Build a Business From Your Kitchen Table: Testing Your Idea

Sophie Cornish, Holly Tucker

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781471139031
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Sophie Cornish and Holly Tucker are the founders of notonthehighstreet.com, an award-winning, multimillion-pound online marketplace selling thousands of innovative, stylish products. But eight short years ago Sophie and Holly were maxing out their credit cards, trying to secure loans and crossing fingers that their big idea would take off. Now they've written down all the lessons they had to learn the hard way, drawing not just on their experience but also that of the 5, 000 independent businesses they work with. With startling honesty, they lay bare the truth about getting started while raising a young family at the same time. They believe that anyone should be able to achieve a great working life on their own terms. Here's how. Give your business idea a rigorous work-out with the notonthehighstreet.com 'Down & Dirty Test'.

‘‘Genius is 1 per cent inspiration, and 99 per cent perspiration.’

Thomas Edison

If you’ve picked up this book, it’s probably because you’ve got a great idea for a business. Well, congratulations. Ker-ching! And all that.

But how do you know it’s the right idea? What if someone else has had the idea already? How do you tell anyone about your great idea without someone else pinching it and doing it first? Have you had the whole idea, or is it just halfway to being a great idea? Supposing it is a great idea, but you’re not the right person to turn it into a business. How do you even know if it could be a business? In other words, you’re only 1 per cent of the way there. That’s not to say it isn’t a very vital and necessary 1 per cent. Think of it as the 1 per cent of DNA that makes the difference between you being you and you being a chimpanzee.

It’s rare that a successful business idea is perfectly formed when it is first thought of. There’s nothing wrong with trusting your instinct. In fact, we rely on it all the time. So just because something sounds fantastic, or gets you excited, doesn’t mean it is fantastic. Feel the instinct – and then get practical.

Once you’ve mulled over your idea for a while, perhaps even talked it out with someone close to you and decided that it has got legs, then you’re halfway there. But what you need to do next is something that will really pull it apart and test all the component parts, to see if it still works when you put it back together.

We’d like you to do something that is not quick or easy, but it holds the key as to whether your business can really fly. If you can’t find it in yourself to have a go at the following exercise, then you should seriously question whether you have it in you to start and run a business at all. On the other hand, if you relish this task, then you’ve got it. You’re made of the right stuff. Don’t be nervous – anyone can do it, so long as they want it enough.

What you write here will not be your business plan, but it will help enormously when you do come to drawing one up. It will sort the wheat from the chaff – the two-a-penny, common or garden ideas we all come up with from the stuff that successful businesses are made of. Getting through our acid test is a landmark in itself. Once you have completed the exercise, you will have something tangible and useful, something that gives you the right l...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Copyright page
• CONTENTS
• LETTER TO THE READER
• #1 GETTING DOWN AND DIRTY