7 Steps to Validating Your Business Idea: Step 1

Do you dream about starting a business that offers freedom and creates a bigger patient impact?

Several Pharmacist-entrepreneurs (Pharmapreneurs) have taken the necessary steps to build innovative and successful businesses.  In this new series, I will walk you through the 7 Steps to Identifying and Validating your business idea.

One of the most common barriers for new entrepreneurs is not knowing where to begin.  Pharmacists are becoming increasingly dissatisfied with our profession.  I should know, I was one of them.  Things changed for me when I began my community pharmacy MTM consulting business.  

If you have been fantasizing about quitting your job and starting a business in order to lead a more flexible lifestyle, check out these seven steps to validating your business idea.

1. Let Curiosity Lead You to Your Passion
When successful entrepreneurs give the advice “follow your passion” they tend to leave out one key detail: some passions start out as merely vague interests.  

First, I was curious about consulting.  
Then, I felt called by the impact I was having on my patients.  My curiosity led me to learning more about business and figuring out what type of consulting business I wanted to build.  
Once I had a successful business model, I starting writing articles about what I had learned to help educate other pharmacists.

The first step to validating an idea can appear quite passive.  Essentially the first step is letting your idea ruminate, exploring it and allowing your curiosity to lead you to a subject.  

If you are luck, it may even lead you straight to your passion.

If you are ready to explore your curiosity about entrepreneurship and want to build a pharmacy consulting business of your own, I invite you to the join the E-course and Community at PharmapreneurAcademy.com   In the self paced video E-course Lessons, I will guide you through the steps you need to build and market your business quickly and help you to side-step any roadblocks that you encounter on your journey.  In the Forum, I provide group coaching and answer your individual questions.  The Community is a place to find support and inspiration for building your Dream Career.

Still exploring?  Listen to my latest Pharmacy Podcast episode with Pharmapreneur Academy member Paula Belle and hear how she built her consulting business from one client to eight and counting!  

And when you are ready to join, just go to Pharmapreneur Academy, sign up and get INSTANT access to all 7 Lessons and check out all the great discussions in The Academy Forum.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Blair Green Thielemier, PharmD is an independent consultant pharmacist living in Arkansas with her husband and daughter.  She is the founder of Pharmapreneur Academy, an online teaching platform where she guides pharmacist-entrepreneurs through the process and barriers of building a pharmacy consulting business.  She is the author of How to Build a Pharmacy Consulting Business: Your Rx for Finding Freedom and Loving Your Career, a contributing author for Pharmacy Times and guest host on the Pharmacy Podcast.  More information about Dr. Thielemier can be found on her website BTPharmacyConsulting.com