Lessons Learned – Finalizing the Short List of Initial Business Ideas

The title of Melanie Lindner’s article, Is Your Great Idea A Real Business?, asks what some might consider a fair question as we continue our journey to starting a new business.

“We were trying to find businesses that would want to buy our software, but it was hard to get new leads,” says Moodley, 36. He figured other sales organizations would be willing to pay $30 a month to drum up new business through his site, which would offer more targeted information than, say, mainly free sites hosted by Bloomberg and Schwab.

Good idea, terrible timing. About four months later, after plowing $2,500 and putting hundreds of hours into a prototype, Moodley watched in horror as Google launched its own finance site, called Google Finance. “It literally looked exactly like my site,” says Moodley. “I had a sinking feeling in my stomach as I clicked around and realized that their site was completely free, and I was planning to charge for the same information.”

Moodley’s mistake is all too common, says Toby Stuart, professor of entrepreneurial management at the Harvard Business School, who warns would-be small-business owners not to “overestimate their originality.” In other words: If you’ve thought of it, chances are someone else has too.

Fortunately for us, Lindner also gives us some help on how to answer this question, by asking two more:

The first question you should always ask yourself: Do I have a compelling value proposition? It might seem obvious, but it bears repeating: A great idea is only a great business idea if it has an obvious and compelling value proposition–meaning that enough people are willing to pay for your product or service at a price above your cost to deliver it.

Next question: Is there a viable market for your product or service? Even if your business is likely to turn a profit, professional investors won’t line up to fund an operation with limited growth potential. Also, don’t expect to create a new market–if one doesn’t already exist, there’s probably a reason

Have You Created an Impossible Business? by C.J. Hayden works through the efforts of a consultant to help entrepreneurs in two different scenarios. While these deal with existing businesses, rather than the determination of the basic concept or business idea in a pre-start up situation, there are relevant lessons for our journey. It sometimes helps to look a little further down the road when you’re studying a map (or GPS display). Here’s some wisdom from Hayden’s article.

It’s easy to think that any business can be successful if you work hard enough, but there are many situations where this just isn’t so. Consultants, coaches, and other service professionals often start a business believing that all they need to do is charge a “reasonable” fee and sell “enough” of their time. But unless you do the math to prove or disprove your assumptions, you may be creating a business that can never succeed.

New consultants, coaches, and other professionals almost always overestimate how much they can earn and underestimate the amount of time and money required to successfully market themselves. They also forget that they will have to cover not only their living costs and business expenses, but pay self-employment tax, buy their own health insurance, provide for their own retirement, and allow for unpaid vacation and sick time.

Another way to look at the process can be found in the article, A process to test a startup idea, by Brian S. Courtney.  In Courtney’s case, he had an existing business, but was interested in pursuing something different. Courtney said “[S]o what does this have to do with a startup? Well, I’m using this same process to help define my next move.”

We use five steps to align business users and software developers:

• Define the idea
• Determine the business case for doing it
• Create alignment around it
• Define an implementation plan to execute it
• Get executive buy-in to fund it

I love (perhaps too much) the phrase “low hanging fruit.” Common definitions include a simple problem or target; a target that is easy to achieve; or a problem that is easy to solve. Most of us love to find low hanging fruit, and in our search for the best business idea for us, we’re sure to find some. An article by Andrew Goldsmith, which I posted today on the Applied Entrepreneurship group site, Here’s an Idea That’s Not Quite Ripe, gives another view of this.

Goldsmith’s article seems to focus, literally, on orchards and consultants. He says:

How is a company like an orchard? In the minds of some consultants, we’re all field hands and they’re the Johnny Appleseeds of change. And the right way to work those trees? It’s advice we’ve all heard: pick the low-hanging fruit.

Plowing (no pun intended) through the article, discounting the general feeling of some that consultants may not be worth the fee, the article ends with the news that the consultants have figured out a better solution than the clients thought.

“In the past,” Faubion says, “we had larger trees that required ladders. The new trees are ‘pedestrian’ trees that don’t require ladders. So instead of picking the low-hanging fruit, the industry has lowered the tree.” Now that’s thinking outside the, uh, orchard.

The real lesson for us at this stage of our journey to start a new business is not how brilliant some consultants might be. Returning to the orchard, Goldsmith’s article mentions that “low hanging fruit” may not always be the best. It is the easiest to pick, but often the better fruit is higher on the tree and requires more work to reach. The lesson for us may be that we may come across many, easy to find “answers” on our quest. Just as there are often several equally plausible answers to a question, a common tendency is to harvest what seems acceptable, rather than working a little or a lot harder, going for the better answer and the real prize.

