Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin - Is Your Big Idea— A Good Idea?

Episode Date: April 6, 2022

The best entrepreneurs have ideas that vary from the excellent to just plain bad. Here are the five specific questions to ask yourself to see if your brainchild is a viable business idea or just a brain fart.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Well, it doesn't. Charge for wasting our time. I will take a check. Like an old school check. You recognize her from anchoring on CNN, CNBC, and Bloomberg. The only financial expert you don't need a dictionary to understand. Nicole Lappin. I've had hundreds, thousands of terrible ideas.

I mean, all good entrepreneurs have. And you will too. But it's actually one of the best things that can happen. Why? Because it's all a numbers game. Only about one out of every thousand ideas is a good one. And the more bad ones you have and can identify, the closer you are to your good one. I've been there. I have had some bad ideas for products that never went

anywhere because they were bad. Maybe they could have been good with the right team or the right timing, but they made no sense for me at the time they came to me, which, by the way, was likely in the middle of the night or maybe in the shower. Regardless, I always wrote them down and sat with them to see if there was any nugget of goodness there. Here are some of the ones that didn't make the cut. Pink vodka. Yep. A resume builder site. A stylish lockbox. Designer desk accessories. And boss bitch cocktails. Maybe I'll revisit these ideas someday. But once I wrote these ideas down and took some time to mull over them, for one reason or another, they just weren't a good idea for me at that time. Or just not a good idea, period.

I know, I know, your business idea is amazing. To you. It's your baby. And it's really hard to give up at any stage. That's why I think you need to ask yourself, honestly, if it's any good before getting too far in. Because the longer you wait, the more difficult it becomes to shut it down. Here's the ultimate question. Does the world need what you're offering?

Just because you've thought through it a lot, or even if you've already written a business plan, doesn't mean it's a good idea. Here are five specific questions you need to ask yourself to see if your brainchild is a viable business idea or just a brain fart. Number one, is this a unique idea? Is there no or very little competition? If you haven't found something similar, by the way, dig a little harder. Number two, is there enough of the market share that I can grab? Is there white space, so to speak, or the opportunity for me and my idea to grow in the market? Number three, do I have time to be laser focused on this idea to see it to success? In other words,

this shouldn't be one of a bunch of things you're trying at the same time. Number four, will the demographic I'm targeting respond well to this? Number five, and of course, the million dollar, hopefully, question, can it be profitable? These five questions are an excellent start to help you decide whether your idea is worth going all in on. But even if you answered hell yes to all five, the road to launching a successful product is still a long one. Once upon a time, I had a particular product idea that I thought would take off big time. I did the very exercise I took you through in this episode. I ran my idea through these five questions and could answer all of them with a resounding hell yes.

And I even made it to the holy grail of product launches, HSN, or the Home Shopping Network, the network that launched a bajillion products before me, including our changemaker Joe Mangano's Miracle Mop. But to make it through a night at HSN, you need exactly that, a miracle. Tomorrow, I'm going to spill it all in a special confessions episode. But in the meantime, here's today's tip you can take straight to the bank. Even if your idea is kick-butt genius, you don't get the deciding vote. That's up to your customer. But here's the thing.

You don't need to wait until launch to find out if there's an appetite for your product. Before launching an idea, test the idea. You can create your own focus group by posting about your idea on social media or even getting together a group of your friends you trust to talk through your brainchild. It is scary to put yourself out there and be open to real, honest feedback,

but it's a process that will take your idea to the next level. Money Rehab is a production of iHeartRadio. I'm your host, Nicole Lappin. Our producers are Morgan Lavoie and Mike Coscarelli. Executive producers are Nikki Etor and Will Pearson. Our mascots are Penny and Mimsy. Huge thanks to OG Money Rehab team Michelle Lanz for her development work, Catherine Law for her production and writing magic,

and Brandon Dickert for his editing, engineering, and sound design. And as always, thanks to you for finally investing in yourself so that you can get it together and get it all.