It starts with an idea. Ideas might be dime in a dozen, but it is the starting place of every great endeavor. Great ideas are usually born out of a challenge you or someone you know have faced or an opportunity/gap you notice.

In the DNA of every human being, there is an ability to create something out of nothing. This ability usually lies dormant in the lives of many people because they have been programmed not to value things that are not obvious to everyone else. However anything that everyone else has seen is no longer an opportunity that can turn into a profitable business.

The reason why there are so few businesses that stand out is because people would rather copy what others have successfully done than go on a journey to uncover their own potential and create something unique and valuable.

If you want to create a business that would become profitable and valuable in this world, you have to engage your unique potential and there are four things you need to do to engage your potential.

1. Find your niche: your niche is the unique solution you bring to a problem or the way you differentiate yourself in solving a problem with your product or service. A few years ago when I was actively working with small businesses as a business coach, two ladies joined my program and they were both from the hair dressing industry. One had a general hair dressing outfit that catered to any kind of hair dressing needs. The other carved a niche in natural hair and focused her business to cater to only people with natural hair. A year later when we analyzed their revenues, the lady who carved a niche was making double the revenues of the one who offered general services.

The reason is customers saw her business as a business with expertise in natural hair and they would rather take their natural hair needs to a specialist than a generalist. When you carve a niche for yourself, your business becomes known for something.

2. Share your story: you might be great at what you do, but no one will know if you don’t share your story. Marketing and sales are the life blood of businesses that will grow and become profitable. You uniqueness should be publicized to the people who you want to reach also known as your target market. To reach the right people, you have to identify where your target audience is. They can be online on a social media platform or online forum. You can also reach them offline in a group.

 

When you identify where they are, you need to choose the right medium to reach them. You could reach them via content marketing-sharing helpful information through content. You can also reach them by advertising on various online and offline platforms.

 The important thing is to ensure that your story is reaching the people you want to reach and in turn they would buy your product or use your services because your personal or business story resonates with them.

 3. Build your tribe: your business can become profitable if you have a group of people who are loyal to your product or services. These people are known as your tribe. There is a concept of one thousand true fans by Kevin Kelly that says that if you can get one thousand people to support your business, you can easily build a multimillion business.

Your tribe are the group of people who patronize your product or service consistently and also refer other people to you. They are not just customers, but loyal customers who give you active feedback and care about your progress.

You build your tribe by adding value to these people first and showing them that your Company cares about them and in return they reward you with their patronage and loyalty. The saying; people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care comes to play in building your tribe. The investment in time and effort you make in winning these people to your company will pay in future.

 

4. Profit from your passion: the best kind of business to do is a business that you are passionate about. It takes time for any business endeavor to achieve a respectable level of success, so it is passion that will give you the staying power to keep you going especially during challenging times.

 Passion alone is not enough because if you pour your passion into something but do not know how to turn a profit from it, it will lead to frustration. If you want to profit from your passion, you need to balance doing something you are passionate about with something people are willing to pay for to create a profitable business.

You create a business to serve other people and not just to please yourself. So you need to go to your tribe and find out how you can serve them and which products or services will help them fulfill their needs. It is in this process that you can create things that add real value and also fuels your passion.

There is so much potential for you to build a profitable business and I hope these four points will get you started in the right direction.

These four points are excerpts from my book Uplevel. I am currently working on the second book in the Uplevel series. You can learn more about the whole book at www.talealimi.com/get-my-book-up-level/ 

If you want guidance to Uplevel and attract more success in your life, I recommend my “Read for more workshop”. Learn more HERE.