Paul Dowling, CEO at DreamStake Social Media, had an interesting post yesterday on the LinkedIn, Start-Up Phase Forum:

All too often I hear people say that they have had a brilliant idea and can’t understand why people will not buy into it. What they don’t realize is that the idea is only a small part of the equation. In some cases a good entrepreneur can even have success with an average idea so long as it is well implemented. An entrepreneur needs to tick a number of boxes. Firstly, potential investors and clients will need to buy into the person and their management team. A good management team will succeed with an average business idea, whereas a poor management team with a good idea will fail. Secondly, the team will need to be excellent at implementation. This involves writing a good business plan and executing on it. Thirdly, focus is essential. Very few entrepreneurs succeed without extreme focus at least in the early days. Finally, adaptability is a key point. The business idea will evolve on a monthly basis until the right model is discovered. A good entrepreneur can deal with ambiguity.

Wannabe entrepreneurs can spend their lives brainstorming the way to build a better mousetrap. If they do, they may never become a “real” entrepreneur. On the other hand, they can also dive in too quickly, perhaps having plucked some of the low hanging fruit we discussed earlier in this series, only to find it spoiled and worthless. That could leave the wannabe entrepreneur broke and exhausted from pursuing the “impossible dream.” Not a good scenario.

There must clearly be a balance in our efforts to discover the best business idea for our new venture. Just like the saddlebags on a mule, there must be balance between working hard and “working smart” on this stage of the process. At some point, however, we must also make one of our first business judgments and determine that we have exhausted our reasonable prospects of coming up with a “brilliant idea.” If we have not, we might want to start at the beginning and go through the basics again, recruit others in the process to give us different perspectives and skill sets, or simply find a mentor who can help us get back on the right path.

Once we find the first “brilliant idea,” our journey has just turned the first corner. In the next post, we’ll finish our quest for the perfect business idea and start the stage. We will embark on the process of initial research and testing of the idea we’ve come up with to give ourselves our first internal performance audit.

This is the fourth post in the business startup series. For others in the series, check the series index.

Join the Applied Entrepreneurship group on LinkedIn. Membership is free and I try to post about ten articles a day there. We have some great discussions going and if you are an entrepreneur, we hope you will join us.

Lessons Learned – Refining (or finding) the Initial New Business Concept

In my last post, I mentioned I had been working on a change of direction for this blog. Instead of digesting the fifty or so articles I post weekly on the LinkedIn, Applied Entrepreneurship group site, and then giving my thoughts and impressions of common threads, I’m trying something new.

The current plan is to continue to use the rapidly growing Applied Entrepreneurship archive of some 1,400 articles on entrepreneurship (also available from the Boxnet application on my LinkedIn profile page), as well as new articles I post from this point forward, The difference is that instead of just blogging about the articles, based upon whatever gets posted on a daily basis, I’m going to try to “connect the dots” in a different way.

The premise of the blog’s new direction will be to use those articles, as well as your comments, in a step-by-step journey to starting a new business venture. Beginning with this post, I plan to walk through the process of starting what could be either a hypothetical business, or perhaps an actual business. I plan to have some fun with this, and I hope you will too.

There are at least a few things, which could make this a little more interesting.

• First, quite some time ago, one of the posts referenced an article I’d run across describing a “virtual incubator” project. Without going into too much detail, entrepreneurs posted their interests online in an ongoing user generated blog format, in hopes of matching talents, opportunities, and other things necessary for a start-up. The goal was to actually create one or more real business ventures out of the “sparks” generated through the virtual community.

I followed much of the string from the beginning, which ended up consisting of hundreds of posts. I won’t spoil the secret of the extent to which this generated real business ventures, but I would like to think this series has at least the same potential.

• Second, a group of professionals with whom I have served on a board of directors, has been exploring the possibility of continuing to work together in some new endeavor. We all spend some of our time on charitable boards but have an interest in the potential of working together to make some money together. We like each other and respect the talents we have seen each other display for many months, while we served on the board of the same enterprise. We plan to get together socially in the near future, and I’m sure this topic will come up.

There is the potential that we can use the output (from me) and input (from you) of this blog series to help us gel our thoughts, pick a plan to go forward, and actually get a business off the ground.

