Choosing a business can feel like one of the most important decisions you will ever make.
Perhaps you have several ideas. One seems more profitable. Another is closer to your professional experience. Another is something you have always enjoyed doing. You may have spent months researching different opportunities, watching videos, attending business events and asking successful entrepreneurs what they think you should do.
Yet you are still unsure.
The difficulty is that most people begin with the wrong question.
They ask:
“Which business can make me the most money?”
That matters. A business ultimately has to generate income. But before asking whether an opportunity can make money, there is another question I believe you should ask:
Is this the right business for me?
Because a good business opportunity is not necessarily the right business opportunity for you.
The £200,000 Mistake
I knew someone who had a genuine interest in farming and solar energy.
Then, unexpectedly, he became involved with a partner in developing a music-streaming business in an African country.
I asked him why.
He had no real experience of the music-streaming industry. He didn’t understand the technology behind such a platform or how the backend of the business operated. His primary experience of music streaming was the same as most of us: he consumed music online.
This created a serious problem.
Because he didn’t understand the business well enough, it was difficult for him to assess whether the person they had employed to develop the platform was actually delivering what had been promised.
By the time he came to speak to me, he and his partner had invested more than £200,000.
Eventually, they discovered that the person they trusted to develop the business had taken them for a ride. Money that should have gone into developing the venture had disappeared while the developer was living lavishly and buying properties.
The business collapsed.
Worse still, some of the money had been borrowed from institutions, friends and family members.
It was a painful experience.
But the story didn’t end there.
Afterwards, my friend returned to something much closer to his genuine interests: farming. He eventually started a poultry business.
That business is now doing extremely well.
What changed?
There are obviously many differences between the two ventures, but one of the most important is easy to overlook:
The second business fitted the founder.
A Profitable Opportunity Can Still Be the Wrong Opportunity
When people are deciding which business to start, money naturally becomes part of the decision.
They see somebody succeeding in property and think about property.
They hear about people making money from artificial intelligence and begin looking for an AI opportunity.
Someone tells them about a profitable franchise, e-commerce opportunity or emerging industry, and suddenly they begin wondering whether they should enter it too.
There is nothing inherently wrong with noticing opportunities.
The mistake is assessing the opportunity without assessing your relationship to the opportunity.
An industry can be growing rapidly.
The market can be enormous.
Customers can be spending millions.
Other entrepreneurs can be making fortunes.
And it can still be the wrong business for you.
That is why I believe we need to go beyond the traditional idea of Product–Market Fit.
Founder–Product–Market Fit
Product–Market Fit asks an essential question: does the market genuinely want what you are offering?
But before you get there, I believe there is another fit worth exploring:
Founder–Product–Market Fit.
It asks whether there is alignment between three things:
You, the problem you are solving, and the market you want to serve.
Your experience matters.
Your skills and natural abilities matter.
Your interests matter.
Your life experiences matter.
The problems you understand matter.
Your ability to reach potential customers matters.
And, of course, whether those customers actually care enough about the problem to pay for a solution matters.
This doesn’t mean that you must already be an expert in everything required to build the business. Founders learn, develop new capabilities, find partners and bring in people who know things they don’t.
But there should be enough alignment for the opportunity to make sense.
Don’t just assess the opportunity. Assess the founder.
The Millionaire Question
When someone comes to me with several possible business ideas, there are a number of questions I can ask.
But there is one question that can reveal quite a lot.
Imagine that tomorrow morning you became a millionaire.
You no longer needed to work for money.
You had travelled to the places you wanted to visit. You had bought your house and cars. You had helped your family. You had given money away and been a blessing to other people.
You still wanted to work, but now you were working because you wanted to spend your time doing something meaningful and enjoyable.
Which of your business ideas would you choose?
It’s a deceptively simple question.
What it does is temporarily remove money from the decision.
And sometimes, once money is removed, people immediately know which opportunity they would choose.
That tells us something.
It doesn’t prove that the idea will become a viable business. We still need customers. We still need demand. We still need people willing to pay.
But it helps us discover which opportunity may have the strongest connection to the founder.
Don’t Just “Follow Your Passion”
This is not an argument for blindly following your passion.
“Do what you love and the money will follow” is incomplete business advice.
You can love doing something that nobody wants to buy.
Equally, you can discover something extremely profitable that you are capable of doing but would hate spending the next five years of your life building.
Neither extreme is what we are looking for.
The stronger opportunity is usually somewhere at the intersection of:
- What you care about
- What you are naturally good at or capable of learning
- Your knowledge, experience and life experiences
- A real problem experienced by identifiable people
- People who are willing and able to pay for a solution
Money belongs in the equation.
It just shouldn’t necessarily be the first thing driving the decision.
The Seven Signs You May Have Found the Right Business
Within the Founder’s Journey Framework, I use seven signs to help founders think more carefully about whether they may have found the right opportunity.
