{"id":80,"date":"2016-10-25T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-10-25T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/freelancetofreedomproject.com\/?p=80"},"modified":"2021-10-19T14:55:25","modified_gmt":"2021-10-19T18:55:25","slug":"validating-your-business-idea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/freelancetofreedomproject.com\/validating-your-business-idea\/","title":{"rendered":"The Lean Approach to Validating Your Business Idea"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As freelancers and small business owners, coming up with business ideas isn\u2019t the problem. Rather it\u2019s corralling those ideas into something resembling order & then moving forward with the good ones<\/em> that presents the real challenge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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But what is a \u2018good\u2019 idea when it comes to your unique business and how do you find out whether the people you want to serve will actually put their card details in and hit \u2018Buy\u2019?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

WHY \u2018RESEARCH, RESEARCH, RESEARCH\u2019 IS ONLY HALF THE STORY<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Aside from being the procrastinating freelancer\u2019s best friend\/arch nemesis, research is touted as the key to validating your business idea. And while there\u2019s a lot of truth to that, research needs to be paired with specific, goal-oriented action<\/em> if it\u2019s going to be of any real use.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whether it\u2019s driven by excitement or the desire to be right, research often simply results in us seeing exactly what we want to see in the data we collect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And as Paul Graham wrote in \u2018How To Get Startup Ideas\u2019:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSo many founders build things no one wants because they begin by trying to think of [business] ideas, which often yields bad ideas that sound plausible enough to fool you into working on them\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

We then run our ideas past others and, as Graham puts it,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c[People] don\u2019t say \u201cI would never<\/em> use this.\u201d They say \u201cYeah, maybe I could see myself using something like that.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

MINIMISE THE RISK BY GOING \u2018LEAN\u2019<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

While there are no certainties in the life of a freelancer or small business owner (bar uncertainty\u2026 and, um, taxes), a \u2018lean\u2019 approach to validating your business idea is the best way to gauge demand before going all-in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

FINDING VALIDATION WITH THE \u2019MVP\u2019 APPROACH<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

In \u2018The Lean Startup\u2019, Eric Ries describes the Minimum Viable Product or \u2018MVP\u2019 as:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA product which has just enough features to gather validated learning about the product and its continued development.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Applying this MVP approach to validating your business idea would therefore involve:<\/p>\n\n\n\n