Hello New Business Friend!
I am referring to you as a New Business Friend because we are beginning a journey together.
Our journey together will take us down paths that you may have already traveled.
Our journey will also take you down paths that you may have failed to navigate.
We will also discover paths hidden by the noise of everyday life. Some hidden paths we can’t afford to skip the journey of discovery together.
Day 1 of a Business - What Not To Do?
What do you think the vast majority of people do on their First Day of starting a new business?
If you guessed Picking a Business Name, you’d be with the majority.
Why does a startup founder do this?
Because friends and family first question to the budding startup founder is:
“What’s the Name of Your Business?”
Please don’t spend 1-second worrying on Day 1 about the name of your business!
You can spend countless hours - days - weeks - months even choosing your business name.
Day 1 of any new business is best spent in other ways. Keep Reading to Find out how I recommend you spend Day 1.
Day 1 of My New Business: IDEA Stage
The first day of your new business begins with the IDEA Stage.
All businesses start as an IDEA.
The IDEA is most often related to a PROBLEM. Often the PROBLEM is a challenge that you are facing or recently faced. The PROBLEM likely frustrated or even angered you. You said to yourself - “There Must Be a Better Way!”
One question most people fail to ask on Day 1 of starting a new business is “Has Someone Else Already Found a Better Way?”
In the pre-internet days, most communication was in written form. Newspapers, books, magazines, patents. This made it challenging for the average person to discover COMPETITIVE SOLUTIONs.
Limited communications of SOLUTIONS to common PROBLEMS led to the rise of small pockets of civilizations. Rome, Athens, the Greeks are examples of societies with breakthrough SOLUTIONs. They were able to rise, to the detriment of surrounding societies (Example: Barbarians).
The positive effect of the rise of the internet enabled SOLUTIONS to common PROBLEMS to spread around the planet in seconds. Even the poorest can now learn skills to allow them to better themselves.
IDEAS shared with colleagues around the world that can lead to cheaper and better SOLUTIONS to even the most complex problems.
So my question to you astute New Business Friend is the following. How good of a job have you done researching the SOLUTIONS to the IDEA for a business you jump in head-first?
Day 1 should be all about COMPETITOR RESEARCH!
HOW TO START YOUR COMPETITOR RESEARCH
1) Open your browser (Please use the Google Search Engine, not others)
2) Enter a 3-10 word description of the PROBLEM. Not your SOLUTION IDEA. Add the word “solutions” to the end of your search string. Example search strings are teenage ache solutions, sunburn solutions, door lock solutions, and electric motor design solutions.
3) Create a spreadsheet. I recommend Google Sheets. Google Sheets is FREE with a Google Email account. It is easy to share this spreadsheet with others for review (which I will come to later).
4) Go through the first 100 unique search results that Google returns. Cut and paste the each of the 100 individual links into COLUMN A in the spreadsheet. You will title Row 1: OTHER SOLUTIONS.
DON’T DRILL DOWN AND READ EACH RESULT NOW! C
5) Now Label COLUMN B: “10-WORD-DESC”. This field will contain an up to a 10-word description of the SOLUTION to the PROBLEM.
6) Now Label COLUMN C,D,E,F,G: “COMPETITOR”.
In each of the five fields, you will list the weblink to any competitor website listed in the article. If as you later read the article associated with the link and none are listed, that’s OK.
7) Now Read the first 100 Google Search Results and fill out the spreadsheet. If you find less than 100 relevant results, then you may need to shorten or be more specific in your search phrase. Experiment until you get a good set of Google Search Results.
NEXT STEP
1) Did you find your exact/similar IDEA already in the form of a PRODUCT offered by others?
2) Did you read about an IDEA available or in development that sounds like a better or cheaper SOLUTION?
3) Are any of the IDEAs by others already establishing a significant market share?
4) Are Venture Capitalists funding any of the COMPETITOR SOLUTIONS?
CONCLUSION
Yes, this research may take you 8+ hours. That’s OK!
Learning what the other SOLUTIONS are to the PROBLEM your IDEA is the most critical FIRST STEP you can take in starting your business.
I’ve seen so many company founders spend months working on a new company without having ever done this Competitor Research. Founders come to me looking for coaching. They share their IDEA. Sometimes I’m already aware of a similar, identical or better solution on the market. Or I know of one that has Venture Funding to the tune of tens of millions of dollars (or more) by venture capitalists.
I hope you finish Day 1 having completed this task and feel even better about your IDEA than when you started. If you do, then you are ready to put a second day into this IDEA Stage of your business.
If you finish Day 1 and found better SOLUTIONS, identical or similar SOLUTION IDEAS to yours, then CONGRATULATIONS! You have saved yourself months or more of your valuable time that you can now focus on your NEXT GREAT IDEA!
I hope this article gave you food for thought. If you are past Day 1 on your new business, don’t beat yourself up if you haven’t done detailed COMPETITOR RESEARCH yet.
Start first thing tomorrow and get your COMPETITOR RESEARCH done now!
Kenneth Ervin Young