How to assess a business opportunity part 1: Time

Since I’m self-employed and do quite a lot of networking I’m often approached by people trying to get me interested in their business opportunity. And that made me ask the question: Is there a process for ‘how to assess a business opportunity’?

Now I’m very keen on doing business and I know that many people would greatly benefit from an additional income source from their spare time.

In this article and over the following four I’ll be showing you a very simple methodology for assessing a business opportunity and making the decision on whether what has been presented to you would work for you.

So if you could do with extra income, read on and learn how to assess a business opportunity.

There’s 5 parts to this series:

Time
Interest
Money
Expertise
Motivation

So let’s start with Time:

It is absolutely vital before you commit to doing any kind of spare time business activity that you make an honest assessment of how much time you can realistically dedicate to your business over a prolonged period.

If you can’t give enough time then your business will be slow to start and it’s likely that you will become frustrated by the slow progress. And this will increase the chances of you quitting.

One of the benefits of a network marketing business is that it is usually a tried and tested methodology for business growth where you can quickly learn a system and quickly train a team to follow that system. This helps to leverage your time, where your business can grow without you constantly having to manage your group since they should become more self-sufficient.

Many network marketing experts suggest you need to dedicate between 8 and 15 hours a week to make progress on your business quickly enough to keep you interested.

If there isn’t a well documented model for your business, do you have the time to learn what you need to increase your chances of success?

Even if you start something as simple as a blogging business you will still need to dedicate up to three evenings a week (possibly more) to write and promote your blog. This could easily add up to 8 or more hours per week.

The key here is to work out whether you can readily dedicate sufficient time, week in and week out, over the foreseeable future to give your new business opportunity the best chance of success.

You need to ask yourself: Can you fit this activity around your lifestyle and family? Is it possible that family members can help with some of the work?

However, there is still a couple of things to bear in mind here: most of the work in any new business venture is all at the beginning as you push to gain some momentum.

Having been in this position myself I know how difficult it can be to stay motivated when all you seem to be doing is working and, on the face of it, not getting very far or making much progress.

Also, it usually does takes time to get some kind of traction or visible progress in any new business start-up. It’s very rare for a new business to start making money right after starting up, these things take time and it’s vital that you take this into account.

So, can you see yourself giving up several evenings a week for the next year? If not, then it may be possible that the business opportunity that you are considering isn’t right for you.

Have any thoughts on this? Please feel free to share them in the comments below.