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This week we explore the steps for getting your next idea off the ground, particularly focussing on the importance of a minimal viable product! Aimed at helping you shape your idea whilst saving you precious time, resources and importantly, delivering a better end product!
A podcast helping companies grow with marketing strategies, automation and time-saving tips and creative solutions.
James: Hello, and welcome to another
episode of behind the madness.
I'm your host, James Roberts,
founder, and owner of method.
We are a growth agency who are hell
bent on unlocking company's potential.
Through graphic design and branding,
web development, web design, digital
marketing, and lead generation,
as well as automation and some
other time saving techniques.
Today, we're going to be talking about
how to get your idea off the ground.
Now, this idea could be something
that you've been thinking about
that you've been brewing over for
the last number of weeks or months.
Or it could be something that you've
been tasked with at work, or it could
be something that you've come up with
as part of a marketing campaign or
strategy that you already have going on.
What we want is this podcast to give you
a number of steps to easily get this new
idea off the ground to get it running.
And to give you some tips and some advice
of what we've learned over the years
through people coming to us with these
ideas and with these new concepts that
they've had and how best to achieve them.
A lot of the time with these ideas, we
break them all down in a similar way.
And it's that, that we want to
cover today in this podcast.
but before we dive in, I really
want to go over some ground rules.
We're a young podcast.
We're only in our 13th episode.
So we're still kind of finding our feet.
And with that we need help you, from our
audience, from our friendly listeners.
Let us know how we're doing, let us
know what subjects you want to hear.
If something's really interesting
to you, or you want us to expand
on something that we've covered.
Then give us a shout.
We're a friendly bunch.
What we want is to produce
more content that is valuable
to you to help everybody out.
We've got our list of clients and
they're fabulous, we love them all to
bits, but we want to help more people.
And the only way of doing that is by
producing content like this podcast, to
be able to help these companies grow.
One of the best ways of doing it is
by producing content that is valuable
to multiple people, to get that
right though, we need input from you.
So help us out.
Help us help more people.
Drop me an email at
james@hellomethod.co.uk with any
suggestions or feedback on the podcast
and we'll build it into the next episode.
Okay.
Without the way let's jump
into today's topic how to get
that new idea off the ground
Today we're looking at
getting ideas off the ground.
Let's say your sat at home after a hard
day's work, you've got your feet up on the
sofa you're watching your favorite soap.
You've got a lovely warm
cup of tea and hand.
Your mind's relaxed and all
of a sudden you get hit with
this lightning bolt of an idea.
What are you going to do with it?
Where are you going to start?
As I mentioned it doesn't
have to be that startup.
It could be how you can get
something going within a company.
With all ideas.
There is a long time that is
usually required with incubation,
something where you mull over ideas.
You get creative with them.
And you can take a long time to
get that initial idea to a concept.
And with all of these new ideas that are
coming in, all of a sudden, this little
idea that you had is starting to grow.
It's almost becoming out of control.
You can do this with it all.
And we can add this in and in
the future, it could do this.
But what you want to do is really
prove that concept, that first
initial idea as quickly as possible.
But.
How do we do that?
We have a term called or we haven't
coined it, but it's a term called
MVP, which is minimal viable product.
Jumping into Wikipedia quickly.
A minimal viable product is a version
of a product with just enough features
to be usable by early customers
who can then provide feedback
for future product development.
So let's remove all of the bells and
the whistles that we might've added in.
Oh, it'd be great to do this.
it's easy to get carried away.
With the next thing and all we
could do this and all, when, if
we did this, we could add that in.
But what we really want to focus
on is what couldn't this product,
or the website or this idea,
what couldn't it live without?
What is its main reason?
What is its main objective
and focus on that.
And once we, once we understand
what that is, We can think
about how we can introduce that.
there's a saying that certainly
around tech, which is to fail fast.
The reason say that is you can design
something and develop something
and spend years and years doing it.
And it actually falls over at the
first hurdle and you've got to go
back through all of that, all of
that work that you've already put in.
So, if you can focus on the
main objective for your product.
And think, how can I get this in the
simplest way in front of somebody?
Then we can see if that
core idea is going to work.
Now let's take the example of
you've come up with a new app.
So I want to build a new app, now,
apps are notoriously expensive.
There's a lot of development work.
There's a lot of design work that
needs to go into produce an app.
But if your core.
All it was, was connecting people.
Then, is there anything
else that you can use?
Any other bits of software
that are already out there?
Any other, websites maybe you can utilize
a Facebook group and focus on what
you're trying to achieve with that app.
And if it is connecting people, then,
maybe you can focus down on what that
reason is and set up a Facebook group.
All of a sudden you
haven't had to go down.
A huge development cost.
And you're actually using something,
which rather than weeks months,
even into years of development.