• Third, simply posting “the best of” articles and gathering feedback from readers should allow me to periodically post “best practices” lists and discussions. The Applied Entrepreneurship reading list, referenced above, contains literally scores of articles on many different aspects of entrepreneurship, as well as the process of starting and running a successful business. Some of the articles contain conflicting points of view. Some are better than others. Some are the best for one situation, but may not work for another. This is where experience, a good dose of luck, and the art of applied entrepreneurship come into play.

There is no one book, which will walk you through starting up every type of business under every set of circumstances. I’ve bought and studied enough of them to feel comfortable in making that statement. I’m still buying them and reading them, but I doubt I’ll ever find that silver bullet. On the other hand, there are lots of millionaires, and quite a few billionaires, who got where they are through imperfect means and methods. You don’t necessarily have to do it perfectly, but you do have to do it well enough to beat the competition and sustain that long enough to get it to the bank. (Read the article I posted by Anthony Robbins, Don’t Try To Be Perfect.)

I plan to use this blog series to generate a series of “best of the best” business startup and business operations articles, which I hope will provide you with both an opportunity to participate in the selection process, and benefit from the results. The success of this part of the plan is as much dependent upon you as it is on me, so let’s get started.

On The Threshold of Starting a New Business Venture

One of the threshold issues in such an endeavor deals not with issues, but people themselves. An article by Noam Wasserman, which I posted on the Applied Entrepreneurship site earlier this month, Founding with Friends, Founding with Strangers?, deals, as the title suggests, with the issue of whether one is better off founding a business with strangers or friends. The article gives pros and cons, and was certainly worth reading as a preface for this venture.

Another of the threshold issues is whether the concepts entrepreneur “wannabes” are working with are real ideas or “just” opportunities. Often, I find my new clients come in with great excitement, having found what they think is the “better mousetrap.” Just as often, someone has apparently just found the “perfect” business opportunity, but they have to act fast to make it work. In both cases, there is a great danger that they will rush past the basics on their way to the “gold rush.” Sometimes that can work, but the odds are slim.

Yesterday, I posted an article by Tim Berry (founder of Palo Alto software and great business blogger), titled Ideas vs. Opportunities. Here are a couple of points from his article:

The business planning process is about filtering the opportunities — a precious few, requiring focus, and planning — from the idea.

An opportunity has some of the following elements:

• Industry and market potential: look at market structure, industry structure, growth rate, margins, costs, etc.
• Economics: capital requirements, fixed costs, cash flow, return on investment, risk.
• Competitive advantage: degree of control, barriers to entry, availability of sufficient resources.
• Management team: people who know the industry, the market, the operations, the logistics, the road to market.

So now we’re starting on the journey with at least two things in mind. The two issues are:

1. Is it better (or reasonable) to start a business with friends than with strangers?
2. Are we better off looking for an idea for starting a new business, or just looking for the right opportunity?

There are clearly many more issues one should consider at this stage, including the old entrepreneurial quotient self-evaluation. We’ll get into that and dozens of other startup questions and answers as we travel down this road together. If you have suggestions on answers to either question, above, or would like to suggest other threshold questions, please contribute to the process.

This is the first post in the business startup series. For others in the series, check the series index.

Join the Applied Entrepreneurship group on LinkedIn. Membership is free and I try to post about ten articles a day there. We have some great discussions going and if you are an entrepreneur, we hope you will join us.

Lessons I Learned Today 6/30/09 – Getting to Know You; Science Lab 101

This is a digest and recap of highlights, quotes, and comments from articles and discussions posted on this date on the Applied Entrepreneurship, LinkedIn group site.

 

*A Practical Guide to CEO Succession Planning by Clarke Murphy

“Clarke Murphy and the CEO/Board Services Practice discuss the specific elements and timeline of a successful CEO succession plan, as well as the steps necessary to ensure a smooth transition.”

1. Begin intensive knowledge sharing.

2. Communicate with stakeholders.

3. Develop a written transition plan.

4. Share the transition plan.

5. Strengthen relationships with the board.

The article contains an example of a grid showing the personal average of each candidate based upon the following criteria:

• Vision and Strategy;
• Ensuring Tactical Success;
• Relationships and Communication;
• Motivation; Business;
• Fit to Situation

Competitive Benchmarking with four tiers:

tier 1 – Best candidate available in the market for this position

tier 2 – Would present as candidate without reservations

tier 3 – Would be presented as a candidate with reservations

tier 4 – Would definitely not be presented as a candidate for the position

“Managing the CEO succession process is a board’s ultimate responsibility. A regularly reviewed and closely followed succession plan is essential to successfully exercise that responsibility. The costs of shortchanging this process are easy to see when companies are caught off guard by events; the payoff is reflected in the company’s momentum as it moves from one leader to the next. In addition, ongoing succession planning helps the board to be better informed and aligns the development of the senior management team with the strategic needs of the company. Beyond its usefulness in risk mitigation, CEO succession planning contributes to the successful governance and management of the firm long before a successor is needed.”

