I know from previous experience that many of the folks who read and follow my ideas are business owners, or leaders in the businesses that they work in every day. Therefore, even though this site is designed to help you STOP making excuses there are several things that there are NO excuse for in business, and I want to take this opportunity to clear the air on that, before we get TOO much farther on anything else.
Right Market: There are SO many folks, especially business people, who think, “I have the greatest left handed widget buster in the world! As soon as this comes to market I am on easy street.” They will then devote a great deal of time and resources to developing said widget, even remembering to set some of their money aside for marketing and then are crushed when the world doesn’t beat a path to their door! Now I completely understanding that there are certain times when you will develop something and then concern yourselves with exactly WHO might be interested in it later, but truly, those are few and far between.
For example, last year I wrote and published four books, and although I did do some research before I started writing, the majority of THAT was keyword research so I could some up with titles for the books and their associated sites, that would appear high in search engines. Little if any research was done about whether there was anyone out there dying to read a book about my subjects. But see these books were not written for the general public. Yes you could go to Amazon search on my name, and buy all 4 books. But if that ever happened I would be the most surprised person of ALL! See those books were written as text books for my classes and as supplements to my speaking engagements. I sell the majority of those books, and, that way I get to maintain all the profit! But see I knew when I started writing them that this was going to be my method of distribution. I didn’t care f a big name publisher was interested, and I wasn’t looking for an agent. I needed a book produced at a price I could afford to invest!
Understand that that is NOT what I teach in my writing classes. I do explain that this is one OPTION that they could explore, and many folks who are looking to write a “vanity bio” or a personal history book, it’s a great idea, because then you can get those books and pass them out to family and friends, look really cool while your doing it, and spread some good about your family history! But again, that’s a very small segment of the writers that I am teaching. The majority of writers I train on how to make sure that their message, and everyone needs one, should have some kind of a market before you start your process. You may be the worlds authority on left handed suffers of Osteogenesis, but if there are only 100,000 folks world wide who would be even mildly interested you may want to invest your time somewhere else!
So how do you know if you’re in the right market? Some of it is common sense, for example we recently celebrated a holiday here in the states that frequently depends upon the consumption of large amounts of green beer. DO you think that this would be the BEST day to open a wedding chapel that specialized in non alcoholic wedding receptions? Probably not. But wait, we live in a large city near a college with thousands of young people who will want to get married! Your right. But that city is in the south, as you say NEAR A SCHOOL and is promoting several things that most young people are not interested in, abstinence and marriage.
Now if you want to market a home made hang over remedy that costs less that $2 and a 100% success rate? I’ll bet that the day AFTER this particular holiday would be awesome, better yet having ‘half shirted’ cuties handing out small papers with your 800# on them that Saturday night, would be an even BETTER idea.
But really, look around, not only at what you WANT to do, but what the community around you IS doing and ask yourself, is the right product at the right place at the right time for the right people? Two out of three isn’t bad, but 3 out of the four is even better and personally I’m not investing a lot of money until I see that numbers are at least leaning into four out of four!
In case you want a NEW way to experience our site, please check out the link below:
markettest3
Next time, will assume that you are in the right market, but start targeting in to see if you have chosen the right niche.
Until then, you should pick an excuse that you can live with, just not when it comes to running your business!
