Good marketing can be transformational but you must be able to deliver on the resulting demand.
There is nothing wrong with copying. It is a free market and competition is a good thing. It keeps people on their toes, keeps prices fair and customers generally benefit. So don’t feel cheated when somebody else starts a copy of your business - take it as a compliment but be careful to protect your intellectual property (IP) as we discuss later.
A Franchise is the ultimate copy, you have a great head-start because all of the operational detail and much of the sales and marketing is predefined for you. Trust us, that is worth paying for, as you will find out.
biz-wisdom: Steer clear of saturated ‘price-war’ markets. They can be very destructive and small businesses or lesser funded companies most often lose in that game. Same applies to ‘get rich quick’ schemes that arrive in your in-box. It is important to be in control, so test your idea for yourself.
In general, the key to ‘cloning’ another business is to experience as many of your competition as possible. Become a customer and test out their customer service and sales skills. Most importantly, use their product or service. Analyse their business model, work out what they do and why, how they sell it and how they deliver it. Work out how you can improve upon this. Once you are in business this can become instinctive and addictive. You will find yourself analysing every company you buy from and those you don’t.
If you are risk averse, inventive and creative, why not innovate? Innovation is the most exciting, ‘buzzy’ human endeavour. It drives the economic and social progress of Homo Sapiens.
What is ‘innovation’? One answer is that innovation involves disruptive change in an industry, sector, product or service. This is powerful ‘medicine’ - it can take down giants! It involves looking at a market in a completely different way. It may be a new enabling technology or a supply chain, distribution, sales or marketing concept. Whatever the ‘big idea’, it disrupts the way your competitors do business or creates a whole new market or both.
There are famous recent examples in the field of mobile technology and music in particular. If you want to learn about innovation and disruptive behaviour then we recommend reading the biographies of the key players. These are the kind of ideas we don’t talk so openly about because they have such enormous potential value, so contact us if you wish to partner up on something and we will do it properly and ensure that you protect your intellectual property first.
Often the best new ideas come when we are just ‘living’. Very Zen but actually the best way to do this is to travel wide and frequently and look for things that don’t exist in your home country. Also for things that can be imported or exported, things that simply haven’t been thought of at home or wherever your target market is.
Migrating conventional services to the internet is very profitable if you get it right. There is a big structural shift occurring right now with many people doing this. You will have experienced this for yourself, no doubt. This demonstrates the real value of the internet - it was never about websites, rather services of convenience and potentially global reach. That is why not all businesses benefit from a web presence but people sell them one anyway.
Nature provides great inspiration for new business ideas and certainly technologies. Look at nature, how it solves problems. There are many examples of products that have sprung to mind whilst sitting on a park bench observing wildlife. Look at how nature interacts if you want services or how it works if you want technology products. Learn from nature, it has been innovating far longer than us.
Problem solving is often a good source for a new business idea. The world is full of people suffering and having problems. Observe the deficits in your own comfort, your everyday private and business life. What could help?
Target a specific type of person, business or social group that you have an affinity with and ask them what they need? What are their unsolved problems? What would be their ideal service or product?
biz-wisdom: Remember, ideas are free. It is the enormous energy, passion, hard graft, money, risk and stress it takes to execute that contribute to success. Unless your idea is world-disruptively innovative, share your idea with other people. Don’t fear them stealing it, the real skill is in the execution of the idea; they can’t steal that from you. We are here to help you execute your idea and transform it into a living profitable and valuable asset.
Testing and Refining your Idea
Your idea needs testing on your target market. Even if your business is a copy of another such as a franchise, you may still need to test your designated geographical area, demographic or sector to ensure it will sell in that arena.
biz-wisdom: When it comes to trust, never take other people’s opinions or advice at face value, even advice from professionals or from colleagues. You bear the risk. When taking advice from others, always ask yourself ‘What’s in it for them?’, ‘What is their angle?’, ‘What is their motivation?’. This will get you far in life too.
In a trust network like our Biz-Network where all members are carefully vetted and have built trust over time by working together, some of these problems can be overcome and this is very valuable. It allows you to build teams quickly, reacting to rapid market change.
This is your business and your financial and legal risk. You and your key stakeholders, need to be in agreement that it will work. In so far as is practical, in time, effort and cost, try to verify in as many independent ways as practical, all advice and feedback that you receive.
How do you ‘test’ your idea? It is conventional to perform market research. What is market research? There are two sides to this. It is about testing your product or service on real people that you don’t know. It is also about asking people what they want or need. It is about matching solutions to real world problems or needs.
This is a vast subject and beyond the scope of this book but the options for most small business start-ups include use of a market research firm. This costs money but is worth it if your budget stretches to it. If you don’t have the money for that then you can D.I.Y but research the subject at least a bit first. Final option? Don’t do any formal research. Many first-time business owners don’t as many are ‘clones’ and already have evidence of market demand. If you choose not to, you won’t understand the market so how can you compete?
Your objectives should be:
1 To understand your market - for example by asking some simple questions. How large is it? What geographical areas does it cover? What demographic does it target? Is it business-to-business or are you selling to the public? Who are the competition? What are their strengths and weaknesses? What slice of the market can you realistically take? What is the underlying trend in the market and are there sub-trends?
2 To gain an understanding of the target customer - Who are they? Where are they? What do they do? Think? Like? Dislike? How do they buy? When? How often? What volume? Their trends and sub-trends?
3 To establish if your intended product or service is a good fit with your intended market and customer profile - How is it perceived? Strengths and weaknesses compared to competitor’s offerings? Price comparison? Quality? Delivery? Quantity? Perception of brands?
If you are testing an idea yourself then you need to devise, with your other stakeholders, a set of questions like those above. Create a quiz that will satisfy the above objectives. You need
