I’ve have never tried to get this very personal process down in one place before. From idea through to a real business step by step, with as many of my own personal techniques and suggestions thrown in, as we go. There are rainforest amounts of books printed about people’s startup experiences – what I’d like to try here is to write about the real techniques and steps I have been through many times before when taking a new business idea and working to move it through to a real product or service. Hopefully a more grounded approach than some of those ‘How to’ or ‘My experience as an Entrepreneur’ books. Well, we’ll see. Questions and comments very welcome!

So, want to start a business? Have the necessary passion to start a new business but are unsure where to start? Looking for that new, innovative, winning new business idea? Or perhaps you’re waiting for divine inspiration to serve up that winning idea like money from heaven before you actually get up off that sofa and GO FOR IT. Sorry to burst your bubble – waiting won’t make it happen. You have to ‘create’ it yourself. But maybe it’s closer and easier to get than you think, maybe you can come up with that idea today.

Here are a few ways that work for me – so much so that they’ve become almost unconscious processes that happen on autopilot and better yet, their easy. Give them a try.

When asked where my ideas for new business come from I often joke that it’s a ‘disease’, something which is uncontrolled, being delivered in the grey matter between my ears without conscious thought or a process. That’s close, but not exactly how it happens.

During my first interview for a role at Procter & Gamble fresh out university one interview question still sticks with me. The interviewer passed a glass across the table and asked me to name ten uses for it. Use number 1 was…a glass, she was unimpressed. Use number 2 was a paper weight, (better but still no cigar), number 3 was a lens to read small print in a document and before I knew what had happened, ten different and increasingly creative (read – crazy) uses had spilled out in the interview room.

That process is not too dissimilar from the process you could try. This redeployment of one product idea (in my case ‘a stack of Pringles’) into another product category (Fire Escape Ladders) helped me come up with the idea for my first company, X-IT Products to produce an idea I’d had for the world’s smallest, safest, strongest fire escape ladder. See the link?

A refinement on that creative free thinking is what we’ll call ‘What if’. Find a product, web service or business that is in the space that you are passionate about and really impresses you. Thought of it?

What’s great about that business? What do you really like about it? Now think about what would make it even better? That would take it from being a great business and make it a world class business. Write down every idea that comes to you….when you feel yourself drying up, read through the list and see if that squeezes any more ideas out of you. Take a read through that list and see if any light bulbs go off in your head – any really obvious improvements or refinements to that already great business?

The third approach that might work even better for you is what I’ll call the ‘Pissed Off’ brainstorm. Has a product, service or business failed to live up to it’s promise? Maybe they over sold you or your expectations were mis-aligned with the reality of the business. Maybe they screwed up or the product was faulty. Perhaps they don’t exactly meet your need. But who cares? You do, because this is an opportunity to figure out what the business or product needed to do to deliver on it’s promise, to meet and exceed your expectations. And if they aren’t meeting your needs because of some flaw, figure out what needs to happen to solve it.

Let’s try an example, I’m driving from New York to Philadelphia – it’s lunch time and I’m hungry. Watching the signs as I travel, what are my options? Ah, here we are – McDonalds, Wendy’s, Dunkin Donuts and a few no-brand obscure Italian restaurants. More often than not if I’m hungry enough, I’ll drive through and buy something. But just once, wouldn’t it be good if I could get something that was healthier. It’s true that most of these places sell salads but then the light bulb goes off! Before Whole Foods selling organic and more ‘wholesome’ food, most supermarkets were similar. Whole Foods changed the supermarket ‘game’ – what about a motor way food joint that changes the game in the same way as Whole Foods?

A quick, drive through that offers freshly prepared, all organic, non-greasy, non-salad food? As of today, at least on the routes I drive, they would be the only food chain of its type. Talk about cornering an underserved market. Surely not everyone want’s a burger or a slice of pizza? Is this a winning idea? Who know’s but it could make someone a lot of money if it takes off. Don’t forget my percentage if you make this one a reality!

So, there are other ways that these ideas are created but hopefully these few are good as a start, so:

Product Design New Application:
Think of how one product or design can be re-deployed to solve other problems

What If?:
How could a great product or business be a ‘world class’ business? How does it need to change or improve?

The Pissed Off Brainstorm:
If only X did it this way….why couldn’t they just do Y?

Try these approaches and see where they take you. Feel free to come back and post how you get on. Maybe then I can write an article on some ‘what to do next’ steps for your new winning idea.

When you find your winning idea then you are already further along than most ‘would be’ entrepreneurs, now to go an make it a reality.

Sign up to our mailing list if you would like to get more ideas for your Startup Success!

Andrew

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We launched Advisor Garage in 2004.  At that point, Advisor Garage had cost me just under $20K. I had one really smart guy build it, as I was about as capable of building it, as I am of doing my own dentistry.

When we launched Advisor Garage, we charged members a grand total of zero dollars – that’s Nada, Zip, Zilch, bumpkiss AKA Nothing! And during its four years of life, we went on to charge people zero on a daily basis. During that time, we continued to spend money on the business – servers, programmers, adsense and so on. We were so ‘Not-For-Profit’ we should have received a medal!

That doesn’t sound too smart does it?

…Perhap you’re asking yourself – “So why did you launch it Andrew?”