1. You genuinely care about the problem
Is this a problem or area you find yourself naturally interested in?
You don’t have to wake up thinking about it every morning, but there should be enough genuine interest to keep you engaged when building the business becomes difficult.
2. Your background gives you an advantage
Your professional experience, personal experiences, education, relationships or previous work may have given you insights that someone approaching the problem from the outside would not possess.
Ask yourself:
What do I know about this problem that gives me an advantage?
3. Customers genuinely care about the problem
Your interest isn’t enough.
There must be real people experiencing the problem you want to solve.
And ultimately, enough of them must be willing and able to pay for your solution.
4. You enjoy learning about the area
Building a business will require you to learn.
If you find the subject interesting enough to keep exploring, asking questions and developing your understanding, that is another positive sign.
5. You can imagine yourself doing this for the next few years
You don’t have to commit to doing it for the rest of your life.
But can you realistically imagine yourself remaining interested in this business for the next three to five years?
6. People already recognise something valuable in you
Do people already ask for your help in this area?
Have you solved similar problems informally?
Have people complimented your ability, asked your advice or referred others to you?
Sometimes the market has already been giving you clues.
7. The founder, problem and market begin to overlap
This is where everything starts coming together.
There is something you care about.
Your background gives you something useful to contribute.
There is a real problem.
There are identifiable customers.
And there is evidence that people will pay to have that problem solved.
That is where Founder–Product–Market Fit begins to emerge.
Do All Seven Signs Need to Be Present?
No.
Someone once asked me whether they needed to see all seven signs before choosing a business.
I don’t think so.
These are signs, not a rigid pass-or-fail formula.
However, if you can only identify one or two, I would be cautious about investing heavily in that opportunity.
Suppose you have no relevant experience, little interest in the problem, no easy way of delivering the solution, cannot imagine yourself doing it for the next few years and don’t know anyone experiencing the problem or anyone who can connect you to those people.
Why would that be your first choice?
There may be another opportunity sitting much closer to you that gives you considerably more to start with.
You Don’t Have to Choose Your Business for Life
Another reason people remain stuck is that they make the decision too big.
They think:
“What if I choose this and realise in ten years that I should have done something else?”
You are not choosing what you will do for the next 40 years.
You are choosing what deserves serious exploration now.
Can you see yourself doing it for the next few years?
Does it fit your current interests, experience and capabilities?
Can you begin delivering something without waiting years?
Can you identify people who have the problem?
If there is sufficient evidence, that may be enough to move forward.
The Founder’s Journey is a journey precisely because both the business and the founder will change.
If You Have Several Ideas, Don’t Test Them All at Once
This is one of the most important things I would encourage you not to do.
Suppose you have three promising ideas.
It can be tempting to test all three simultaneously.
Don’t.
If you are trying to build three businesses at once, you divide your time, energy, money, attention and learning between them.
After six months you may conclude that none of them worked.
But the truth may be that none of them received enough focused attention to discover whether they could work.
Instead, rank your opportunities.
Which has the strongest Founder–Product–Market Fit?
Choose that one.
Then give it a proper test.
Give One Idea 90 Days
I recommend giving your strongest idea 90 days of focused exploration.
That doesn’t mean spending 90 days secretly building something before showing it to anybody.
Quite the opposite.
During those 90 days:
Talk to potential customers.
Observe their problems.
Test your assumptions.
Make offers.
Try to generate your first sales.
Ask for feedback.
Learn.
Adapt.
The purpose of the 90 days isn’t to prove that your original idea was perfect.
It is to generate enough real-world evidence to decide whether you should continue, adapt or walk away.
That is far more valuable than spending the same 90 days jumping between five ideas.
Before You Climb the Mountain…
If you are currently trying to decide which business to start, don’t begin by asking which opportunity could make you the most money.
Ask a better question:
Which opportunity has the strongest fit between who I am, what I can offer, the problem being solved and people willing to pay to solve it?
Then choose one.
Explore it.
Give it 90 days.
Let the real world teach you.
You are not committing yourself to this business forever. You are simply giving the strongest opportunity enough focused attention to reveal whether there is something worth building.
This is the work of what I call the Explorer Stage of the Founder’s Journey.
Before you spend years climbing the mountain, it is worth making sure:
You’re climbing the right one.
Where Are You on the Founder’s Journey?
If you are unsure whether you are still exploring the right opportunity, trying to turn early sales into sustainable income, building a business that can operate reliably without depending entirely on you, or moving into growth, the Founder’s Journey Assessment can help you identify where you are.
Take the FREE Founder’s Journey Assessment to discover your current stage, what deserves your attention now and what you may need to work on next.
Access the FREE FOUNDER’S JOURNEY ASSESSMENT TOOL HERE: https://forms.gle/tTwiiRcGc61WznW66.