Inside Out Approach To Entrepreneurship, Part 1, Find The Niche

akemi — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 21:43:12 +0000

So how do you become an entrepreneur?

This is the first post of Inside Out Approach to Entrepreneurship series. It is going to be a very important and experimental series.

As I wrote in A Year Without Paychecks Part 2, I quit my corporate job last September. I now work for myself, and my business is profitable. So I guess my readers would be saying something like, “Oh, that’s great, Akemi, but how can I start my own business? I want to become an entrepreneur, too, but I have no clue where to start.”

I’m more than happy to help. In fact, that is the reason I started this Yes to Me blog – to help aspiring entrepreneurs to actually start a small business.

I’ve had just one hesitation, however, about tackling this topic head on. I’m a new entrepreneur myself. It’s been a fun ride for me, but does my advice have any weight for the aspiring entrepreneurs?

My solution: What if I offer myself as a target of criticism while I ramble on my advice?

I think I’m on the right path, but heck, I’m open to hear any criticism. So I will be talking about the following steps to entrepreneurship and sharing my experiences. And I’m sending out open invitation to the following business experts online so that they can say whatever they please in the comments or in their own blogs.

Inside Out Steps to Entrepreneurship

Everyone is welcome to participate. Here are some people who are pros on this topic that I’m hereby inviting:

Cath Lawson The bold business advisor

Tom Volkar Great life coach who specializes in career improvement

Tim Brownson Another great and controversial life coach

Tom Stine Yet another life coach, a spiritual one

Jen (MMND) Young millionaire retiree who is now offering coaching

I feel a bit of masochistic pleasure about including these successful life coaches because in this series I will have to discuss the failure of my own life coaching business.

Readers, if you are an aspiring entrepreneur, you might want to write your pending questions in the comments – as you know, I respond to all comments, and some of these experts may be kind enough to respond, too.

Step 1, Find the Niche

So, the first step is to decide what you want to do. And this is the biggest question. Most aspiring entrepreneurs seem to be stuck here.

I think you are stuck because you are looking outside of yourself. No, you first need to go within and know what you love to do. Then you figure out how you can develop it to products and services that people would love to pay for, which will be Step 2, Polish your niche.

Now I’ve already figured out what I love to do, but in order to show you how you might want to do this step, I’ll pretend I’m clueless. If you already know who you are and what you love to do, go ahead and skip this one. Just be sure it’s something you love, not just something you can do.

If you go into business with what you can do but you hardly care about it, even if you can do it well, you are setting yourself up for misery. You could be buried in money and feeling lonely and unfulfilled. Why would you want to do that? Is it any better than your current job?

How to find what you love to do

If you have been doing what everyone else wants you to do, you may have forgotten what you love to do. Very sad. So to remember who you are and what you love, pull out a sheet of paper and do a bit of inventory work.

Questions you may consider:

Which books do I love reading? And why? (Check your bookshelf.)
Which movies do I love watching?
Which music do I love?
What activity do I love to do?
Which aspects of my current job do I love?
More things that come to your mind regarding what you love to do

My list looks like this.

Books:

The Autobiography of Malcolm X – great life story.

How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie – I remember reading this when I was in high school (yes, in Japanese), long before the term “personal development” was in fashion.

Various books on personal and spiritual development including those by Alan Cohen, Deepak Copra, Tao Te Ching.

Greek mythology and various other mythologies

Movies:

Lost in Translation – sophisticated sense of humor and great story

Beautiful Mind – great life story

Amadeus – great life story with great music

Music:

Baroque, Mozart, some airs in opera (I’m not very specific)

Lois Armstrong and Billy Holiday – great voices. I like the human warmth and power.

Activities:

Reading and learning – I just never get tired of reading and learning new things.

Writing – I like sharing and communicating.

Quiet time, like walking in the park early morning

Aspects of my last job (assisting president of mid-size company, along with general admin responsibilities):

Variety – I like doing a lot of things rather than doing the same thing all day long.

People – I like dealing with many people and building long-term trusting relationships.

Creativity – I was allowed to do a lot of things my way because I was the only person who could do them.

Also, I used to be a teacher. I liked teaching (languages) to adults and young adults because it was a lot about communication and relationship building.

When I was in school, I liked history a lot. All those fascinating stories and movements! When I went to college, I thought of studying psychology, but was discouraged when I figured that it’s about treating “dysfunctions.”

Do you see a common thread?

“Great life story”came up a couple of times, and the factor of people. So are the aspects of communication and dealing with people. And the long time interest in personal development.

So . . . when I learned about a profession called “life coach”, I thought that must be something meant for me . . . (continued to Part 2)

Further resource: If you can shed out some cash, Naomi Dunford offers one-on-one phone brainstorming session on this. I have worked with her – not to find my niche but to market my niche – and can say she is a very smart and sweet pro.