Could actually just be proven quickly
with something that already exists and
your marketplace might already be there.
We often work with this in terms of
websites, people come to us and we
want to launch a new website and it
must have this and it must have that.
And we often go through the why's.
Why must have this?
Why are you wanting to do this?
How is this going to help your customer?
Who are your customers?
So.
Once we've done all of that research, we
can actually say, well, do you know what?
This is going to be a huge amount
of development and you want to
get it live very, very quickly.
How can we bottle the essence
that you want to kind of get
across and get that out quickly.
And it might be that, you know, we don't
go for this whole bespoke build and we
use a, I don't know, Shopify, for example,
and we launched the products to get it out
to the customers really, really quickly.
And we see if that one product
is going to work seeing if
it is going to attract people.
The fact that they wanted to
have a membership site and do
all these other things on the
back of selling that product.
Well, that can come later.
People often struggle
with getting started.
And the reason they do is because
ideas can be plentiful, especially
when you're super excited about
getting something launched.
There is a sales tactic,
which is to sell the step.
And not to worry about
the whole staircase.
We often get carried away through
sales, where we want to sell
everything we can possibly do.
And the next big thing.
But really what we want to
do is focus on that step.
As soon as you start thinking about
the whole staircase, there's a lot
of steps within it and that's how
you don't even take that first step.
Focus on what you need to do first.
What steps do you have to take in
order to progress to other steps?
You'll find that some can't
be done without others.
So all of a sudden you can
start to build up these steps
in an order that makes sense.
And you can break them
down into smaller chunks.
Exactly the same as we've
all heard the expression.
How do you eat an elephant well
it's a little bit at a time.
Then you can do the next step and
the next step and the next step.
But it doesn't have to be
this complicated process.
All of these ideas that are popping
into your head, write them down.
They're going to come in useful.
But a lot of the times,
certainly with startups.
You are going to have
to make the money first.
So you're going to have to get
something in the marketplace.
That's actually starting to make
an income and also proving to
yourself that this idea is feasible.
Then you can go back and revisit.
What's you need to do next.
And I know that these other ideas,
and again, even when it comes to the
secondary idea, how can you launch that
as something as simple as possible.
So let's take a membership system.
So we've already got a website
and all of a sudden we want
to create a membership system.
We're going to offer
some ways of engagement.
So people through this membership
system are going to have a
reason to keep coming back.
We could also offer discount codes.
We could also do a forum.
We could also do a lot of things, but
if we wanted to focus down on what
is the reason that these people are
going to use this membership site?
Why are we creating it in the first place?
And let's just build that.
The discount codes, the area where they
can chat, where they can connect with
other members that can all be bolted on,
but if you, if you spend all this time
building all of these bits and bobs, and
they're not being used, you've actually
wasted a huge amount of time and not got
anything launched in the first place.
You'd be surprised, the amount of people
who we get in through our doors with
these initial ideas, mainly startups who
don't really know where to get started.
And they get overwhelmed.
Now.
With the amount we get through our doors,
there must be a huge amount who don't.
They just don't know where to start.
And these brilliant ideas that we've had
in our head are just going to go nowhere.
Because of the issues we
have in getting them started.
So focusing on an MVP will give us the
steps on what's the core value here.
What can't I live without?
And what's going to give me the most.
The most benefit to even
progress with this idea.
Launching any product
or idea is expensive.
And sometimes.
Getting the product built, designed.
And out into the world.
No matter what it is, is
going to take some capital.
But you might be surprised that the
marketing budget can sometimes be more
than that initial product expense.
So all of a sudden having a gut feel
about an idea, just isn't enough.
You need to get data feedback from
people who aren't family members.
To be able to go to investors or to take
it to the next level, to get funding.
in able to get this
product off the ground.
Here's a method we're going
to try and help people as much
as we can, as we already know.
That's that's our mission is to help
companies reach their potential.
But what if these companies
can't even get that started?
I hate the idea that there
are some amazing ideas
cooped up in people's brains.
And there is a fear that they just
don't know what to do with them, where
to get these, these ideas started.
So.
If you have an idea and you
just want to bounce it off
somebody we're a friendly bunch.
Drop us an email, or even just pick
up the phone and speak to us, we
can give you the steps or even a
rough cost of what it might cost.
To get something into the world.
At least this will give you an
idea and hopefully you'll be
able to take that first step
and be the next mark zuckerberg.
That's it for this episode
of behind the madness.
I hope it helped you think
through how to get your ideas
started and get that ball rolling.
Every idea deserves an opportunity
to flourish and working out how to
get that idea moving can sometimes
take a bit of thought process.
If you have any questions for me,
any questions about the podcast?
Any questions about how to
get your idea off the ground?
Drop me an email.
Send it toJames@hellomethod.co.uk.
Until next time thanks for listening