Ever watched Dragon’s Den and thought ‘I can do better than this, I have great ideas!’? 

Whether your idea came as a flash of inspiration, or it’s something you’ve been wanting to bring life to for years, there are plenty of ideas that will come to you and won’t ever leave. 

But how do you turn that idea into something tangible that you can make money from? 

Follow these steps and you’ll be well on your way to launching a successful business. 

1.Do some research 

Once you have a clear idea about what you want your product or business to do, you should do some market research to see what’s already out there, and what your potential competitors are offering. 

You should try to focus on more than just how these ideas were successful and more about those that didn’t succeed and where they went wrong.  You could learn things that will cause you to reshape your original plans. You will begin to understand the difference between functional and non-functional requirements for your product which will help when it comes to marketing later on. 

What competitive advantage can you develop to compete with those who are doing similar things and developing similar ideas? Is there potential for you to jump on the back of what they’re doing? 

2.Draft your business plan 

Having an outline of what you’d like to do is a vital step in getting your business up and running. This will help you to share your story with investors, talk about your goals and how you predict the business to scale over time. 

3.Build a prototype 

Having a prototype is essential when it comes to business planning. Having one allows you to test out whether or not the business plan is feasible.  

Remember, a prototype doesn’t have to be a physical product. It can also be a website that represents the business that you can also use to collect the contact details of people interested in being a part of the business. 

It’s also a great way to rank up those search engine rankings by creating a search engine optimized blog or two so that you can build a following of interested parties. Your prototyping phase is about taking your vision for the business and making it real to see if potential customers would be interested in buying from you. 

4.Make some money/ Fundraise 

How much money do you reasonably need to make a business and sell products to make it scalable? This is one of the things that should be included within your business plan, but before you get to that stage, you need cash in order to make it happen to begin with. 

For some ideas to consider fundraising you could:

• Get a small business loan- again you would need to be able to demonstrate that you’d make enough money to pay back the money and any interest attached to it. 

• Go to outside investors- they will put money into the business in exchange for a percentage of the business 

• Crowdfunding- use websites and apps such as ‘Kickstarter to allow future entrepreneurs to gather micro-donations to help to get their business off the ground.  

Once you have all of the above in place, you should be in an excellent position to get your business running.

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