How to decide what business to pursue?

Jemba

I have lots of ideas for businesses, but don`t seem to be able to settle on one to pursue.  Has anyone else faced this, and how have you gone about isolating a good path to follow?

UrgentCareDoc

We have a partnership of three physicians who own a group of urgent care clinics that have been operating for 19 years. Three years ago, we realized that we had a passion for helping folks answer the questions, "How do I start and urgent care clinic?" and "How do I develop an urgent care clinic?"  We had found that the missing ingredient for our own urgent care clinics and for our colleagues was this: software made specifically for urgent care clinics.  We started Practice Velocity Urgent Care Solutions, and the company now serves over 150 urgent care centers in most states in the USA.  We suspect that the business of urgent care software worked for us for several reasons:Experience: We have years of experience with starting and devolping own own seven urgent care clinics. Note: traditional urgent care centers are for caring for illnesses and injuries that are not true emergencies.Passion: The urgent care industry is a rapidly growing industry with fantastic people delivering a much-needed service to the American public.Contacts: We had many friendships with colleagues through our involvement with the Urgent Care Association of America.Need: We had been frustrated for years with the lack of software that read met our needs for urgent care charting, billing and coding.Expertise: Our urgent care staff had hundreds of years of collective experience in every aspect of the urgent care industry.Idea: We had a unique idea that would allow our software to truly make urgent care clinics more efficient, safer and more profitable.Synergies: Our existing business would be able to fund the software development (at least partially) through increased profitability derived from the software.Those are some of the reasons why we started Practice Velocity, LLC. What is a great benefit of our particular business is that we truly enjoy helping others share in our success, and we have been able to help over 30 physician partnerships with their own startup urgent care centers.  We wish you the best in finding a business that makes sense for you.

Jemba

Thanks for your response and your inspiring story. I like your structure: experience, passion, contacts, need, expertise, idea & synergies. It sounds like a perfect fit all the way around. Thanks also for your good wishes.

bfleming98

I think everyone who`s in business faceses this all the time -- Too much opportunity.  The most important thing is once you settle on One Idea stick with it and don`t jump into something else.  Otherwise you`ll be running around in circles.  That`s a mistake I see a lot of people making.
 
 

Rojgiean

Opportunity is like a series of horses.  You can decide which one to ride, or you can harness a group of them, and buy a chariot.
I would look into it, and try to narrow down your array of possibilities, based upon your personal likes and dislikes, your experience and passions, strengths and weaknesses, what kind of need there is in the market, and financial issues such as startup cost and oprational costs versus your budget.
I think it is important to remember, you don`t have to settle for one... just remember that each additional business brings more responsibility!  The flip side of the coin is that you also have a series of lines of income potential.
Focus on a single business or small group of businesses you treat as a single business (a single business plan, and single operational plan for the group of 3 to 5 businesses), and remember, much more than 5 you will be doing nothing more than chasing your own tail, while gaining no ground!  Also, it is important to remember that if you are currently working a "real job" while trying to start your own business, it harldy makes sense to focus on more than one to two business ventures, and only two if they are "intimately" related, for an easy congealing of the concepts into a single set of plans!
I hope this helps in your future endeavours!

calvinjr

I have had numerous friends go through this situation. What I try to get them to understand is pick one business that you  love doing (you would do for free) and which business can provide you the return on investment you are looking for. When you make that list,  it becomes pretty apparent  what dream you should follow right now.Also, just because you can`t do something now doesn`t mean you can`t do it later.C.