How do you take a hobby or interest and turn it into a business?
In this blog, I’d like to share a simple but effective process I use with my clients to take their hobby or interest and turn it into a viable business plan.
This process can be used for any start up business.
IDEA
We start with the IDEA.
Your idea for a business may be totally unique to you or it could be providing a service that others already provide like a McDonald’s restaurant.
Once you have decided on what your business is going to be then you need to do your Market Research.
Market Research
Researching your market is an essential process.
The research you do is to ensure that there is a demand for the product or service you are offering.
Here are some of the things you should find out during the research phase:
- Place – where is an appropriate place to sell your product or services?
- Price – what price will customers pay for your offer?
- Product – this means Product or Service provided
- Promotion – how will you promote your offer in the marketplace?
- People – who are you selling to? Who is your Your IDEAL Customer?
Decision time
Next you will want to check to see if your business is viable based on the information you have gathered.
In order to do this I draw up a very basic business plan. Here are some questions you will need to answer within that plan:
- Where are you selling your product?
- What volume of product or service are you looking to sell?
- How do you hope this will increase over time?
- Sales on the internet are different from sales made in a local area.
- What is the unit cost of your product or service delivery?
- What are your costs of Promotion?
- What does it cost for you to sell your Product?
- What Price do you need to charge to make the profit you want?
Once you have this information, we can pull it all together to create a business plan ready for you to take ACTION.
The final stage is to go through the tasks you need to undertake before you actually start operating your business.
For more information about the Hobby to Business course we run or about the work book which has been designed to put new businesses on the right path please contact Edward Tudor.