The starting Process- Shelbi Brosseau

In Entrepreneurship class taught by Professor Houlihan at Benedictine University we got into groups to address a problem. My group consisting of Thang Nguyen, Kristi Vandewiel and Khamari Robinson   addressing the problem that What do you do when you have an idea but don't know where to start? As we started we had a hard time wanting to jump straight to the solution but we did some brainstorming and came up with questions to interview individuals that have an idea.


We each interviewed individuals that either had an idea or started an idea. The first interviewer was Taylor Boma who has an idea of starting a budgeting app. We went through the interviewing process and asked numerous questions such as  What was the inspiration in coming with your idea. This is a perfect question because most of the time someones idea starts off as benefiting them or something they would want or use, then the more they think about it the idea turns into more of how this can be a business and benefit others as well as myself. The next question that was very vitally is How did you decide the right time to start this business? This question gave us a better understanding of why those that didn't start their idea what is maybe stopping and those that did already start their idea felt that was in fact the right time. Writer Scott Shane states “ When asked to identify what would be entrepreneurs most feared about starting a business, 38% fear of going bankrupt, 37% fear of irregular income, was larger than those who feared personal failure and losing job security”.


The interviewing process results made us realize that we needed to reframe our problem. As a group we came to the conclusion that their is no way we are going to be able to help ever start up entrepreneur and that their a different stages at which people are at in terms of their ideas or businesses. We changed our problem to How do we help those that are fearful of starting their idea?
This then allowed us to find more research by narrowing down our problem.

We then created a survey that consisted of 15 questions more specific to are reframed problem. A few of the questions we asked were what is your biggest fear of starting your idea. This allowed us to see that their is a fact a bit of fear in some of the entrepreneurs and that is what it is stopping them.


This project in class has been very helpful in helping me with my own idea because fear is among all of us at some point. Sometimes people just need to talk out their ideas. Read more in the next blog to know what my group and I decided to do next.