Your experience gained through acting upon your business ideas will help you to understand which types of businesses you’d like to run and which ones you wouldn’t.
Using this information, you can create a business idea checklist.
What is a business idea checklist?
A business idea checklist is a list of requirements that your business ideas have to meet in order to be something that you will work on.
Example business idea checklist items
The checklist items below are often found in an online business idea checklist:
“My business must
- be remotely operable
- be scalable
- be able to generate income passively
- be catering to a specific type of customer that I like
- not be providing a mission critical service
*this is generally to avoid receiving urgent phone calls in the middle of the night about something not working that simply must be working“
My Business Idea Checklist
I never thought too much about what I wanted from business when starting previous ventures. I just had so much energy and enthusiasm that I would work on pretty much anything.
Having experienced the empty feeling of putting time and energy into projects for little reward, I’m now a lot more considered with what I work on.
For instance, when working on my online course teaching people how to build a website, I have some very deliberate goals.
The checklist items of this project include:
Align well with my existing business
I love building the business of garymelican.com for so many reasons.
I love:
– understanding and growing lots of businesses at once
– being inspired by other entrepreneurs
– collaborating with other talented designers/developers to produce insanely high-quality products
Rather than my time being divided as a result of working on a new business / product, ideally each project will contribute towards the others’ success.
Have no venture capital requirement
Currently, I prefer working on smaller ideas and generating income from day one so as to avoid the entire process of raising venture capital.
This will most likely change as the stakes get higher but for now, you won’t find me pitching on stage.
Make money while I sleep
I’ve worked on a few projects already that have earned money passively. It’s a great feeling to go for a walk, buy a coffee and then realise that your coffee was paid for by ad revenue or eCommerce sales.
This is something I definitely want to prioritise in all upcoming businesses!
Know and Like My Customers
In previous ventures, I underestimated the importance of knowing and liking my customers.
Knowing your customers
Having a deep understanding of what your customers fear and aspire toward will give you an advantage over the majority of your competition.
This will be helpful when marketing, selling and updating any aspects of your business.
Liking Your Customers
Liking your customers will make your running business feel almost effortless.
For instance, I recently had the task of interviewing 30 people about why they wanted to learn to build websites.
This “customer research” resulted in me getting to chat in-depth with 30 interesting people about my favourite topics. Each conversation left me feeling inspired, energised and excited to deliver for those people.
“The ultimate business hack is to choose customers who you like hanging out with.”
– Rob Fitzpatrick
Creating your business idea checklist
You may have a rough idea of your business idea checklist items, but it’s helpful to be explicit about the type of business you want to run from day one.
You can start by putting aside 1 minute now right now to write down 3 or 4 checklist items somewhere.
It’s also fun to see your business idea checklist develop over time.
P.s. please send me over your checklist items when finished, I would love to see them 🙂
