I’ve come across a great number of people who have brilliant business ideas but they are afraid to share them because the ideas may be “stolen”. Do you know that feeling? When your idea is so “genius” that you have to keep it in, strategize, plan, and when the time is right, you will have it all built and then release it to the public.

Unfortunately, this is pretty naive. I find that people who have only began thinking of “business ideas” are the ones who fear that their ideas may be stolen.

Let me tell you a story. I once had what I thought as a brilliant, God-given, unique idea that would make me billions. Yes, billions. Naturally, I was very afraid that someone may steal my wonderful idea. I thus kept it to myself and just kept on building on it. Since I was not a programmer/web developer back then, when I had the idea fully fleshed out, I approached some techies seeking a partnership. What I found was astonishing.

As I started befriending programmers and web developers and began telling my idea to them, I realized that the developers I was interested in partnering with didn’t care too much about my “genius idea” but were much more interested in what I brought to the partnership. What kind of skills did I have? What kind of connections did I have? What was my reason for pursuing what I was doing? What did I know about my industry?

You are bigger than your ideas. It is always good to have “genius ideas” but you need to reach a level where YOU as a person are more valuable than your idea, a level where you are valuable independent of your idea. In other words, you need to get to the point where people realize that your “genius idea” cannot succeed unless you are part of the team.

Still, so what if they just steal the idea? The fact is, once you start marketing to the public, the whole world will know about your idea. if the idea is good enough then competitors will pop up and they will try to outdo you – and some of them will have very deep pockets. But, the thing is that anyone can try and copy you, but no one can actually be you.

They can steal your idea, but no one can steal your style, your creativity, and your drive to succeed. That is what should make your business different, and successful.

If you take time out to seriously consider all that is involved in running a business, you will find that the most prominent tasks and traits are multi-tasking and organization. These are the same qualities that define most Project Management jobs. You have to know what is going on in each aspect of your business from projected revenue to hiring staff to advertising and beyond. The best way to prepare yourself for this multifaceted undertaking is to take notes from Project Managers.
Like most jobs that are challenging, Project Managing is not glorious. In fact, it is seen in the corporate world as a position that consists mostly of creating busy work. Yet, in these positions you need to know the ins and outs of all aspects of the corporation that you are working for. You need more than just a peripheral knowledge of your current advertising campaign; you need to be fully entrenched in its ideology and delivery in order to manage how it is run by delegating responsibility to those best suited, and so forth.

This is the same situation when you own your own business. The exception is that you need to know more than just one aspect of your corporation; you need to have intimate knowledge of each corner of your business in order to manage its daily affairs including task delegation, future planning, and idea generation. As the owner of a business you are the head of Accounting, Marketing, Human Resources, among other sectors. You will have staff that will look after the details, but it is up to you to hire the right people who share your vision for your organization and can deliver what you expect in a timely and organized manner.

That is why it is so essential to have the right staff to follow through on the tasks that you set before them. If not, you could wind up in a situation whereby you are micromanaging all the aspects of your business down to the most finite detail. This is exactly the situation that you want to avoid; drowning in the details and micromanaging your way into disaster.

This is where the skills of Project Management come into play. Being a Project Manager is about knowing a little bit about each aspect of your business and not being a specialist in any. You find competent people to do the required tasks, whether it be controlling, marketing, or hiring staff, but you oversee the entire process and make sure that your final stamp of approval goes on each major decision that comes to your desk. You make sure that things get done as planned and make sure that none of the details are missed and fall through the cracks.

After all, this is your business, and you will want these little details to reflect your vision for your endeavours. The key is to hire staff that you can feel confident know your vision and manage them in a way that reflects open communication of the daily goings on in their respective fields.

Many people often have an idea of a business that they may be interested in starting. The next step should be to then do some initial research on that business and find out whether it is worth doing. If you have picked a good niche market or industry, it should have the following characteristics already:

• A Market that Can Pay for Your Product
• The Product You Offer is Valuable to Them
• There are opportunities for recurring revenue
• The Market is Big Enough to Support Your Product

Steps to Research Your Niche Industry

1. Do some competitive research – What are your competitors doing for this niche industry. Hopefully there aren’t many in your niche industry yet but if they are there, try to find out what works for them. If no one is offerring the same product or service, try to find out what other companies who sell to the same niche are doing for their product or service. (Note: Keep note of these companies as they may be able to help resell your your product.)
2. Find Out What Marketing Works Best for Them – Some niche industries are most effectively marketed to through referrals, while others can be reached most effectively through direct response in related publications, and still others might respond to more mass media like TV or radio. Once you know this, you can start researching those media for ads that have worked well for other companies. Ads that have run for long periods of times are often ones that are the most successful.
3. Understand the Economics of the Industry – In an industry like dentistry, there are some interesting economics going on. Preventive dentistry is far less profitable than elective procedures like cosmetic dentistry. Therefore, most dental practices are more interested in increasing their cosmetic cases. If you know this, you can focus your product and advertising more on cosmetic dentistry and get a higher response on your marketing, provide more value for your clients, and gain more profit per unit sold.
4. Is Your Product a Good Fit? – Play devil’s advocate here. If your product doesn’t exist yet, is there a reason why? Have other’s tried it and failed already? Maybe you have a great idea of how to reach potential new car buyers through the newspaper but your target market (high end car dealers) prefers for a little more high-end marketing?

Doing the Research of your Niche Industry is one of the more “abstract” steps in starting a business. There is not as much of an end goal like creating a piece of advertising or testing out your product. It’s tough to know what to look for when doing your research but the more you know about the industry that you’re targeting and the state of your potential competitors, the more successful you will be in targeting that niche market.