Five ways to test out a new business idea (without having to put yourself out there)

Photo by Bambi Corro on Unsplash

Like many entrepreneurs I know, I am not someone who struggles with new ideas.

My biggest challenge is too many ideas and not enough, time or energy to dedicate to putting them all into action. Maybe you relate?

During my days of building side hustles alongside my corporate job, I’d read a lot of books such as The Lean Start-Up and The $100 Start-Up which advocate for the “Faster-Leaner-Smarter” approach to starting a business. If you’re not familiar, it’s an approach that was born in the tech and car manufacturing industries. It involves taking an idea and making it into a minimum viable product or service as quickly as possible. You then offer it up to potential customers, get their feedback and iterate again and again until you have a profitable service or product that sells well.

The concept was one that I could really get onboard with and in some ways has influenced the approach that I now use with my own clients.

But putting it into practice, I found that there were some very significant pitfalls in trying to apply it as a company-of-one just starting out:

• I was a solo business owner trying to do all of the tasks that larger companies might have several teams worth of people dedicated to

• The fear of visibility as a new business owner was very real when my ‘audience’ was mainly made up of family and friends and a whole world of people I didn’t know

• Making a ‘minimum viable product’ is a pretty tough ask of a (recovering) perfectionist and so by the time I’d created something I was happy to put out in the world, a little bit of my fiery passion had started to die off

• I didn’t really know anything about selling and so wasn’t very good at inviting people to try out my offering, meaning I had a distinct lack of feedback to work with

The result was that I felt like I was always rushing, created a lot of things that didn’t get used and was frequently chopping and changing my offers and my pricing.

Over time, I’ve found several tools to help me get my own ideas out of my head and into the world in a way that works for me. The result is that fewer of the ideas actually make it to the end point, but the ones that do last longer because they are the ones that I really love, feel totally behind and are specifically crafted for the people I know I can help.

A large part of this has been slowing down the creation process, to first check whether this is an idea that:

• I am enthusiastic to pursue

• I have genuine skills and value to add

• Fits with the overall vision and mission of my business

And that’s what I thought I would cover here today:

5 (relatively) low effort ways to test out a new idea for a product, service or business, without having to put yourself out there.

1, Write a long form journal post

Longer form writing is a really good way to flesh out your ideas. You can cover one or all of, what the idea is, why it matters, who it helps, and how it helps them overcome a particular problem or challenge.

2, Make a vision board

Collect a series of images that describe how you imagine this product or service working for your potential clients.

3, Record yourself speaking out loud

I find speaking out loud is one of the most valuable ways to ‘thingify’ my ideas. Use the voice note recorder on your phone and imagine you were describing this new idea to a friend.

4, Map it out

Start with the idea at the core and draw arms as you think through the details of what it’s about.

5, Doodle

I still have a notebook full of doodles of logos and taglines for things that never made it any further than that!

The key is to start getting those thoughts out of your head and into the world in a way that feels comfortable and safe so that you feel encouraged and motivated to move onto the next step, not so far out of your comfort zone that you need to go hibernate in a cave afterwards!

I’d love to know how this lands with you and whether you have any ideas of your own to share. Please feel free to get in touch and let me know if you plan to give any of these a go.