The Google search “how to become an entrepreneur” provides over 200 million results with most
providing some slight variation of the following basic steps.
- Discover or invent your “eureka” offering.
- Identify a market for your “eureka” offering.
- Find funding to execute your business plan.
- Execute your business plan and become wealthy.
Apparently discovering your “eureka” offering and finding a buying market must be obvious, warranting no additional information. And every aspiring entrepreneur must already know how to launch a company, penetrate a new market, compete with well-branded competitors, and scale a company.
Oh, and finding and convincing investors, venture capitalists and loan officers to provide you with
hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash must be as simple as picking up a gallon of milk on your way home from work. Seriously, the advice most gurus, thought leaders and motivational speakers provide about becoming a successful entrepreneur is as helpful as “drive to the local convenience store and buy a winning lottery ticket.”
No single checklist will ever work for an aspiring entrepreneur. Why? Because everybody’s situation is completely different. Think about it. If a checklist did exist to launch a successful company and achieve financial independence, then wouldn’t it be the most popular text in the world? Let’s be honest, the odds are against aspiring entrepreneurs, especially with the limited real help that’s available to help them. To be successful launching a company, you need a proven, actionable process.
Without achieving success following numerous generic and completely useless startup processes, plans, checklists and templates, GCA Founder, Randy Wimmer, decided to use to a framework, or process, that he developed to address complex challenges. It’s called the DADDEE Framework. DADDEE is an acronym for Dream, Analyze, Define, Develop, Execute and Evaluate. And here’s the crazy part of the DADDEE Framework, you must define what each stage means.
For example, “Analyze” begs the question, “analyze what?” Your unique and constantly improving
answers to this question will ultimately have you homing into what really matters for your specific
situation. “Define what?” Define your goals, your scope, your limitations, your opportunities, your…and so on. Develop a go-to-market plan, Minimally Viable Product, a Pre-Seed or Seed Funding Strategy, a whatever.
There are no wrong answers—Only derivations to better ones. And checklists will be used. However,
the trick is to create your own checklists that perfectly align with your unique situation.