 

*The ABCs of Buying a Business by Tim Berry

“Buying an existing business is an excellent option that is often overlooked by entrepreneurs, but it does have advantages. You will have an established name, existing customers and an immediate revenue stream. However, searching for a business to buy can be difficult, and finding the right one to buy is tougher yet.”

“To provide some ‘structure’ to this very complex decision, the following process-oriented steps may serve as a checklist to help you go through the process.”

“Based on what you know about yourself and why you are interested in this business, you must constantly assess if the concept and the business is right for you. Does it fit with your interests and your resources? Cash, credibility, skills and contacts: do yours match what this business will demand?”

“Access to the “real numbers” behind the business is crucial.”

“You will want to retain a Certified Public Accountant and an attorney who is knowledgeable in business acquisitions. A CPA will to help guide you through the financial analysis process, and you may benefit from legal counsel as agreements are drafted and signed. Their expertise and the emotional separation from the process can make the costs for their services your wisest investments in the entire process.”

“Ultimately, negotiations will lead to a business valuation to determine what the business is actually worth. There are several ways to estimate the value of a company, such as the value of the company’s assets, how much debt does it hold, and from what sources are the company’s current revenues and profits? All of these are going to have a different impact on the value of the business. Other factors to consider in the valuation process include:

• Level of risk
• Competition
• Growth
• Organizational stability
• Management team
• Overall desirability

“Based on a valuation that you find acceptable, the specific arrangements of the financial transaction may determine if this is a “go” or something to walk away from and feel good about.”

“Determine if you are going to be able to add value to the business or if your goal is simply to keep “the machine” running. Once you have purchased the business, what are your objectives? Are you planning on owning the business for the next twenty years, or growing it over the next five years and then looking for the opportunity to sell? This will impact the intangible assessment of what the business may be worth to you and help assess the potential challenges ahead. Beginning your business plan will help to clarify your objectives and the business potential ahead.”

The bottom line:

• Take your time.
• Be methodical about gathering all the information you can.
• Pay attention to the details.
• Get help when needed and leverage available resources.
• Continue to “test” to see if the business and its demands fit who you are and what you want your business to be.
• If the deal doesn’t feel right, keep looking

 

*Questions to Ask When Buying a Business by Stephen Windhaus

“There are so many questions to ask when considering the purchase of an existing business. Let me give you a few examples that relate to financial, marketing, ownership and operations:”

• Why is the seller selling?
• Have you asked to review the certified financial statements of income, cash flow and balance sheets for the last three years?
• Have you asked to see the company’s IRS returns for the last three years?
• Have you asked for a copy of all documents of all outstanding indebtedness?
• Has there been any significant turnover of employees?
• Is there a close relationship between company and customers?
• Do vendors display preferred, regular or irregular relations with the company?
• Are there any members to a management team for this company?
• What are the actual conditions of existing fixed assets like office equipment, machinery, vehicles and the like?

“This is a brief list designed to give you a starting point from which to begin the investigation of the venture in which you are about to invest.”

 

*Buying a Business? Know What You Are Getting! by Tim Berry

“When buying or investing in a business you need to evaluate that business carefully. One tool is the Investment Analysis.”

There are many valuation formulas:

• The Book Value formula calculates valuation as Assets less Liabilities, just the same as Net Worth.
• The Liquidation Value formula says the business is worth the liquidation value of its Assets, less Liabilities.
• The Replacement Value formula says the business is worth what it costs to replace it.
• The Times Sales formula is one where the business is worth the Sales Multiple shown as the Calculated Sales-based Valuation.
• The Times Earnings formula is another of the two most common.
• Market comparisons look at actual transactions of similar businesses of similar size.

“The valuation of a business depends not just on simple formulas and multiples, but also general market conditions, specific economics of the business, its location, its branding, its management team, its balance sheet, its customer base, the negotiating skills of the parties, and other factors.”

