All Ideas Are Not Created Equal

For the past few years now, I have been working through simple business plans to test (on paper anyway) various ideas I have had with which I intend to change the world / earn my fortune / escape the shackles of corporate slavery.

The difficulty for me has been deciding which idea to throw ‘the triplets’ behind. The triplets are your scarce resources of time, money and energy.

I think I have finally worked out a simple 5-point checklist for doing this, which I want to share with you.

By the way , I’m assuming you are, like me, holding down a full-time job whilst trying to ‘bootstrap’ your idea.

1. Understand why you want to start a business. There are many reasons to do so, almost all of them valid under given conditions. The task the wannabe entrepreneur has is to be able to clearly state their particular reason. In my case, it is twofold: Firstly, simply to facilitate a lifestyle – pay off the mortgage; fund the school fees; allow me to open a bookshop without having to worry too much about profit maximisation. Secondly, because there seems to be a genuine need for simplified business planning for the non-expert.
2. Understand your current pressures. A simple spreadsheet may help here. List all of your activities by day, from exercise regimes, to bedtime reading, to meal preparation and so on. Add realistic times to each of these. Then label them according to their degree of necessity. Play-time with my son is critical for me. Watching re-runs of House M.D. less so :) Eliminate anything from your activities spreadsheet that is not a 1 or a 2 on a 5 point scale (where 5 is least important). Show the new activities spreadsheet to your spouse and children, if you have them. No business, especially a bootstrapped one, will be successful without the support of family. They will need to buy-in to this new routine.
3. Understand what’s left. Add up all the free time you now have on your activities spreadsheet. It’s hard to specify an amount here, but I would suggest you need at least five two-hour blocks per week to be viable.
4. Understand what you can do and where you can ask for help. If you’re not a designer, don’t try and design a website. If you’re not a lawyer, don’t try to draft Equity Agreements. Look for free templates online. Ask your social circle for help, recommendations or introductions to experts. Trying to do everything yourself is a huge drain on your energy and time. An hour for me trying to design a website from scratch is a wasted an hour. But in an hour, I can find a good-looking, free template and apply it to my code.
5. Understand what you need to deliver. The trap many people fall into is trying to solve every conceivable problem and lock-in every imaginable feature on day one. Your product does not have to be perfect to be a good product. If you can figure out what one or two features your customers would love to have on day one, you can concentrate on those to the exclusion of all others (unless your customers change their minds…). The 80/20 rule can apply here – 80% of your customers’ pain is probably solved by 20% of the features in your ‘vision’.

With these 5 points, I have gained much greater clarity regarding my ultimate desired outcomes; what I can and cannot do; the changes and sacrifices needed; and what I need to deliver to make all of these things happen.

Thanks to this simple process, I now have a roadmap to follow to bring my ideas to fruition in a reasonably ordered manner, which has got to be less stressful than just diving in feet-first.

As you can see, this is my first post on this blog, so I’d love to know what else you think should be added, removed or changed from this list. Do leave a comment and share.