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I was talking with a friend the other day who recently started a business pursuing her passion. She was able to move into securing billable work relatively quickly through word-of-mouth and her network of contacts. As she is branching out, she is looking to develop a more formalized statement of services and marketing messages. The thought of it all, she lamented, was bumming her out. She wanted to DO the work but found herself needing to spend more time than expected to set up the business. Unfortunately, this is not at all unusual. Many people start a business to do what they love and then realize there so much involved in starting a business that its becomes hard to find time to do the “fun” stuff you started the business to do. You need more hours in a day to do both. That’s why it is crucial to find something that drives you – a passion – so it can feed your energy rather than drain it. The best book I’ve found for exploring solutions to this dilemma is The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber. If you’re starting a business and haven’t read it, I highly recommend it.

We were talking about her business – a service many people could use – but I was (in my normal boot-in-the-butt form), asking who her target market was. Had she chosen a niche? What was her marketing strategy? The blank but overwhelmed stare told me what I suspected: she didn’t know. Now this is a really smart lady, but she was visibly frustrated by not having answers to questions that apparently nagged at her as well. What she had discovered is a trap many entrepreneurs fall into: shoot first, ask questions later.

I see it all the time. I have an idea/skill/talent/product. I think it is cool, that people need it. My friends and family see the need or the value, but that’s as far as I’ve gone to validate my idea or my fine tune my approach to the market. And when the capital requirements tend to be low, it is tempting to just quickly hang out a shingle and call it a business without doing any serious primary market research. In my experience, this can be deadly.

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