Every business that we see out there today on the market, no matter how grand, first got started from one idea.

Getting the idea for a service or product that you'd like to create is often the easy part. And where the difficulty comes in is with the follow through on that idea. Having the idea is a great start, though that alone won't see the product or service realized. It's going to require a combination of planning, effort, discipline, and more.

Outlined below are 5 steps that are frequently cited by entrepreneurs as having helped them to get started and carry-through on seeing their own goals accomplished.

1. Narrow It Down

Think about what you want to accomplish with your service or product.

Is there a need that you want to meet for others? Is there some long-term goal that you want to accomplish by bringing the product or service to market? Spending the time to clearly think about what you want, helps to narrow it down on where the time and energy should be focused.

Wanting to direct your time and energy toward too many different things at once, can easily prevent you from accomplishing something that might mean a lot to you. Spending the time to thing about it deeply, about why we are interested in the idea, then that will help us establish focus for where we want our time to go. When we have a clearly defined goal then we can have a better idea and plan for where we should invest the resources.

2. Ask Questions

Seek Out Help From A Mentor

Taking the time to network and speak to other people in the area that you are interested in is a great way to go about learning more about it.

Networking has proved valuable for many entrepreneurs and it's an easy way to try to get started on turning the thought into action. Making a point to take the time to talk to someone else who has more experience and skill in an area that we might be interested in learning more about can be an effective way to learn what step we should take next on the business journey. Taking the time to try and network with those in the area that we are interested in, can be a very effective way to get our foot in the door, to learn and become more involved in what we're passionate about.

3. Conduct Market Research

You've got an idea for a product or service that you'd like to create, what comes next?

For many, market research is a valuable place to invest some time and is a critical step to take for getting a better grasp on the product or service that we might be interested in attempting to deliver to the market.

By doing market research it will help you get a better idea on the potential market size for your product or service, see competitors that are out there, and more. It involves utilizing things like polls, surveys, and other data. Market research might start off fairly broad but can easily be narrowed down with the more time that is spent looking at the relevant data to the project. Is the product or service that you want to create even needed, will people be interested? Conducting market research is a great way to find out.

4. Come Up With A Plan

A Plan For Your Energy

Now that you've taken the time to really think about what it is that you want to do, possibly narrowed down your interests, done a little bit of market research or sought help from a mentor, then comes the task of making a plan for your goal to be realized.

If we don't come up with a plan for our time then it can easily be wasted. If we want to invest that time and effort toward something that we hope will show a later return, then we have to be clear about how we are investing it.

What is progress going to look like to us? What is the end goal? Is there required funding for the project or other needs that have to be met? Taking the time to plan out and detail what success along the path will look like, can help us to remain focused on achieving the goal. It also helps to give us an idea of our accomplishment so far, by providing us with some timeline to see how far along we've already come.

5. Test It Out

Getting Feedback From The People

Get the product out there into the hands of the people and get some feedback. This is a great way to go about improving the product or service and coming up with something even better in the long run.

There are a number of creative, easy, and cost-effective ways, that entrepreneurs today can go about getting their product out there for a test. Allowing the market to give feedback is a great way to find out what the response might be to the service or product. Testing out the product and listening to what the consumer has to say about it can provide an incredible value in the way of opportunity for improving on that product or service later on.

Testing the product or service out is a great way to get validation from the market before making a big leap like investing a huge amount of finances, or many years of our life, on working toward something that might not be a good investment for us.

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Sources:
https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/225354
https://www.forbes.com/sites/ilyapozin/2012/06/11/turning-an-idea-into-a-business/#2be334ea672d
https://www.bdc.ca/en/articles-tools/start-buy-business/start-business/pages/small-business-ideas-starting-own-business.aspx
https://goodmenproject.com/business-ethics-2/5-steps-for-entrepreneurs-with-an-idea-but-no-funding-cmtt/
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/02/how-to-launch-a-successful-side-hustle-in-a-month.html
https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/250984
https://www.inc.com/articles/201105/10-steps-from-idea-to-business.html

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