Decoding Startup Talk to Come Up with a Business Idea

It’s been a little over six months since my friend Maia contacted me about wanting to start a business.

Even though she had found a lot of quality content on the Internet, most of them were focused on startups and she felt as if they did not communicate well with her.

Given that part of my job entails on understanding the development of small businesses, I thought I’d meet Maia and try to help.

We met at a coffee shop near her apartment to talk about her project.

She told me about wanting to start her own flower arrangements business.

It seemed to be the perfect business idea for her. Maia loves gardening. She is actually one of those people who names her plants and treat them as pets. Earlier this year, she even helped start a community garden in her neighborhood.

But as we chatted along it became clear that there were some obstacles she’d have to overcome before getting things off the ground:

• Maia was not ready to quit her full-time job;
• She didn’t have a lot of money saved up, and getting a loan was out of the question;
• She had no idea how to turn her passion into a profitable business idea.

Learning to turn your passion into a profitable business idea

During our meeting, Maia told me about feeling overwhelmed with the talks about Business Model Canvas, Lean Startup, Minimum Viable Product and so on.

She also talked about having a hard time finding a connection between what she had read and her situation.

I remember feeling the same way when I first started working at Kyte. I am not bold or creative guy, and I avoid risks at all cost. But I always got the feeling that I needed to have those personality traits if I were to become a successful entrepreneur.

Once I got to interview with small business owners, I realized that I had created a very unrealistic idea of the whole thing. Most of people and businesses I visited were not at all like that.

Hard and Soft Skills: The Basis of Your Small Business Idea

Maia opened up about having a hard time coming up with a business idea that was both feasible and lucrative. So I asked her to open the note-taking app on her phone so that we could list her hard and soft skills and use them as the basis for her business ideas.

Soft skills are your personality traits, like being creative, articulate or organized. Hard skills are the things you can actually do, like painting or writing. The small business ideas that will best suit you are usually a combination of both.

Maia had received a lot of compliments for the organization of the community garden and wrote down leadership and management as her soft skills and design and gardening as her hard skills.

Research the Market: Online and Offline

I went on to tell her of ways she could ransack the market for problems her future business could capitalize on.

Next time you leave the house be on the lookout for ways you can use your skills to solve problems that you and others face. Do the same online. Make a list of search terms related to your business ideas and google them to see what comes up. People are regularly sharing their thoughts on products or services, and if you pay enough attention, you can identify ways to bank on that.

Maia then remembered she had painted some flowers the other day and thought they’d make for some nice greeting cards. But ended up discarding the idea after finding that hundreds of people were already doing that.

Innovation comes in many ways, shapes and forms.

When looking to start a business, it is normal to feel intimidated by the competition. Keep in mind that you don’t have to come up with a never-thought-before business idea to be successful. Innovation can also come from offering better customer service, user experience, materials, pricing, location, accessibility, branding, etc.

Another thing that concerns most people are the costs related to starting a business.

Research shows that the average cost of starting a new business from scratch is at just over $30,000.

Most people don’t have that kind of money and getting a loan to fund something you are not sure it is worth pursuing might be a risk you are not willing to take.

Bootstrapping: Starting a Business with Little to no Money

Maia had the same concern. She had had issues with her credit before, so getting a loan was not an option. That’s when I told her about bootstrapping.

Bootstrapping is about managing the resources available to develop your business accordingly. By doing so, you’ll be able to gather the necessary know-how to create a successful product or service without facing that many risks.

In Maia’s case, although she dreamed of having her own flower shop and making flower arrangements, the costs involved in renting a space and buying the necessary equipment to grow and sell the flowers were too great.

So I told her to consider running her business from home or a co-working space and to look for ways in which she could use resources that were already available to her to create a product or service that could start being marketed fast.

MVP: Developing a First Solution

We also talked about developing a basic version of the idea so that she could start selling as soon as possible and fund her business.

This leaner version, also known as MVP (Minimum Viable Product) should consist on an initial offer that addresses the pain points of a single group of people, maintaining the essence and competitive edge of her product while cutting out costlier parts.

When you focus on developing the essence of a solution, it works not only as a way for you to gather the start-up funds you need to grow your business to what you envision but most importantly as an opportunity to engage with early customers and understand what is and isn’t working.

Maia must take a few things into consideration when developing an MVP:

• It must serve at least one group of consumers
• It has to solve one problem well
• It needs to be easy to make and sell

Lean Business: The Build-Measure-Learn Loop

The process of starting small consists in taking one step forward and seeing how it feels. If the results are favorable, then take another step forward. If not, take a step back and use what you’ve learned to try again. Because better than developing a solid product or service is developing one that customers actually want.

Maia and I then finished our coffee and agreed to meet again in a couple of weeks.

Upcycling Opportunities: Adding your touch to already-thought ideas

Earlier today I received an email from her with the subject line “Plantable Greeting Cards.”

It turns out she had found a DIY guide on Pinterest for plantable greeting cards that you embed the paper with flower seeds so that people could plant the card in the ground and watch it grow into a flower.

I was surprised! Maia had found a great way for her to get things started. She told me she had a bunch of flower seeds at home and they were also cheap to buy, plus she could also recycle scrap paper from work to cut down startup costs.

Side Business: Starting Small and Growing

During the first steps of entrepreneurship, it is crucial to minimize and manage risks.

Maia decided to keep her job and treat her idea as a side-business at first. She said she would use this opportunity to mature the business enough until she feels comfortable taking the plunge.