“For privately held companies, valuation of a business is theoretical until there is a transaction. When the transaction happens, the business is worth whatever the buyers pay for it. As a buyer and or seller of a business you don’t necessarily get what you deserve; you get what you negotiate; or what you settle for.”

 

*How Does Innovation Fit into a Business Plan? by Tim Berry

“Innovation changes a business plan pretty much as a reflection of how it changes a business. It adds risk, uncertainty, and interest too.”

“Risk has two sides to it: up and down. The upside risk in innovation is of course the benefits to a business when innovation leads to a more desirable offering: better product, suitable for a larger market, differentiated from competition, easier to build, and so forth. The downside risk the business that depends on innovation usually positions itself on innovation and loses big time when somebody else comes up with the next new bigger, faster, and better. “

“Interest comes with innovation too. Market makers are interested. Opinion leaders are interested. Competitors are interested. And investors are interested. To the investor, innovation means defensibility and market advantage.”

“Innovation is part of your company’s identity, we would hope one of its strengths, and certainly a key element in business offering. It directly affects the market, both in the higher degree of guessing required (educated guessing, we hope) and in how it affects target market and message. And it affects strategy focus, too, because it turns a company towards it like plants growing towards the sun.”

 

*To Franchise or Not to Franchise by Tim Berry

“When you are trying to decide whether to buy into a franchise there are several factors to consider. Make sure you are looking at a solid and effective franchise that offers real value. There are hundreds of good ones, but lots of bad ones too.

You are paying an up-front franchise fee and a percentage of sales to get two main benefits:

• A formula you can follow, a proven formula that guides you through the process, avoiding expensive mistakes.
• National marketing to enhance your business with a brand name, television advertising, etc.

“I would want to know about training costs, needs, quality and availability. I would also want to know from other owners how well the parent company meets franchisees’ needs regarding product and system-wide marketing. I’d want to know also whether their marketing actually works and how much supplemental marketing you need to do. Do they supply signage? Do you have any choice about signage, etc.?”

“I’d talk to at least 10 other franchisees before I spent my money on somebody’s franchise formula business. I’d also find an attorney with experience in this area, and go through with him or her some of the questions you should be asking. For example, is the franchisor going to protect your territory or sell another franchise across the street? How can you tell for sure? What guarantees does the franchisor make about national advertising, etc.?”

 

* Social Media Will Change Your Business by Stephen Baker and Heather Green

“There are some 9 million blogs out there, with 40,000 new ones popping up each day. Any dolt with a working computer and an Internet connection can become a blog publisher in the 10 minutes it takes to sign up.”

“The divide between the publishers and the public is collapsing. This turns mass media upside down. It creates media of the masses.”

“Companies have to learn to track what blogs are talking about, pinpoint influential bloggers, and figure out how to buttonhole them, privately and publicly.”

“The dot-com era was powered by companies—complete with programmers, marketing budgets, Aeron chairs, and burn rates. The masses of bloggers, by contrast, are normal folks with computers: no budget, no business plan, no burn rate, and—that’s right—no bubble.”

“The role of the blog startups is to build tools for this grassroots uprising.”

“The Web we’ve come to know is mostly a collection of documents. A library. These documents don’t change much. Blogs are different. They evolve with every posting, each one tied to a moment. So if a company can track millions of blogs simultaneously, it gets a heat map of what a growing part of the world is thinking about, minute by minute. E-mail has carried on billions of conversations over the past decade. But those exchanges were private. Most blogs are open to the world. As the bloggers read each other, comment, and link from one page to the next, they create a global conversation.”

“In time, aggregators could turn the Web on its head. Why? They discourage surfing as users increasingly just wait for interesting items to drop onto their page or e-mailbox. Internet advertising, which traditionally counts on page views and clicks, could be thrown for a loop. Already Yahoo is packaging ads on the feeds. Google is testing the waters.”

“Mainstream media companies will master blogs as an advertising tool and take over vast commercial stretches of the blogosphere. Over the next five years, this could well divide winners and losers in media. And in the process, mainstream media will start to look more and more like—you guessed it—blogs. Clay Shirky, a Web expert at New York University, calls it ‘an absorption process where the thing doing the absorbing changes.’”

“Blogs can land sponsorship deals for as much as $25,000 per month, say consultants. O.K. money for an entrepreneur, but a rounding error in the ad industry. Blog power simply doesn’t translate yet into big bucks. For now, it’s running mostly on people’s passion to communicate—especially in developing markets.”

