So if you have decided from your assessment of your strengths, supports and risks that you are the person to run a successful business, you should now consider your business idea. And whether you are going to manufacture something, provide a service or run a retail shop, it is useful to think of your business as producing a product. This way of doing things allows you to see not only how to improve your product and profit but also how you might expand. For a retail shop this is harder to apply. However if you are running a specific service, then that service is your product.

Customer view

The first thing that you have to remember is that your product isn't for your own amusement but for other people who want to buy it. You will have to provide what they want to buy and not what you think they ought to want.

It is not enough for Mum and Dad and Auntie Glad to like your product, you need a few hundred strangers who think so as well. You must think carefully and critically about your product. You have to bear in mind the current market, your product's packaging, its quality and its price. If you have doubts then think of a way to improve it. Remember that if you don't have confidence in it, your potential customers certainly won't.

Product concept

So if you have decided from your assessment of your strengths, supports and risks that you are the person to run a successful business, you should now consider your business idea. And whether you are going to manufacture something, provide a service or run a retail shop, it is useful to think of your business as producing a product. This way of doing things allows you to see not only how to improve your product and profit but also how you might expand. For a retail shop this is harder to apply. However if you are running a specific service, then that service is your product.

Customer view

The first thing that you have to remember is that your product isn't for your own amusement but for other people who want to buy it. You will have to provide what they want to buy and not what you think they ought to want.

It is not enough for Mum and Dad and Auntie Glad to like your product, you need a few hundred strangers who think so as well. You must think carefully and critically about your product. You have to bear in mind the current market, your product's packaging, its quality and its price. If you have doubts then think of a way to improve it. Remember that if you don't have confidence in it, your potential customers certainly won't.