Idea to Income: 6 Lessons to Get You Started Pt.1
This is part 1 of a 3 part series titled “The 3 I’s of Entrepreneurship”
For millennials, living our dreams is the centerpiece of our canvas called life.
But of course, society doesn’t run off our thoughts. It takes money to move things forward.
The power of reflection can create wonders by pulling the ideas out of your mind and bringing them to the forefront.
Below are the 6 lessons we learned while creating Black Couple Travels. These lessons learned will help you accelerate your goals, too!
[ihc-hide-content ihc_mb_type=”show” ihc_mb_who=”3,4″ ihc_mb_template=”4″ ]
Lesson 1: Realize your passion
Let’s start with three questions:
- What do you think about frequently that you just can’t seem to shake or get out of your mind?
- What do you know or do better than anyone else around you?
- What are your family, friends, and peers consistently asking you to do for them?
Reflection time spent on realizing your talents is worth it!
Lesson 2: Formulate an idea
An idea is a thought that’s planned out. Keep in mind something called the “marketplace”. It’s where people come to buy your offerings. Your marketplace is your friends, family, and neighborhood.
When you understand the needs of the market around you, it will guide you in crafting the answers to the void of people’s desires.
For example, our marketplace consisted of individuals who wanted to know good places to travel and they wanted to invest beyond their 401k-pension plans. Bam! Black Couple Travels was born.
Let’s do an exercise.
Write down every idea you can think of in 10 minutes. Do not judge yourself. There is no right, wrong, or bad idea. Just let your mind flow freely. After you have written these ideas down, select your top 3 ideas. Start thinking about how to formulate the idea with 3 things in mind:
- Does it make sense?
- What do I need to get started?
- Are there people already doing this?
This should help you get going in the right direction!
Lesson 3: Define your goals
© Black Couple Travels
Create a vision board. Look at goals as something to admire. Char and I have a vision wall that consists of multiple short-term and long-term vision boards. When we wake up, we look at them every day and it keeps us on track to complete our daily task of conquering success.
Also, understand that goals are the marker or milestones to keep you on the path of success. You have to be so passionately engulfed in your vision that you see it in your dreams. And that is when you can manifest it into your reality.
Lesson 4: State your identity
There is power in picking a good name for your brand that stands the test of time. Never neglect the advantage of SEO. We receive requests from media outlets, brand managers and others on partnering with Black Couple Travels because we show up first in Google automatically. You have to choose a name that’s easy to remember and easy to say. Ask yourself, what’s unique about your name? Your uniqueness can be found in its simplicity.
Lesson 5: Define your presence
Today we are playing in an everchanging technological space. The major social media platforms change their rules quite often. One day you can have many views and be bringing in a steady income, then the next they change how you make money.
What you need to do is be self-reliant while leveraging technology to build your platform.
Start by:
- getting a domain name
- choosing the right host to build your website
- picking the right theme
- Setting up accounts on social media platforms
Also, it is very important to own your identity. Building a website is the number one way of establishing an audience. We often fall for the trap of convenience while not even realizing that social media owns us. It’s time to gain your power back and own it.
Lesson 6: Test the market
We believe that the best school is experience. You have to have skin in the game in order to learn what you need to know. Test out your product, platform or service by boosting posts, and running online campaigns as well. See what works, doesn’t work, and needs to be improved to ensure that your product or service is market ready.
Final Thoughts
The biggest problem for millennial entrepreneurs is that we sit in our minds all day.
Stop delaying, doubting, and second-guessing your abilities. We are the fearless generation that has been blessed with easier techniques to build brands and work from anywhere in the world. There are no limits for us. Start taking advantage.
These lessons are how we created Black Couple Travels. If you want more insights or have additional questions, email us at blackcoupletravels@gmail.com.
[/ihc-hide-content]
