The big & sticky

Sometimes when you are in the weeds of trying to accomplish your weekly goals or reaching out to make industry contacts, you find yourself glued to a computer screen or on the phone for two, three, fours hours of the day. Coffee becomes your best friend. For me, after those long nights I try and revisit and test my current answers to some of the higher-level questions that are critical to the success of the overall business.

In a recent article on women run businesses from Entrepreneur magazine there were some good ideas on what some of these higher level questions are.

1. Is your idea scalable?- a product/service that rides a trend that blooms in 3 - 5 years. Most importantly, an expandable distribution system, manufacturing relationships that can sustain higher volume levels, a plan for increasing the sales force and a plan for scaling up advertising.

2. Is it a commercially viable business model? - this is a kind way of saying do you have a solid understanding of the costs of the business / industry you're thinking of entering. For instance, how do advertising expenses affect your break into the black.

3. Viable exit strategy - not fun stuff, but necessary.

4. Clear pitch - It can be easy to "know" your business but not be able to explain it well. I've run into this stuttering phenomenon more than once. Practice is really critical. This is also a great area to get feedback from your advisory board on. Their role is not only to help with understanding the dynamics of new industries / setting up relationships, but also to ask you the tough questions to crystallize your thoughts.