Does your Startup Business pass the beermat test?

Creating your startup business is probably not an overnight plan but you should try and simplify your first thought on this to just that. Many entrepreneurs talk of a beermat calculation for their startup business. This is a simple calculation to see if the money adds up. Its probably worth keeping this simple and then sleeping on it. If your idea still seems like a good one after the beermat told you it was and a good sleep then carry on investigating it.

To begin your investigation on your startup business make every step a sink or swim one. First off, how does the beermat react. You will probably want to have a figure for how much you can actually bring in every month or year and then a figure for how much money will go out every month, year and so on. If there is a positive difference and the margin is big enough to allow for some mistakes and profit then you have made the first hurdle. Its still swimming!

Your next step should be to find out if your beermat assumptions are true. Is there enough of a market to make the income that you wrote on your beermat and are the costs as low as you wrote on your beer mat? They may be very different or they may be better than you thought. You should try and find all the information you can and if the margin is still enough to make mistakes and profit then your startup business could possibly be a success. Its still far from that now but maybe the idea is still swimming. If there is no margin for success then maybe this startup business idea sinks and you find a new beermat.

Now you need to stick with the sink or swim for a little while longer. This starts to look like a flow chart. A flow chart will ask a question if the answer is yes then your startup business idea proceeds to the next question. If the answer is no then your startup business idea proceeds to the 'to be filed' pile. Its important to keep this pile because maybe at a later stage you will be able to draw on some of this information or maybe something changes in the future that revives the idea and makes it viable.

Once you have answered enough questions on the market and the costs, now start asking questions on your kills and your ability to bring this to market. As with the flow chart, make it a sink or swim, yes or no situation. Your startup business will need to have the right skills involved to be a success. Do you have the skills or can you find the skills and still make the beermat numbers work. If after all these questions about the costs and the skills are answered and your startup business idea is still swimming then you should ask one last question and sleep on it. Do you have the drive and ambition to make it work? This is going to take time, energy, commitment and dedication but above all, you will still need to have the enthusiasm when everyone else is too worn out to take the next step.

If after all of this, your startup business idea is still swimming and you have almost all the answers and you are still enthusiastic about your beermat idea then it is quite likely that your startup business could possibly be a success. Its just possible though and so now the hard work begins. The smart work has already started and the hard work plus the smart work could equal a Startup Business Success!