Another aspect is getting yourself listed so that when people search for your product they are going to find you. You know you go on Google these days and you will find 100,000 other sites offering your product. So you need to find a way to get your website to come up if people are doing a search. That's not an area I am a expert in, but again it goes back to differentiating your self and targeting your marketing, otherwise you are wasting your time.
I guess my advice to any specific business plan is that you have to know something about the business before you get in. Don't think I love to cook or I love to eat, so I should open a restaurant. We get people who love baking and want to start a bakery. If you haven't worked in the business we tell our clients to work in the business for a while, be an employee and find out what the business is all about. Don't just decide I want to start this business because it looks easy or I would like to do this or it's been a nice hobby for me. Getting into the business is a very different thing and operating is very complex and unless you have actually done it. You really should know what it takes from the inside the business. There is nothing wrong with learning the business on somebody else's nickel before you put your own money into it. If you don't know what the business really is all about from the inside you probably shouldn't be doing it.
Absolutely do what is your passion, passion is very important. You have to have the passion, but the real test is whether other people will buy it. And are there enough other people to buy it at a price that you can make money at it? That's where the work of defining who your customers would be. How many of them are there? Do they have the disposable income to buy it? Do they live in a concentrated enough area? Where can you reach them in a way that you can let them know that your product is available for sale?
But you do need to choose something you are passionate about. The worst kind of clients we get are people who come in and say, "I want to start a business." And when we ask them what kind of business they are thinking of they say, "I don't know. How can I make a lot of money?" They are never going to succeed in business. You have to start at the other end. Here is what I like to do. Here is the kind of business I want to go into. I am passionate about it and I know something about it. The passion has to show in the business plan. The bank must see that you are passionate about it, but that's not enough obviously because they can't give you a loan on passion. So, it's a combination of passion and knowledge about the business.
