Karl Craig-West Business blog writer, website builder, public speaker

How to assess a business opportunity Part 5: Motivation

OK, so this is part 5 in my series of articles on 'How to assess a business opportunity'.

This time we're looking at (cue uplifting music and training montage...) motivation

Motivation is best described as the reason or reasons that anyone does anything.

But let me expand on that just a little: Always bear in mind that 'nobody does anything for no reason', there is always a reason for what people do.

Strong motivation is absolutely vital when you run a business, you need to be very very clear as to why you are doing what you do. Without this you will seriously struggle, end of story.

This means that you need to know very clearly the reason or reasons behind the effort that you make. Especially when things are not going as well as you would like, and I can tell you now that there will be plenty of those times.

So what are the key reasons that people get into business? Many people get into business to make money (in some cases lots of money), some folks get into business because they see it as a way of avoiding working for someone else (to some extent this is my motivation), many people run businesses because they enjoy the freedom of making their own decisions and doing what they want and enjoy.

The thing is, you need to be very clear early on what your motivation is. Why do it? Why put in those long hours? Why work so hard?

Without this clarity you will feel as though you are working for no good reason. When you start a new business you will have to work very hard, you will usually work long hours, and you will often face many challenges that those in employment will never face.

So having a clear reason for doing it all gives you the ability to look beyond the challenges you have in front of you right now and also to understand that the most worthwhile things are often the most difficult.

Now, I've often been accused of being an inspiring and motivational person. This is because I always encourage people I meet who are in business or looking to start a business to really go for it. When you run your own business you begin to realise that your success or failure is often in your hands. This can be very liberating, especially when you wake up to the amazing possibilities open to you in business, but it can also be quite terrifying to those who have never experienced this before. And this is one of the many reasons why many people don't start businesses.

The thing is; when you run your own business there are no excuses, you are the boss, you make the decisions, and you have to be responsible for the action necessary to make your business work. It will be the clarity of your “reasons why” that will help you take the necessary action.

This means that, more than anyone else, you have to be self-motivated. You absolutely have to know what you're doing and why you're doing it.

The importance of this to success is why a whole industry has been developed over the last 100 years purely dealing with motivation. There is half a library of motivational books and recordings available to you to help this.

And bear this in mind: you have to take responsibility for your motivation. Nobody else is going to give it to you. But, as mentioned in the previous article on expertise, this is something that can be learned. Your first tentative steps in business will rely heavily on your level of motivation which has to come from you.

Another important thing to bear in mind is that if your motivation revolves around somebody else then at some point you are likely to come unstuck. I know from my own research that one of the reasons why failure rates on diets are so high is because the person on the diet is trying to lose weight and look better for someone else's sake. It is vital that you have your own reasons.

You have to do it for your reasons and nobody else's. Even if you start a business to feed your family you need a personal reason to do it (and the well-being of family is, for many, the strongest reason).

Interestingly enough, this morning I was at a business event and one of the speakers said that she had started her business not because of any high-minded ambition but simply because she was skint and needed to make some money quickly. As a single mother, I'm sure her motivation was very strong indeed. Now that she's been in business a while (2 years) she's woken up to the possibilities out there from having a business and this provides her with different motivations to develop her business into other areas.

So, think long and hard about why you do what you do. You need to have a very clear and very strong motivation for starting a business. Take it from me, running a business is the best thing you could possibly do in your career but it also far from an easy option.

The previous posts in this series can be found here:How to assess a business opportunity, part 4 - Experience
How to assess a business opportunity, part 3 - Money
How to assess a business opportunity part 2 - Interest
How to assess a business opportunity part 1: Time

I'd love to hear your thoughts on motivation when starting and running a business or for when looking at how to assess a business opportunity so please write them in the comments box below.

How to assess a business opportunity, part 4 – Experience

Since beginning this series on 'how to assess a business opportunity' I've realised that writing just 4 or 5 articles was simply not going to be enough. In fact I could write a dozen articles and something else might occur to me for consideration.

However, this time we're going to look at 'Experience' or 'Expertise'.

It's absolutely vital to any new new business idea that you give serious thought to what kind of expertise you can bring into the mix. And your conclusions may well surprise you.

So, for this exercise, ask yourself this fundamental question:

Do you have an prior knowledge or expertise in the business you're assessing that will help you to get started?

You see, most of us have a wide variety of skills and knowledge that can be applied to a business. Maybe you've worked in sales or customer service, you might have some useful IT skills, maybe you know something about the product or service you're offering. The list could go on. So try and compile a list of your skills so you can look for ways to apply them immediately into your business operation..

A lot of people are being made redundant right now and becoming freelance at what their old job was. So there seems to be a growing army of HR, marketing, health and safety, project management and PR consultants in the small business world.

There's nothing wrong with that but only a small number of them had any experience in being self-employed or running a small business. And that presents a problem for them, in that many of the skills needed for self-employed are very different to those required for working for someone else.

But all is not lost if you have limited experience, there's very little that can't be picked up if you're willing to put some time into learning and application. And it certainly pays to be a very fast learner when you start a business.

However, your self-education must be constant. In business there is never nothing to learn. Just when you begin to think that you know what you're doing and that there is little more to learn, you put yourself in a very precarious business position. Someone else may come along and steal your market share because they have a new approach or a different and more exciting way of doing things or marketing and promoting business.So, please don't rest on any laurels.

One of the best things about many network marketing opportunities is that constant development and training is usually provided and often very comprehensive. However, it's usually a good idea to try and examine the costs involved in such training to make sure that you've taken this into account in your financial planning/projections.

Having said all of that, there are plenty of books, CDs, videos, and websites available for almost any business learning that you require. A useful place to start is YouTube where thousands of people in business have shared their expertise and their experiences and this gives you the opportunity to learn very quickly.. And it's often a very good idea to try and learn specifics, so you can pick up relevant and directly applicable skills and knowledge as quickly as possible

A useful thing to bear in mind is that any money you spend on training or learning materials such as books or DVDs are necessary business expenses and can help to reduce your tax bill (please talk with a tax adviser on this to make sure you're on the right track).

From my own experience; one of the most important lessons to learn as soon as possible is all about successful sales and marketing. I'm normally quite amazed by the number of people who start their own small business and don't spend serious time and money investing in selling and marketing skills.

I'm probably going to write a broad overview of a marketing plan at some point in the near future but take it from me that it's absolutely essential that you understand who is in your target market, what messages you're going to send to them and how you're going to reach them. Without this information/knowledge/skill you will struggle to gain new customers quickly and this could frustrate your efforts early on.

So, plenty of food for thought in this article on how to assess a business opportunity but my advice is to start learning as early and as much as possible. This way you will (hopefully) have picked up some useful knowledge and skills before you even start in business.

If you've any thoughts or ideas on this I'd be happy to hear them. Please feel free to write your comments in the box below.