Anyone-Can-Do-It-Building-Coffee
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
36 ANYONE CAN DO IT MARKET RESEARCH 37 CHAPTER THREE: MARKET RESEARCH TURNING THE IDEA INTO A BUSINESS So you’ve got a great idea for starting a business and you feel confident in your vision. The reality, however, is that you’re no more than .01% of the way down the road to entrepreneurship. Gut instinct has got you on the road, but conviction is what you will now need to employ to follow it successfully. Almost all of us, at some stage in our lives, have dreamed of starting our own business but very few of us are able to turn the dream into a concrete reality. The fundamental reason for this is that progress almost inevitably stalls at the ‘idea stage’, that point where a business light bulb has to leave the comfort of the imagination and enter into the real world. “If everyone who has talked about starting a business actually went out and did it, the whole nation would be self-employed. But most people would rather fantasize about it than do it.” - MARK McCORMACK, author of What they don’t teach you at Harvard Business School Law 16: An idea not acted upon is worthless Since we started Coffee Republic, countless people have told us that they had the same idea that we did, in a great many cases even before us. They, too, had been to the United States and had indulged in the coffee bar experience that so captured our own imaginations. On their return to England, they had pondered 38 ANYONE CAN DO IT MARKET RESEARCH 39 the idea of opening a similar concept in the UK. A great many of these people were probably better equipped (from the perspective of skills and experience) to pursue the idea than we were. Yet they didn’t do it. “A new idea is delicate. It can be killed by a sneer or a yawn: It can be stabbed to death by a joke or worried to death by a frown on the wrong person’s brow.” - CHARLES BROWDER The thing that separates entrepreneurs is really very simple. While others dream, entrepreneurs see a good idea through to fruition. Whereas for most people an idea is cast aside after a couple of investigatory phone calls and perhaps a few discouraging comments from the so-called ‘experts’, entrepreneurs don’t quit, even when all they have to go on is gut instinct. They keep working hard to realise their dreams. The entrepreneurial mind thinks like this: “I don’t have any experience, or special skills, I don’t have the money. I have no idea how I’m going to do it. But I’m still going to do it.” Almost inevitably, if you’re reading this book, you’ll have found yourself in a position similar to the one described above at some time in the past. Why didn’t you move forward? Did you doubt your own ability? When it came to the crunch, did you feel that your idea wasn’t quite viable enough? Or did you imagine that someone better suited would beat you to the punch? Perhaps your friends and acquaintances, on the other hand, convinced you that you weren’t quite up to the task of starting a business. Sahar remembers a friend who tried to dissuade her from going ahead with Coffee Republic. He said “Do you have any idea what bearing the responsibility for monthly employee pay cheques is really like?” Sahar didn’t know, but she went for it anyway. That attitude represents the difference between commitment and procrastination. Entrepreneurs commit; others fail to get the job done. 38 ANYONE CAN DO IT MARKET RESEARCH 39 Law 17: Entrepreneurs do not procrastinate They don’t approach their business idea by asking “Do my chances of failure outweigh my chances of success?” just as Sahar didn’t when her friend questioned her. Instead, entrepreneurs say “I am committed to this idea. I appreciate that it may only be half-baked and semi-coherent for now, but I AM going to do it. The only question is ‘how’, not ‘if ’” While procrastination is the thief of ideas, the secret ingredient to overcoming it is very simple: commitment. But where do you find commitment, when you have nothing more than an abstract idea – even a great one – to keep you going? How can you find enough commitment to keep working on something on which you’ve spent no more than a day developing? The good news is that you don’t just go out and ‘get commitment’. Law 18: Commitment is generated by working on your idea That’s right! Commitment is not a mysterious formula that some of us can generate and others can’t. Commitment is something each of us can build within ourselves as we actually begin working on our idea. Anyone can find commitment. It doesn’t simply come hand-in-hand with an idea, but rather it is the by-product of not procrastinating and, instead, actually working on the idea. If you leave an idea to languish on the mantelpiece, you will never be committed to it, but if you do something about your idea then your commitment will grow on a daily basis in equal proportion to the effort that you put into it. In other words if you have an idea, start working on it immediately. You may find that your level of commitment is weak at the start, but as soon as you dip your toes in the water that will change. You will start to learn whether or not you’re on the right track and, as the information you’re looking for starts to come in, your commitment will either wither or grow exponentially depending on what you learn. If it withers, don’t worry! You’ve still acted in an entrepreneurial way because you have not allowed yourself to be 40 ANYONE CAN DO IT MARKET RESEARCH 41 discouraged from ‘going for it’. Not every idea is right, and others will soon come your way. If you’re lucky, and you find yourself believing that you’re on the right path, then you will experience a dramatic inner shift. Your commitment will gradually escalate and become a burning determination. Then absolutely nothing will be able to stop you from reaching your goal! 40 ANYONE CAN DO IT MARKET RESEARCH 41 Our Story - how we found commitment. o find out the answer, we’ll now take you back to the Thai restaurant on the King’s Road that we mentioned a T little earlier. That was a critical evening, even a defining moment in our lives, because the key to Coffee Republic was very simply that we didn’t leave our idea hanging in space between us on the table that night. After we’d talked about our idea over dinner, we didn’t go home thinking “we’ll come back to this later” or “we’ll do some passive investigating over the coming weeks and see what happens”. Instead, Sahar decided to check out the coffee market for herself. Was she right about the lack of a good coffee experience in London? She set out to convince herself by finding the answers. The next morning, with the well of enthusiasm still full from the conversation of the previous evening, Sahar left her flat bound for the nearest underground station intent on taking the first concrete steps on the road to turning the coffee bar idea into a reality. The precise purpose of Sahar’s expedition was to prove that a gap in the market existed, but that wasn’t really the crucial point about the effect of that critical morning’s work. THE KEY WAS THIS: WE ACTED. With no delay whatsoever, we took our idea one step further and brought it out into the real world. By acting on an idea, the idea ceases to exist only in the imagination and becomes instead the physical embryo of the business that is ultimately created. 42 ANYONE CAN DO IT MARKET RESEARCH 43 The idea starts in a state of inertia and you need to get it into motion. It’s all about momentum, really. Momentum builds as a result of each step you take forward, no matter how small. Lots of small steps equal serious momentum, whereas if you do nothing and fail to take any concrete steps at all, your business idea will never see the light of day. In just over twelve hours, from the restaurant conversation to Sahar’s circuitous journey around London, our idea had taken physical steps and we had momentum on our side. In no time at all, therefore, we had exponentially increased our chances of bringing our idea into the world of reality. We had already embarked on the ladder of commitment. Have you ever had this sort of conversation? YOU: “I have a great idea for a business.” FRIEND: “That sounds great. But a word of caution…” ANOTHER FRIEND: “Yes, I tried something like that once. It will never work. It didn’t for me…” YET ANOTHER FRIEND: “Well, good idea, but let me play the devil’s advocate…” YOU: “Mmmmm, well, it did seem like a good idea, though I can see that I ought to have reservations.” THE FIRST FRIEND: “No, you go ahead. But never forget that it won’t be easy and you almost certainly won’t succeed.” YOU: “Oh well, it was just an idea. Let’s talk about something else.” Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? When you are committed, you don’t let any of that bother you because you have a deep passion and certainty which will carry you through the minefield of obstacles, rejections and doubts that you will face.