As a business coach and marketing mentor, everyday, I happen upon aspiring entrepreneurs or entrepreneurs looking to start a new business or re-invent their business or looking to add product lines to their business that want it done yesterday.
While I can appreciate your excitement and desire to LEAP…I must caution you to be sure that before you LEAP, you take the time to develop the core components of your business plan, strategy and model to ensure that once you start leaping you don’t fall.
Sadly, most entrepreneurs don’t know what they don’t know and they tend to frustrate and overwhelm themselves because they don’t have a system designed to walk them step by step through the process of creating a viable business model.
Instead of jumping right in, here are just a few of the considerations you need to make:
1. What is your vision for this new business? By starting with your vision, you should naturally look at not on the business but your life vision or plan and how this new idea plays into that dynamic. Your life and business must be congruent in order for it to work, last and be sustained. I encourage you to get to a quiet place and ponder this question and begin to see yourself at the point of full manifestation. Once you arrive there, how do you feel? Is that the feeling you want when this business is a success?
2. What is the provision you are willing to make to ensure that the business accomplishes what you set it out to do? Provision means that you have thought it out and through and have come up with a plan. Similar to a GPS, when you know the ultimate destination and “plug it in” to your spirit, you will be guided, one step at a time to the next best step to ensure your ultimate arrival at the destination of your choosing. What will you need to do to make sure that your vision manifests? Who will you need to enlist and when in order to complete the core tasks of the vision?
3. What will starting this business offer in the form of a solution to others? The universal law of business, which I refer to daily, says “find a group of people who have the problem that you solve that are ready right now to pay for a solution to the problem.” What is the problem (s) your new or expanded business will solve? What is that solution that you will offer? How will you offer it? Do you need to develop content in order to provide?
4. Who are the people you envision your business serving? It’s great to believe you can help everyone but the reality is that you can’t so, since that is the reality, who have you designated to be served by your business? What are they struggling most with right now? What will they require in order to stop struggling? Answering these three questions NOW will save you a word of heart ache later when you start to market your business.
5. What is the solution that you will offer and have you validated that it is what they want? You have to spend time developing the solution on the front end once you’re clear on the problem you’re going to solve and most importantly, you have to do tons of market research, mainly primary research to validate that they want what you’re planning to offer.
In a future post, I will share some more considerations that you should have resolved before you LEAP. In the meantime, be patient with yourself and the process of building your business. Trust me, the time spent walking first will help you to leap much further
©2012 by Darnyelle A. Jervey. All Rights Reserved. Darnyelle A. Jervey, The Incredible Factor Business Mentor and Coach, is the founder of Incredible One Enterprises.com and the Leverage Your Incredible Factor System® a proven step by step program for learning the mindset, marketing and money-making strategy to produce a 6-figure profit in record time. For more information and a FREE audio download “How to Use Your Incredible Factor to Attract MORE Ideal Clients”.


“Jump, or you’ll spend the rest of your life being pushed.” Sam Bishop, I have to tell you honestly that when I heard this quote from Sam recently, I immediately got goose bumps. This profound statement is so true, especially in the lives of entrepreneurs. I mean we start businesses jumping in the deep end because we can’t stand being pushed by a boss and told how to perform, what to say and when to say it.
As we celebrate the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and honor the work he did for civil rights in the United States, I can’t help to pause and pay homage to the marketer that he was. Yes, I said marketer. I am fond of saying that we are not in the business we think that we are in; we are in the business of marketing our products and services. His product was civil rights and equality and he marketed that product with what I like to call “movement-based” marketing. He was able to inspire a group of people to take immediate, consistent action because he positioned himself as a problem solver. He aligned his message to his marketing and created a movement.
It’s 2012 and everyone is focused on making this their best year ever. I don’t disagree with you; in fact, I wholeheartedly endorse and recommend that you look closely at your goals and your plans and ensure that you have covered all of your bases. Your success this year could depend on it. As you look at your list, it is my recommendation that you use this article and the assignments that accompany it to help you ensure that you are primed and positioned to change lives with your brand, business, message, products and services this year.
Although this song makes me think quickly about the Christmas favorite, it also helps to bring home the point I want to empower you with today and everyday.
If I were asked “what one thing you did differently in the past year of your business that contributed to your overall growth,” I’d answer hands down, tithing time to my business. While many have considered tithing a religious term, I assure you that despite the original of its tenets, it is a term that can also be used in business and personal life.
Retailers do it and if you want to stand out from the crowd in your industry, you must begin to do it as well. Of course I’m talking about planning your year in advance through a strategic alignment of your core business goals with the needs of your ideal clients.







