If you’re wondering how to start a business, it may be easier than you think. Like other successful businesses, you’ll want to make sure you have a good idea first. From there, you can build a product or service that solves a need for consumers. But before you jump into anything, you’ll want to make sure you do your research. This is crucial, because only an estimated 79.4% of companies survive their first year in operation. So, whether you’re starting a business in retirement or just looking to earn more cash, you’ll want to find the right startup growth strategies.

Look at competitors: Analyzing competing products or services can give you an idea of what already exists in your industry. This can help you find ways to improve your idea. It can also help you target weaknesses in your product or service before you spend time and money creating it. Be sure to note your competitor’s prices during this process, which will give you a range of how much customers are currently spending on similar products.

Once you have your small business idea, your next step is to see if it’s worth pursuing. To do this, rely on market research and be sure to analyze your competition. This will help you gauge your audience’s interest. Identify your target customers you can do this by looking at who benefits from your product. You’ll also want to look at factors like age, location and even marital status.

Conduct Research About Business Idea

Fun thoughts aside, however, my “hmm” reflex at historical comparisons is strong, and it’s been further honed by the “Is this fascism?” wars of 2016–21. At least one historian of the 1920s whom I reached out to for an interview for this piece said that the prediction of a “new ’20s” was so strained as to be not worth exploring. Steve LeVine, focusing on points of economic comparison in that piece in Marker, also thought: Probably not. LeVine points out a few key.

I describe the “fun” parts of Only Yesterday because they’re wonderful, but also to make a point about the origin story we’ve learned about the mood of the ’20s. Looking back at Allen’s work from the vantage point of 1986, historian David M. Kennedy argued that the biggest failing of the book was its lack of historical depth: “Rarely did Allen forge an explanatory chain whose links ran back more deeply into the past than 1917.” And indeed, Allen seemed to blame World War I for every ash-covered carpet and scarred dining table. Young people who had been overseas and seen so much blood were not ready to conform, Allen wrote:

Allen is also really good at describing parties—or, at least, the ones the middle class and upper class attended. The historian wrote about how women taking up smoking had “strewed the dinner table with their ashes, snatched a puff between the acts, invaded the masculine sanctity of the club car, and forced department stores to place ornamental ash-trays between the chairs in their women’s shoe departments.” In what I think may be the best passage in the book, Allen described the way 1920s partygoers stepped all over every previous genteel convention:

Anyway, let’s get to that fun. A very joyful book to read about the decade is Frederick Lewis Allen’s Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920s, which Allen—a blueblood journalist and editor at Harper’s—published in 1931. The book chronicles all of the movement and motion that makes the decade sexy, and doesn’t seem to miss a fad.

The property, complete with a 30-seat screening room, a 100-seat amphitheater and a swimming pond with sandy beach and outdoor shower, was asking about $40 million, but J. Lo managed to make it hers for $28 million. As the Bronx native acquires a new home in California, she is trying to sell a gated compound.

A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

In today’s world, building a business also means you’ll need a strong website and social media presence. These can help you learn your customers better. With them, you can even request customers’ email addresses so you can reach them directly as you promote your business.

Build Your Business

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Analyzing competing products or services can give you an idea of what already exists in your industry. This can help you find ways to improve your idea. It can also help you target weaknesses in your product or service before you spend time and money creating it. Be sure to note your competitor’s prices during this process, which will give you a range of how much customers are currently spending on similar products.

From there, you can build a product or service that solves a need for consumers. But before you jump into anything, you’ll want to make sure you do your research. This is crucial, because only an estimated 79.4% of companies survive their first year in operation.