How to Know if Your Business Idea is a Winner

The 2 Essential Elements of a Business

So you have this great idea for a new business.  How do you know if your business idea stands a chance to be successful?  Well there are 2 essential elements in any successful business.  There is a BIG problem.  You have a UNIQUE solution.  Let me elaborate on those two points.

1. Big Problem – When you explain the value of your idea to your friends and family do they say, “Yeah I hate it when that happens”?  If so, you probably have the first ingredient of a successful business.  Don’t get me wrong, the problem does not have to be felt by “everyone”, because maybe every farmer has difficulty finding the best buyer for their crops.  Well your mom may not know that, but every farmer does.  So the key is to find a problem that is a big pain for a specific group of people.  I am going to use the example of the remote vehicle starter.  What a GREAT idea.  Everyone that has ever traveled in a car on a blistering hot summer day or a bitterly cold winter morning understands how terrible it is to wait for your car to cool down or heat up.  The remote vehicle starter is a great idea because everyone understands the pain.

2.  Unique Solution – This is the problem that I usually run in to.  I am an idea generator.  I have a unique ability to identify a big pain that impacts a group of people, but that is usually where it ends for me haha.  For instance, just about anyone could recognize the pain of commercials in the middle of your favorite television program, but I sure could not come up with a unique solution like TIVO.  Even if I thought about TIVO as a concept, I have no expertise to create the software and hardware for the program.  So the second, and often the most difficult piece of building a successful business is creating a unique solution to the big problem.

If you have accomplished both of these pieces then your business idea is a winner and now it is time to implement a sales and marketing plan for your product of service.  Now that you have a great business idea, make sure that you have a strong business plan in place.  Check out Top 30 Most Common Business Plan Mistakes.