Good question – well, here are a few reasons I would tell my Start-Up Therapist if I could still afford one…

REASON #1)

We are entrepreneurs too and had been through the challenges and sometimes pain of starting businesses. We realized that not only was it TOUGH but what makes it even tougher is pulling the PIECES together.  The cash, the first few employees, the people to help develop the product or service, the new channels to market, the sales expertise, the legals and accounting stuff, finding the office – ALL of it.  You can only do it all yourself, while sitting in a Starbucks all day trying to make a venti last, for so long – after that, you need to find others to make your business idea real and Advisor Garage was about bringing people together to help make that happen.

REASON #2) 

I had this idea and I couldn’t shake it…I just HAD to bring it to the world. Being an entrepreneur is sometimes like that – you do it because if you don’t, the idea will continue to nag at you like a little yappy dog until you take it seriously and pat its head for a while. With Startups the ‘while’ often turns into ‘years’. Call it a disease but that’s how it happens. Well, it does for me anyhow. Boy do I need that Start-Up therapist!

REASON #3)

And here’s the kicker – we thought by launching Advisor Garage, we would maybe, perhaps, if we were lucky, with the wind in the right direction…stumble onto a few more great ideas to add value for other entrepreneurs. And, as luck would have it, WE DID!

So…we are transitioning into the next stage of Advisor Garage’s existence, and even as I type – the strands of Advisor garage Mark II are being pulled together…but just to make sure we are going to hit the right target - I have some questions for you, our (hopefully), soon-to-be customers…

1. What is the biggest frustration you face as an entrepreneur?

2. What result or outcome do you want to achieve?

 

3. if you could have anything happen as an entrepreneur, what would it be?

 

4. What information do you need right now that you can’t find answers to?

 

5. Do you need help securing angel or venture capital investors? If so what kind of help do you need specifically?

 

You would be doing us a favor if you could cut and paste these questions into an email and sending your answers to:

 

andrew (@) advisorgarage (dot) com

 

If you haven’t already – join our mailing list and we’ll let you know when the NEW and IMPROVED Advisor Garage is launched and also how it can Help You Successfully Launch Your Start-Up.

 

Until next time.

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About four years ago, I worked with a smart group of people to design and build Advisor Garage.  At the time, dating websites were growing exponentially – it seemed even my postman was about to set up his own version of match.com.  But Advisor Garage was not a dating site to help people met the partner of their dreams…

Advisor Garage was set up to help entrepreneurs ‘connect and date’ advisors and mentors.

This is how we (as tried and tested Entrepreneurs) thought about it…

No Entrepreneur is an Island…Like a great beer – Start-Ups often require a multitude of ingredients…:

A GREAT idea… A plan of execution… Motivated People… Money… A place to do business… Legal support… Marketing… Technology… Money… A Channel to market… Prospective customers with a need… Sales expertise… A Product or Service… Did I mention Money?

…and the list goes on and on.

What about bootstrapping you might ask? Sure – bootstrap – but you still need the above list…and more, you just somehow manage to get them for less. Bootstrapping doesn’t mean no resources – it means cheaper or, if you’re lucky free resources (but remember that saying – you usually ‘get’ what you pay for…).

Pulling all those (and more) elements together can take months – especially for the newbie Entrepreneur – so Advisor Garage was created. The Goal…help ‘connect’ entrepreneurs with advisors with a wide variety of expertise and contacts so they could save themselves weeks and months they would usually spend to find and pull these pieces of the Start-Up jigsaw puzzle together. 

Let me say that in a slightly different way – Advisor Garage’s goal:  Help entrepreneurs shave off months from Start to Market to CASH!

Cash is the oxygen of a new business – Again – Cash is the OXYGEN of the business. ALL Businesses. No exceptions. Private or public sector – for profit or not-for-profit.

Cash keeps the lights on – the people coming through the front door – the computers humming and the telephones ringing. Everything is about CASH. Without it, you can’t service the customer, be a Green company, employ people or yourself or whatever your own, specific, world changing goals for your Start-Up might be.

CASH IS THE START AND END OF A BUSINESS. If you don’t believe me – Go ask General Motors! 

During the three years Advisor Garage was live – over 1000 advisors joined! That’s a THOUSAND Advisors with enormous diversity of contacts, experience and access to resources to help entrepreneurs cut weeks and months off of the cost and time it takes them to start and build their businesses. 

By plugging into great advisors could mean shaving months off the time it takes to bring a business to market. So what?

Those saved months could be critical in terms of securing your first customers…getting ahead of your competition…building your brand and market – but bottom line – it gets you faster to the cash!

During those three years building Advisor Garage I was lucky enough to meet and connect with some great Advisors and entrepreneurs and about six months ago I woke up one morning and had a ‘Eureka moment’…

Advisor Garage had been growing day by day but my Eureka moment told me there was a better way to help entrepreneurs…I felt a broad smile spread across my face as it all fell into place inside my head. 

That day I took down Advisor Garage and began to focus on the Advisor Garage re-launch – a re-launch which would completely change the product /service Advisor Garage delivered but which would offer SIGNIFICANTLY MORE VALUE to entrepreneurs and multiply their chances of successfully launching and growing their young business!

So – We haven’t set a re-launch date yet as we’re still working on it and want to make sure it’s ‘just right’ but if you are interested in finding out how Advisor Garage can SIGNIFICANTLY enhance your chance of Start-Up success and shave months off your time to market and to cash then head over to Advisor Garage and sign up to our mailing list.  We’ll tell you all about our re-launch just before the BIG day!

Next post I’ll tell you a little bit about Advisor Garage’s sister sites that we are also busy developing – Angel Garage and VC Garage…by all means ‘comment’ if you have any ideas about what they may do or even better – what they could do for you and your start up.

Here’s to YOUR Start-Up Success!

Andrew

 

 

 

 

 

 

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