and expensive to succeed at most of these businesses. But at this stage, all you see is the upside.
3. Concept. At this stage, you have achievable ideas but you also bring the downsides and difficulties of your dream into focus. You’re willing to challenge your own assumptions and the claims of those who promise to make your dreams come true. You’re not afraid to look at the costs, limitations, or work required, and you’re willing to begin evaluating realistically your chances of success.
4. Goals. At this stage, you make a specific, realistic evaluation of what you personally want to achieve and what you’re willing to sacrifice to achieve it. Even practical visions involve trade-offs: If you want a large business, you may need investors who would exercise some or all the control over your company. Make sure you’re comfortable with these trade-offs.
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5. Business plan. Finally, you’re ready to develop a thorough, thoughtful, step-by-step road map to success. This is where you actually figure out how to make your vision and goals a reality. You examine your industry, study the competition, and research your market. You identify the best strategies for success and detail your action items, milestones, marketing, and operations. This is your business road map. For more on business plans, see Chapter 4.
ENTREPRENEUR’S WORKSHEET
Moving from Dream to Reality
Using your business idea, fill out the following worksheet to distinguish the achievable from the dream.
Entrepreneurs Make a Difference
Finally, most people who choose the entrepreneurial life wouldn’t have it any other way. They recognize how difficult it can be; they may complain about the number of hours they put in, the vacations they’ve missed; they may have suffered the ups and downs of income. Their business—or businesses—may even have failed. But in the end, they’re sustained by how engaging and challenging being an entrepreneur can be.
As you start on your entrepreneurial journey, aim to make a difference. Businesses only succeed when they meet a real need. Yet those needs can be petty and small: Think of those who’ve created reality shows about housewives in New Jersey. Instead, look to fill needs that are important; make your contribution positive. Do something—create something—that has an impact. It doesn’t have to be world-changing. You need not invent a miracle medical device or devise a way to feed the world’s poor. But whatever you choose to do, try to make a beneficial impact on the world you inhabit.
Entrepreneurs change the world—you can be one of them.
EXERCISE: critical thinking
WHAT WOULD SHERYL DO?
Goal:
Choose a role model to inspire you.
What to do:
Having a role model—an example of a successful entrepreneur who inspires you—helps you create a powerful vision of what kind of entrepreneur you want to be and what kind of business you want to build.
If your business hero is Steve Jobs (cofounder of Apple and former CEO of Pixar Animation Studios) or Elon Musk (cofounder of Tesla Motors and founder of SpaceX), it might motivate you to be driven by innovation first. If your role model is Sheryl Sandberg (the Chief Operating Officer of Facebook), she might be an inspiration for building a collaborative culture for employees. Keeping Ben
Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, founders of Ben & Jerry’s, in mind might inspire you to make social goals an important element of your business growth. Or perhaps you want to be like your sister who’s been earning a good living being self-employed for 10 years, yet goes to all her kids’ soccer games and heads the PTA.
Our role models don’t all have to be famous. Or rich. They can be those who found ways to live the kind of life you’d like to live or to make the type of mark you’d like to leave on the world.
Thinking about your role models, complete the following exercise:
1. Write down the name of an entrepreneur, business owner, or other person you admire.
2. List the traits you admire in that person.
3. List two ways that you can incorporate those traits into your life or your business.
1. U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics.
CHAPTER
2
Opportunity Identification and Feasibility Analysis
What is a business opportunity?
Where does inspiration come from?
Opportunities in old industries
Apply technology in non-technology industries and markets
Traditional to entrepreneurial
Factors of a successful business concept
Characteristics of highly successful businesses
A company’s values and integrity