysis] to show which skills we’ve got or know we can source and which skills we’ll need to get access to.

Making it:

  • We’ve got a picture now of what it is we’re looking to create, a description of what it looks like. Next we need a more detailed specification of what its lifecycle will be, how long it’s expected to last, will it be renewed every year, will it need maintenance, etc [product strategy].

Finding People/Audience:

  • Now think a little wider about the target user description and look at types of user and give it a user journey on the path of finding, buying, using and abusing your offering. And also, how many of each type there are and where you might find them [target audiences].
Action Skills
  • Task List
  • Plan Dates
  • Skills Gap Analysis
Make it Find People
– Product Strategy
  • Target User Stories
  • Target Audiences / Markets

This is the second level and we’re already shaping things up. Next we’ll look at DESIGNING your offering and provide some practical tools and motivation to get to the next level.

Related post: Level 1 – Lost in Building your Business?

Top 12 risk factors to your idea becoming reality and how to avoid them – The Dirty Dozen

Red Risk Road warning sign - risk factors to bringing your idea to business
Top Risk Factors to bringing your idea to business

In driving to take your idea to business or make your offering a reality you will constantly battle with what Steven Pressfield calls ‘Resistance’ in his book Do the Work which is the constant pressures and distractions that press against you holding you back as you work to bring your offering into reality.

I came across this article about human errors and their causes that was surfaced to me by Elvin Box in his LinkedIn feed – thanks Elvin. And it got me thinking about how these are also pretty close to the business risk factors that stand between you and bringing your idea to business.

The article is written by Bernhard Rikardsen (ex-VP of Scandinavian Airlines) and discusses the 12 most common causes of human error from an airline industry perspective and gives some examples of how they can be counteracted.

The Factors include:

  • Lack of communication – very apparent to us as we look to build out an audience for our offering
  • Complacency – don’t get to comfortable and keep pushing your idea into business
  • Lack of knowledge – a clear and present danger and one that if you’re reading here at Faster Founders you are already tackling
  • Distraction – the dark matter around us that saps our attention
  • Fatigue – keeping yourself, fit, healthy and well
  • Lack of resources – part of this for us is also in knowing what resources we need
  • Lack of awareness – knowing that these risk factors exist will help us

Read through Bernhard’s article and think about how each one could be impacting you and your planning today and in the future and what you can do to avoid and counteract them. Knowing about them and being aware is half the battle, taking pro-active action to mitigate the risk of them occurring is a whole lot better.

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