ESYB2 129 - Bigger Checklist 18-Item Business Idea Checklist
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[00:00:00] As you're coming up with your business ideas, it can sometimes be difficult to tell which one is good, which one has less potential, more potential, that kind of, uh, taste for business idea gets developed over time. So in order to help you evaluate your business ideas, I've come up with this 18 item business idea checklist that I want to go over with you now that you can use as a sort of a first line of defense to determine whether the ideas You're getting are actually good ones, or maybe not good overall, but good for you.

First, let's look at the section of how does the idea relate to you? Does your idea leverage some of your background? Because remember, you don't want to start totally from scratch because then you'll just have too much of a learning curve. Then ask, does your idea meet your realistic financial goals? Can it satisfy your financial goals?

Does it have enough of that [00:01:00] potential? Next, do you yourself like the idea and can geek out about it? Like, are you passionate about it or are you kind of lukewarm? Because your passion level for it is important. And that segues really well into the next bullet point. Do you want to do something like this in the next five years?

Because usually, if business ideas are successful, well, then you're going to be running that business for a while. So you should be happy doing that. The next question you might want to ask is does the business give you personal growth in the area in which you want to grow in? And generally, would it make you happy?

Would the purpose of the idea make you happy? And would being in that space make you happy from the day to day? Like for example, you might love the idea of owning a coffee shop or a restaurant one day. But the day to day running of it It might be things that are totally not related to hosting or hospitality [00:02:00] or food.

It might be the details of making sure you have enough fresh groceries that you bought, making sure the staff is on time and then dealing with staff like hiring and firing. So it's not related to food at all. You see, so you have to think about whether you're going to be happy in the day to day of that business for a long time.

Like, will it fulfill you at the end of the day? Because if it doesn't, that defeats a lot of the purpose of having your own business. Your business should also make you happy. Next, in addition to you, the business is in a certain market. You have to think about what market your business is in. You might evaluate it by asking, is the market lucrative?

Like, large? Does it have high end customers who can pay a lot of money? Is it a growing market? These aren't very in depth questions, but at least it's a way to get started to think about these issues. And if you're still positive about your current business idea, [00:03:00] then you might want to start looking into your business idea quality, like the details of the actual idea.

For example, is this idea something that's natural to promote? Some things are easier to promote, some things are less. Is this idea easy to monetize? Obviously, if you sell something, well, then you sell something, but some ideas, for example, Uber. Now, it's very obvious how Uber monetizes, but what if online payments weren't a thing?

Uber would become impossible. Today, that's a trivial question, but just in case online payments weren't so easy as they are now, That will kind of make Uber impossible or very difficult to execute. So you really want to think about these things and not take them for granted. Is your idea naturally monetizable?

Different ideas are more or less profitable, more or less monetizable. Now, the next thing you want to ask is, is this idea difficult to execute? [00:04:00] Like, is it hard or easy to bring to market? Is there a lot of technology that it requires? Are you able to create that or hire somebody to create that? Do you have the money to spend on that?

Which really segues into kind of the other side of that question is, is it not too expensive? Additionally, you might want to think about, can this idea grow into something bigger? Like you might want to start small, but does it have growth potential to evolve? Like if you think about Amazon, they started as just an online bookstore.

And it was very natural to get into other industries later, like furniture, home appliances, now they sell just about anything. But they started only with books, you see. But they probably thought of, well, we'll start with books, but we'll grow into additional markets over time. In some cases it's easy, in some cases it's less easy.

And it's something you want to think about for you. This is not a deal breaker necessarily, but you still want to be aware. Also, if [00:05:00] your idea is innovative, That will carry a lot of risk, because if it's innovative, it hasn't been done before, so you want to get extra feedback. And if it's a commoditized idea, like a very common idea, do you have enough differentiation, like a restaurant?

There's many restaurants out there, but can you differentiate from other restaurants with quality or uniqueness of the food or other things? And, of course, you want to think a little bit more about the market in which you are in, specifically the competition. Is your space too competitive? Like, that same restaurant idea.

In the neighborhood in which you plan to open a restaurant, are there already way too many restaurants? Or would a new restaurant be welcome? If so, what kind of cuisine? Maybe there's some cuisine that's overdone, like way too many pizza restaurants. But some kind of cuisine doesn't exist in your area, perhaps, and that would be an opportunity.

And you also want to look at your industry and think about whether the [00:06:00] current competitors who are winning are liked or disliked. If they're liked, it will be hard to compete against them. But if they're disliked, that market is ripe for having a new player. overtaking the market, which hopefully is you.

So these are just basic questions to run through when you get new ideas so that you get some context to immediately evaluate new ideas without having to go and get feedback every single time you get an idea. This will help you say yes or no on your own accurately and independently to many of the ideas you get.

You'll never have an idea that's yes yes yes yes yes But, as long as you don't have any deal breakers in there, and you have many positive signs, then that's a great starting point for an idea.

