Business Ideas Q&A

Hi Amit,

I actually do know where you're coming from on this one. Big business does have a major advantage in having large advertising budgets, but on the downside they are less agile and this is where smaller business can gain a foothold.

You only have to jump onto any one of your local Facebook groups to see how many individuals out there are actively looking for local service provider recommendations to know that there's something that they're missing in their offerings.

My suggestion in this scenario, would be to try and source a solution that is somewhat 'out-of-thebox', and keep your initial overheads low whilst you are establishing if there is a market for your service. Rather than spend a lot on customised software solution for example, is there something out there in the marketplace that is already setup to help match customers with services that you can launch with sooner and at low cost?

You could start locally, which would also keep your marketing costs down, and use this to gain valuable feedback and find out what the people really want and, as others have mentioned - test, re-test and then test some more.

 

 

The person with the idea is responsible for creating a presentation in some form.  A document or whiteboard work fine.  From there it's reviewed by the affected department heads, put out for all senior management to view and comment on, then we do a Managers meeting to hone it down to what will work best.  It is again vetted by the department manager who will be responsible for inplementation, and is then put into action.  It sounds laborious, but really only takes a week or two to get rolling.

I don’t completely disagree with @Aishah Mustapha , but I think it is a limited answer. The problem as a startup venture you don’t always have all the answers figured out before you start doing business. I’ve been a beta tester of many services that changed after some initial traction. One was called Mogulus (a live streaming company back around 2008) they later transitioned from individual creators to businesses and large events and rebranded as LiveStream. Another one was an online course creator that started out as With Coach, it later became Podio. As my examples show one went from Abstract to literally saying what their service is and the other went from being straight forward to being a bit more abstract (the thinking was that Podio is similar to Podium).

I agree that if you execute well it doesn’t matter so much what your name is, but it can have implications that impact the rest of your brand. Some names are easier to brand around than others, but that may not be known at the beginning. Also if your products, services or customers change than perhaps it is worth revisiting your business name.

It is also vital to understand your customer base. Many fashion brands (especially luxury ones) typically use some version of the founder’s name or initials. This type of choice can also determine or help drive your branding colors, font choice, imagery, price point of product or services and more. Another example is the sun lotion brand Sun Bum, they have playful colors, a playful gorilla mascot, and do lots of ads with surfers. However, Apple is sleek and serious but wants to show you that it doesn’t look or function like other similar brands and its prices follow that.

I would dissuade you from using a name generator if you are ever interested in trying to trademark or protect your name and logo. You need to do some serious thinking and research to understand if the name you want is already in use to give you a jump start on protecting your intellectual property as well as avoiding lawsuits from similarly named ventures (locally, regionally, nationally, and even internationally).

You have it right. Google.

Don't just type in Google your idea in your words, try other variations. Similar ideas or products and see how they track. 

Reality is, Google has made life a lot easier when it comes to researching ideas. So it is the logical first place you would go. 

Biggest issue is most people don't know how to use Google to it's full potential. Typing in a persons name is not how you search for them on Google. 

Here is a video I made on using Google for skip tracing. The first 10 minutes should be enough to show you some ways to research your ideas a little better. 

https://youtu.be/Y1_ZbsMavE8

Family and friends could give you a bias opinion. Google will tell you from a Global scale what interest there is out there. Google will not say it is a Good or Bad idea. It will give you the data so you can make that assessment yourself. So yes, Google it. After you have done that and you believe it is a viable product. Then look at drafting a business plan and continue to research as you go.