Last week we ended up within ventorying your skills, interests, and job history. Today, we start from that point.
The following questions can help you take an inventory of your business expertise and interests. (You can get a piece of paper and treat these questions like a quiz if you want to.) The answers you get will help you select the best possible business opportunity for you.
Questions to be answered
If you were in business field, what top-three business skills have you displayed over your business career? Examples include sales, accounting, marketing, administration, writing, communications, quantitative analysis, hiring, training, employee motivation, product development, customer service, focus, delegation, accountability, attention to detail, and so on. In which business skills are you the weakest? Refer to the examples in the preceding bullet for ideas.
Over your working history (including part-time and full-time jobs), what three jobs have you enjoyed the most and why? After listing three jobs, consider (and list) the reasons why you liked those particular jobs. During your working history, what three jobs have you enjoyed the least and why? Similar to the preceding question, consider and then list the reasons why you disliked those particular jobs.
What were your top-three overall personal skills? Examples include leadership, communication, intelligence, creativity, vision, cheerleading, invention and/or innovation, listening, problem solving, counselling, and so on. If we live in a perfect world and you could select the industry in which you’d like to spend the rest of your life, what would be your top-three choices?
Examples include sports, music, movies, art, finance, education, telecommunications, electronics, computers, medicine, architecture, agriculture, transportation, insurance, real estate, financial services, food and beverage services, apparel design and manufacture, furniture and home products, outdoor products, printing, photography, chemistry, plastics, and so on.
What three favourite hobbies or special interests of yours might be conducive to creating a business? Many people turn a hobby or special interest (such as photography, golf, or coin collecting) into a business. Given what you know about the retailing, service, manufacturing, and wholesale career choices, rank these four in order of desirability. Refer to the earlier section “Consider your category” for details on each of these categories.
Stimulating your thought processes
A little warning is warranted here. Don’t expect to answer these questions and determine that you should immediately open a retail clothing store, start a financial consulting business, or import rare ostrich eggs. Instead, use these questions to help you inventory your skills, interests, and job history. The results should help stimulate the thought processes that will assist you in developing a list of businesses that may work for you.
If, for example, your strengths (and interests) are in sales, you may want to consider a business where sales will be the primary function of the business (manufacturer’s representative, for instance). If you indicate that you have weaknesses in such areas as attention to detail, delegation, and administration, you may want to consider operating a business solo as opposed to one that requires employees.
If you determine that over your job history, you didn’t like those jobs where you dealt directly with customers, the retail business would probably not work for you.
These questions are intended to help you take an introspective look at yourself and lead you to where you would logically fit in the broad spectrum of business opportunities. That’s why we say you’ll find no quick answers here, but rather an opportunity to jump-start the narrowing-down process. Come back to these questions several times over a period of weeks because few people arrive at a solution the first time through.
Narrow your choices
When considering a business opportunity, you need to answer the following questions to assure yourself that the business you’re considering is the right one for you:
Is it a business that suits your personality?
l Consider a retail business if you like dealing directly with people, don’t mind keeping regular hours, and can handle being tied to one spot for long periods of time. The converse, of course, also applies.
l Consider the service business if you like dealing with people, solving problems, and working in spurts and flurries.
l Consider a wholesaling business if you’re a detail-oriented person, if you enjoy supervising employees, and if you don’t mind risking the significant amount of capital that carrying and distributing inventory requires.
l Consider the manufacturing business if you’re a quality-conscious and detail-oriented person who enjoys searching for solutions to such issues as process and flow and quality control. You should also enjoy supervising employees.
Within each of the four major business categories, you can get more specific and narrow down your choices to specific industries. For example:
l Consider the financial services or accounting/tax-preparation business if you like working with numbers.
l Consider the restaurant or entertainment business if you don’t mind working unusual hours.
l Consider a banking, telephone sales, or consulting business if you don’t mind spending long periods of time sitting at a desk.
Is it a business or product in which you have experience? Experience is the world’s best teacher. If you don’t have it, your competitors who do have it are bound to have a sizable competitive edge over you. Sixty percent of successful business owners have gravitated to products or services in industries with which they were previously familiar.
Is it a business you can afford? A service business is usually the least expensive of the four business categories to start, followed by retailing, wholesaling, and, finally, manufacturing. Few more cautionary remarks here are justified. You should take into consideration the amount of money you have and can borrow, or find investors for, when answering this question.
Further questions
Is it a business with too much risk? Can you live with the risk inherent in this business? Generally, the bigger the capital requirement, the larger the risk. Are you sure you’re prepared to live with the risk of starting a manufacturing company? If not, consider becoming a service provider instead - it’s more suited to the average pocketbook.
Is it a business in which you have a competitive advantage? Can you make, service, or sell your product better? If not, you need to ask yourself what will motivate your customers to work with you. (If your answer is price, you’re in trouble already, unless you’ve figured out a clear and high-quality way to create and deliver a product or service cheaper and better than the industry leaders.)
Is it a business in which you can become a specialist? There’s power in being a specialist, and there’s danger in being a generalist. Today’s movers and shakers have learned a valuable lesson from past experience: Focus on doing those things you can do better than anyone else.
Do you believe in the industry you plan to do business in? Some industries aren’t for everyone. Be sure to select an industry that will allow you to sleep at night and feel good about what you’re doing. Is it an industry that isn’t overcrowded or dominated by a few well-marketed companies? You say you’re thinking about a coffee house? You’d better know something or be prepared to offer a different product or service than well-established companies).
Every industry has a saturation point; you want to make sure that your chosen industry isn’t one of them. (You can usually determine the saturation point by observing how successful the existing businesses are.) Is your potential business in an industry that’s moving at a pace that you could be comfortable with? Some industries move faster than others; for example, the biotech industry moves faster than the gift-shop industry.
Make sure that you have a comfort level with the pace of your chosen industry. Some industries will leave you breathless (and moneyless) if you can’t keep up with the pace. The gift-shop industry will leave you bleary eyed and passionless if you thrive on the rush you get from constant activity and change. Is it an industry that you can get passionate about? Can you love the product and the customers? Passion helps sell products to customers and vision to employees.
Recognize your number one asset
Most of us are not born wizards. We don’t have their sense of detail, their drive, their leadership abilities, or their visions for their niches. But the world has plenty of room for folks like us develop ourselves if we possess passion and high degree of commitment.
Visit any outstation community in Sri Lanka, and even the smallest will have a number of business maestros those small-business owners who have made their grocery or furniture or tailoring store the best in the area, those small-business owners who build the best aluminium gates and railings in the area, and those small-business owners who sell more kavum, kokis and other traditional sweets than anyone else. You don’t have to be the largest retailer in the country to be a smashing success. Plenty of mini business wizards are hanging around.
And so, it will be for you if you choose to follow in right footsteps as guided by us - you alone will either make or break your company. Sure, the niche will be important, but you will select it. And certainly, your employees will be important, but you will choose the people you hire (and the people you fire).
And, of course, your products (or services) will be important, but you will have the final word in defining them. Everything that happens within your business will have your own personal stamp on it. Nothing will be outside of your grasp. The small-business owner is the number one determinant of his or her company’s success or failure.
(Lionel Wijesiri is a retired company director with over 30 years’ experience in senior business management. Presently he is a freelance writer)
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