In the mid-1950’s my grandfather, Zit Levan, received a call from a friend inviting him to move from Brooklyn, New York to Miami, Florida to partner in a new pest control business. He answered the call, and moved – leaving behind my grandmother, father, and uncle. He started Vanguard Pest Control, and brought the rest of the family down a year later.
25 years later, my grandfather retired and my uncle took over the business. As the business was growing, they moved to a new building. At that time, phone numbers were associated with physical locations and the phone number didn’t change just because the business at that location did. As soon as they arrived, the phone started ringing for the travel agency that had been the prior tenants.
What to do? The phone is ringing for the prior business. It’s distracting, annoying, and persistent. My grandfather, recognizing an opportunity answered the call. He and my grandmother got licensed as travel agents and spent the next 30 years booking and leading tours around the world.
The phone is ringing, can you hear it?
It’s there in the back of your mind. In your gut. In the kernel of an idea that you have been nurturing for a while. In the “what if” you have been thinking about. In the little change you can see making to the industry that you are in. In the service you can see offering in your community. In the improvement you can see making in your world.
Now is the time.
“Now”, you ask? “When the whole world is shutting down? Why would you start a business now?”
It’s true. It seems like the whole world is on fire. Where everyone you know has been furloughed. Where half of the entire world is under a shelter in place order. Why would you start a business now?
Well, the fact is fires are incredibly transformative. Forest fires provide the heat necessary to clear away the dead underbrush and crack open the new seeds. Come back to a field where a forest fire has happened a year later and you will find tons of new growth and activity.
Answer the Call. Plant a seed now.
“But how,” you say? “I don’t know how to launch my business or I would have already done it.”
It has never been easier.
We have all the tools we need to go in days or weeks from idea to market validation to paying customers. The hard things are figuring out the right problems to solve for the right set of customers and finding the best possible solutions.
To find the answers, ask the right questions:
What’s the problem you are solving?
Who has the problem?
In what situations do they encounter the problem?
What are their goals in those situations?
Who has already solved parts of the problem?
What learnings can you extract from their solutions?
How can you combine those learnings into a new solution?
How can you test, validate, and improve your solution.
How do you launch and spread your idea?
How do you make your solution great?
How do you create an achievable plan to get to launch?
You can make the change you imagine. You can have the business you want.