It’s most often the common-sense questions that people fail to answer honestly
that will lead to their downfall and
Godse has no shortage of scenarios
just off the top of his head. Sometimes
people will go ahead with their idea
even after they’re advised not to, and
it usually ends badly. Often people will
make hockey stick projections, overestimate their revenue and underestimate
their costs and simply run out of money,
or they fail to see that their product only
appeals to a niche market and they tap
out their customers fairly quickly, or they
make up phantom customers who they
imagine will be interested but actually
find none. Then there are people who
don’t think about paying themselves or
about the overhead costs just to make
the numbers work, and also those who
discover too late that they actually don’t
know the first thing about managing a
business.
“Questions can be uncomfortable and
people don’t want to answer them honestly but there are real implications to
not answering them honestly,” he says.
There are many key things to confront at the idea stage that need to
pass before you can move along and
Godse believes you’re doomed to fail
if you think you can skip over that. One
of the first things to consider is evaluating your own strengths and weaknesses
as an entrepreneur. You might discover
that you actually don’t have the talent to
run your own business or that you aren’t
prepared to make sacrifices and manage the lifestyle that will be required.
If your idea is good enough and you
have the capital, then you can bring
people on board to help you through
the process, but that’s simply not realistic for everyone.
Another thing to think about is
whether you’re solving a real problem
or a problem you believe exists and if
you are, who are the customers willing
to pay for that? Do you have to convince them? How do you reach out to
them and how much will that cost?
One lesson learned from Bill Johnson,
former Chairman and CEO of McDonald’s Canada, is to always know what
your customers want and don’t want
and if you’re not sure, ask them. When
McDonald’s first introduced breakfast,
it was a huge success everywhere
except for Quebec. After a year and a
half of throwing money at the problem
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