Don't fall in love with your idea

Tuesday
Date 7 June 2022

You must have heard or read successful business quotes starting from an idea. And yes it is true, the big business that is successful today started from a simple idea from its founder. But you also have to be careful, because your idea could be the killer of your own business.

How could that be?

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Lots of ideas usually pop into our heads, and they usually come out maybe when we eat, play, are in the bathroom or even before you sleep. And when an idea comes up, you believe that idea can be a solution for your steps, it can even change the world.

So you tell your best friend, and at that moment he is interested in your idea. Then you decide to start a business with a business based on your idea. You spend all your savings to make a product or service that is depicted even more fantastic in your imagination, and after that you launch it confidently to the market.

Then you wait and keep waiting for customers who never come. And finally you have to accept the harsh reality that you think it's a very good idea, not necessarily other people think it's good. Meanwhile, you've spent all your money building a business that not many people are interested in.

And it's the number one reason why businesses fail and it's all because you fell in love with your idea. "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder", all looks beautiful in the eyes of the lover and love is also blind. You are not able to see all the defects of the object you love.

Love is also hypnotizing, so whether you realize it or not, you are denying the other person's views that are different from what you see in your idea. Your mind is busy looking for justifications that your idea is interesting.

You should position your idea as a hypothesis, an idea that needs to be tested for truth. Like all scientists, you too have to distance yourself from your idea, no matter how attractive it may seem to you.

Turn your idea into a simple prototype so that other people can see it, touch it and feel it firsthand. This allows other people to respond to your idea using their imagination which may be different from your intended idea.

Then show the prototype to many people, study their reactions. And remember, your goal isn't to convince them how great your idea is, it's to get feedback from them.

Then, refine your idea and make a prototype of the next version and show it again to your potential customers and then ask for feedback again and then refine it again and so on until you succeed in creating the best solution that has actually been validated by your customer.

Successful business starts with an idea, this expression is true but incomplete and so it can make us fail. And I think it is necessary to add one more word, namely, a successful business starts from a validated idea.

So, good luck with your business, good luck and thanks for reading.

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