Chasing the Success - for new comers

There are many beliefs about success including availability of financial resources, vision or taking the risk and most famously ‘taking right step at right time’. 

Financial resources seem to present a good advantage if someone have them but they never can alone guarantee the success. Many people who started their businesses and ventures with small loans made millions and even billions later in the life. On the other hand we have examples of people who inherited good amount of wealth and were left penny less within few years.

Vision can be considered as most important success factor in life of successfull people. However again we can see many successfull people who started with one thing and ended up with doing completely different. In fact they are in category of those who took right step at right time. Vision combined with financial resources however increases the success chances by many folds!

Taking the risks is most widely used term by successfull people. In our daily life when we speak about any successfull person we proudly say, but he/she dared to take the risk. Yes sometimes under some special circumstances taking risk has helped people to succeed. Their determination or acceptance of a certain act as ‘last resort’ helped them to climb the ladder up. However we also have many and many more examples of people who took risks and then lost, as compared to those who succeeded.

Then what could be the factor for success, luck? yes luck is another key factor but this factor can be improved through hard work and intelligent moves. In general whenever a new comer or fresh graduate wishes to start any venture he/she goes for a feasibility study. Feasibility study gives a good idea about success or failure chances of a certain project/idea. However feasibility study lacks the information about actual path. It can not tell if on the way something more interesting can come out (un expectedly)  and such and such modification in the original plan can lead to greater success. It fails to address the issue of try and see yourself. 

Many experts put up a simple formula saying, think, plan and act. This provides a good combination for success. Starting from thinking, one may need to think outside the box but without ignoring the contents of the box itself. A practical advise to new comers or fresh graduates would be to write down every single idea they have in mind, and I mean it-every single idea. The right to enter new ideas in the list should remain valid till they themselves expire. The most important advantage of keeping such a list is to implement an idea written at some time back but which became implementable at some future time.

Let the list grow on one side, they should start discussing the ideas with their friends and if possible with experts. They can search a lot on internet. They can find free feasibility studies done about different projects by government, commercial and non-government organizations. These studies even done in different countries can provide them the basic idea about success chances. 

In addition to the draft list they can always keep the following (or similar) table updated. This table should have details about ideas which has been discussed at the initial stage.

#	Main Idea	Initial Response % Positive % Negative	Main conclusion of any feasibility study	Major Success factors (in your case)	Major Constraints (as per your condition)	Decision
1
2

Next two steps very crucial for success are i. to finalize your product and ii. to identify your niche. Many people at different levels of business life are still not sure about their product. In order to be successfull, one needs to be sure about what products he/she is offering? Same for services. Advantages and disadvantages of the product as compared to other competitors should be well known to its producer or marketing person. Once you know it, then identify your niche. No matter how good a certain product is, it has no chances of success in the wrong niche. However as per marketing strategies there are two approaches in this regard, one is to find a niche and market your product while other is to create a niche for your product. The later no doubt is harder one and was the one chosen by Steve Jobs also. It requires much more courage, determination and involves greater risks. For the new comers I would say, stick to the first approach till you come up with some product/service for which you are quite sure a niche can be produced.

Once you are sure about product and niche then the most difficult but most crucial step is required, i.e. do it, implement it, ship it. Many people prepare wonderful feasibility reports, can see clear chances of success but their lack of ‘acting’ leaves the niche to someone else.