Finding your niche to start a new business

Finding what you’re good at is the first step in coming up with a new business idea. You have to understand your accomplishments, skills, vision, and passion before diving in headfirst. We’ve highlighted a few tips to help you discover what your niche is.

Identify your accomplishments

Looking at how you spend your free time and your professional career, write down the accomplishments that you’re most proud of and the activities you’ve enjoyed the most. Making a list of your accomplishments will help you understand what you’re good at, how hard to have to work to reach your specific goals, and where your passion lies.

Finding your skills

Pinpoint Your Skills

After finding your accomplishments, you need to find the skills that got you there. Identify your soft skills versus your hard skills.

    • Hard skills: Skills that are tangible – real or actionable (like being good at basketball)
    • Soft skills: Skills you can’t touch or see (like being a good communicator)

There are several ways to find out what we’re skilled at, such as taking an assessment or asking those around you. Having someone from the outside looking in is important. Where we might not put something on our list because of struggles and personal bias, someone else might add it knowing better than you that you are good at that skill.

Discovering what you already know is a helpful hint into what you’re skilled at. Maybe you already know how to use video software to create high-quality videos. Therefore, you can mark down video editing as a top skill.

Knowing your skills makes it easier to build a business and do meaningful work. The easiest business to start is one with skills we already know we’re good at. Building off your achievements and passions, you can build a solid foundation for a business.

Not having the perfect skills doesn’t mean, however, that we can’t dive into a topic we’ve never fully experienced before. If you have the dedication and the basic skills to accomplish your goals, you can start any business you want.

Know your vision

What are you hoping to accomplish?

    • Champion a cause
    • Transform your hobby, passion, or interest into a business
    • Pursue an opportunity you’ve come across
    • Create something no one has seen before

Have an understanding of what you’re hoping to accomplish. Understanding your vision will not only help you pick the direction of your newfound business, it will also drive the strategies you need to make it happen.

Acknowledge why you’re starting a new business

Acknowledging why you want to start a new business can lead you in the direction you should take. What’s driving you more than anything else?

    • Freedom: Financial freedom, time freedom, freedom to travel and choose
    • Impact: It’s more than making money – it’s more about making an impact and leaving the world in a better place
    • Legacy: Making my mark on the world

The type of business you choose to create is driven by your choice of freedom, impact, or legacy. With freedom, you’re more likely to go with your best skill creating a business off of your already found knowledge that makes you independent as fast as you can. With impact, you’ll choose what you’re most passionate about, even if you haven’t developed all the skills necessary quite yet. Lastly, with legacy, you’ll choose your best accomplishment and start your business based on this. If you’ve already accomplished something great, it’ll be much easier to build off of to leave your mark on the world.

Understanding yourself and your motivations to want to start a new business is key to finding your niche. You can’t build a business based on nothing. Your drive and passion have to lie somewhere. Understanding your personal drive is key.

Things to consider when starting a new business

Passion led us here

Starting a new business is fun and exciting but also challenging. There are a million things you need to consider and plan out. While this is certainly not everything, we compiled a list of topics we found most important and points people don’t always consider when starting a new business.

Start while you are still employed

New business owners are never really sure when the company will break even or make a profit. How long can you go without a reliable source of income? Finding time to work on your startup while still being employed can be difficult, but being employed means you always have a reliable source of income while you work through the startup phase.

Make sure the money is lined up

You have your source of income from still being employed, but that doesn’t mean it’s enough to get you started. Many people say to just go for it or you never will. While this is a good point, you do need to make sure you have your finances figured out first, including a backup plan. It takes a while to either save up, find somewhere that will lend you money, or get potential investors. Know where your source of money is coming from before you begin.

Know the legal requirements for starting a business

Getting the legal and tax issues correct the first time will be a huge time and money saver. It’s much more difficult and expensive to correct the flaws after you’ve already begun. Different types of businesses have different requirements. Learn what your legal and tax responsibilities are before you start. Check out the ten steps to start your business from the U.S. Small Business Administration.

Don’t procrastinate

While you might want to have every detail planned out and investigated before you start, there’s no need. You will never be able to predict exactly how your business will go so why fret about every little detail when your whole plan could blow up at the slightest change. No one ever really has all the pieces in place. You’d go crazy trying to figure out every possible route and solution. Do your research, scope out the market, have a basic plan, but don’t let perfection push you to procrastination.

Get professional help

One of the reasons people start a business is for passion and drive. Being driven and passionate, however, does not mean you’re an expert on starting a business. A lot goes into a business that people don’t generally think about such as, accounting and contracting. You’re not going to be an expert on all things business overnight. Consider hiring a professional to do such jobs. While some might forgo hiring professionals and attempt to do it themselves, they are, in the long run, wasting time and possibly money.

Absorb everything

There are others who have been in the exact same position as you, listen to them! They probably have some of the greatest advice since they know first-hand what it’s like to start a business. Smart entrepreneurs learn from the mistakes of others. Listen to your friends and family too, they know you and can help you work through things. Other people’s ideas and opinions of the business are important too as they can reflect what consumers think. As you listen and learn write things down, then take those ideas, opinions, advice, and work them out to make plans for your business.

Share your business – Put yourself out there

How are you supposed to sell your business if you don’t share your business? It can be intimidating to share your business with others, but you can’t be worried about every person’s opinion.

Talk about your business. You never know who could be listening and the connections you could make to grow your business. People like to do business and support businesses of people they know. Be bold and speak confidently. If you want your business to succeed, you need to be able to convince consumers to buy from and support your business.

Make sure you are marketing and networking constantly. Put your business out there and don’t be shy!

Don’t fixate on mistakes

Successful entrepreneurs learn from their mistakes and move on. Dwelling on your failures will get you nowhere. Anyone and everyone can tell you that in the business of creating a business, there is no room or time for self-pity. Realize your mistake, learn from it, and move on. Everyone hits roadblocks and mistakes; it’s how you react that matters.

Never stop learning and implementing new things

People are constantly changing their likes and habits. In response, the market changes. Unless you want to be left in the past, you need to be constantly adapting to the new market. Keep your eyes and ears open for new things. Are there new ways to market? A different variation you could be offering? A new target market you could capture? Listen to your customers and pay attention to your industry.

We hope this list helps you better plan out your new journey and follow your passion!