 

* Social Media SWOT Analysis by Peter Hollier

“It only makes sense to use SWOT analysis within the Social Media realm to determine the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats that business has or will encounter upon initiation of a Social Media program. Without a SWOT analysis it will be impossible to develop an effective Social Media Marketing Strategic Plan, develop company guidelines and effectively initiate the Social Media Program.”

“The following questions are a starting point to what should be asked about your company’s SWOT”

• Does your company have the creative people required to develop meaningful high quality content and communication on a regular basis?
• Does your business understand the keywords customers and prospects use to find your Social Media content?
• Does your business have strong change management skills?
• Does the company feel comfortable with empowering company employees to interact with customers using Social Media?
• Are you customers using Social Media for personal or business reasons?
• Have you identified and evaluated the efforts if any of your competitor’s Social Media presence?

“This by no means a comprehensive list of questions which need to be answered to complete a SWOT for your business’s Social Media program however, it is an indication of the types of questions you should be considering about your business’s capability to thrive in a Social Media environment.”

 

What I Think

I think all of the articles posted on this date center on change and change management of one sort or another. I also think the common thread is “getting to know you.”

Clarke Murphy’s article, A Practical Guide to CEO Succession Planning, deals with the specific elements and timeline of a successful CEO succession plan. Boiled down to the basics, this is simply a system in which criteria are developed to compare and contrast various factors to reach a decision on which of several options is the best fit for a particular situation. It is a way to “get to know” and understand several options and pick the best one.

The articles by Tim Berry and Stephen Windhaus on buying a business, when boiled down to the basics, are also stories of how one can create a series of criteria to use to compare various options. One option is to buy a business. One option is to not buy a business. You can take this up a notch, and compare various, somewhat dissimilar opportunities and bring them down to your own personal set of “final criteria.”

The screening used to compare various franchise opportunities presents one set of criteria. The screening to compare opportunities to buy several non-franchise opportunities presents other criteria to compare and contrast. Once the best candidate from each “column” is selected, the winners can be compared and contrasted using a narrower set of criteria, and that in turn can be compared to the advantages or disadvantages of taking no action. What a concept!

As they say, the devil is in the details. Knowing what formulas or criteria to use can be as much of an art as a science. Giving appropriate weight to the various criteria or factors is also critical to ending up with a selection, which will make you happy. These are things, fortunately, which can be accomplished by the proverbial “trained professional.” Selecting which “trained professional” to use and when to use them is, likewise, a process in which you can develop criteria relevant to your situation, such as education, experience, price, availability, etc.

Even the social media SWOT analysis article by Peter Hollier presents a similar analysis. Distilled down to the basic concept, this is a process of a company getting to know itself and how it will be able to manage a change when dealing with various options. In this case, it is a matter of developing relevant criteria to determine if it can achieve reasonable ROI from engaging in a social media campaign.

Isn’t this the same sort of thing our high school teachers tried to us in science lab? This is the scientific method applied to business opportunities. According to Science Buddy. Com, a popular Web site for kids learning the scientific method in school:

 The scientific method is a way to ask and answer scientific questions by making observations and doing experiments. The steps of the scientific method are to:

• Ask a Question
• Do Background Research
• Construct a Hypothesis
• Test Your Hypothesis by Doing an Experiment
• Analyze Your Data and Draw a Conclusion
• Communicate Your Results

Notwithstanding the Art of the Deal, is business really this simple? Does it just come to putting things on a grid and selecting the option with the best numbers. Not really, but it seems like that could certainly help.

Look at a relatively simple personal transaction, such as buying a house. There are lots of factors to consider, but for some people who move frequently, the process is just not that hard. Through multiple experiences, they have learned to identify the important things they want in any house, such as price, condition, location (ex. proximity to where they work, or to good schools), number of bedrooms, etc. Others, involved in exactly the same process for the first time, are probably much more likely to see the decision as extremely complex, to make a significant mistake, and be unsatisfied with the results, because they didn’t factor in something important to them.

In residential real estate, “curb appeal” is very important. In business, not so much. Given the wealth of material available online and from “trained professionals,” why would a business owner rely on curb appeal in an significant situation? “Getting to know you” can be an art, but not all of us are artists. If you want to play the odds, my money is on the science. 

 

 

If you enjoyed my impression of these articles, why don’t you read them for yourself and see what you and I missed or hit? Join the Applied Entrepreneurship group on LinkedIn. Membership is free and I try to post about ten articles a day there. We have some great discussions going and if you are an entrepreneur, we hope you will join us.