So you’re thinking about going it alone, telling your boss you won’t be in on Monday and then setting the world alight with your great idea.
One of the hardest decisions a would-be entreprenuer has to make is when to give up the day job. You know, the one that pays the bills.
Is it go for broke, give up the well-paid job & pray the sales come in? (and before the bank manager reaches for the valium) or juggle both, pay the mortgage but delay establishing the business properly and maiky your first million.
Starting part-time may be an option. There is no right or wrong, just what works best for you. Although if you are hoping to attract investors then the ‘juggle both’ option is not an option. They’ll want full-time committment, nothing less and quite rightly.
So how do you make the choice?
One way is some brief market research. Test the water. Produce a small number of samples and get honest feedback from potential customers.
When Innocent Drinks was founded by three Cambridge graduates – Richard Reed, Adam Balon and Jon Wright in 1998, after spending six months working on smoothie recipes and £500 on fruit, the trio decided to test their idea from a stall at a music festival in London.
But how to quantify the research? Not just ‘I think we did OK’ but statistics that stood up as reliable.
Well, you know I like the quirky and if you can introduce quirky into market research, you get my vote. As well as a lot of free publicity.
So what did Richard, Adam & Jon do?
They asked visitors to their stall to put their empty bottles in a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ bin depending on whether they thought the three should quit their jobs to make smoothies.
Nothing complicated, definitely not sophisticated but by the end of the day when the Yes Bin was overflowing they had their answer.
Innocent Drinks is now a business employing over 200 people with a turnover of £100m pa and with their products now available in 7000 retail outlets.
Reliable market research? Another one for the Yes Bin.
