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This weekend, start a business.
You might think that there’s something inherently wrong with this statement: building a real business takes months, years even. This is often true, but you can come up with a solid concept and often a working prototype up for a workable business within a matter of days.
Try this:
Brainstorm- Write down things you love for 10 minutes. This is probably the easiest step to your process. Anything that comes to mind, write it down. 10 minutes is longer than you think.
Eliminate- Take a look at what you wrote down. The ultimate goal of this exercise is to build a business out of one of your interests; what would either prove to be nonviable or uninteresting? When I did this exercise initially I wrote down Parks and Recreation, Veep, and The West Wing. Getting into the television production market isn’t too realistic without funding and creating fan fiction isn’t of much interest to me, so I crossed them off of my list.
Match- Your interests are probably broad as they stand right now; link them with potential businesses. In example:
Running- online store for running shoes, shoe fitting, online training
Food- food recommendation, local food delivery, subscription box for foodies
Vacations- vacation planning service, online service to save money on airlines
….
Select- Pick out 2 to 3 of your favorites from the businesses above, and now test the concept. Tim Ferriss has a great post up on validation here; definitely go through his process to prove it. You’ll attempt to find 1,000,000 potential customers via Google Trends, Insights, competition analysis, and more.
Get started– Depending on the type of your concept, several tools can get you started online. Want to start an ecommerce store? Set up a listing at https://www.shoplocket.com/ and then share it with your friends. Subscription commerce? Start out at http://member.ly. These sites are perfect when you’re just starting out as there are next to no startup costs and can be set up in under an hour.
So that’s it. In the last 5 steps, you’ve gone from no idea to a solid concept or prototype!
