My Approach to Executing Ideas

Last week I shared a new idea I had with my wife. She thought it was cool :-).

I shared an idea about creating Entrepreneurship Community Centres in local boroughs as alternative schools for 18-25 years. This would provide them with community, support and inspiration around creating new businesses and gaining work experience with entrepreneurs.

I capture ideas like this in my journal because I genuinely don’t want to get distracted from running my current business the Angel Investing School. However, I want to illustrate what I would do in the next 6 weeks if I actually wanted to make this idea a reality.

Here is my 5 step process below:

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1. Empathise: I would validate my assumption that some 18-25 year olds feel like school doesn’t cater for their entrepreneurial needs and that they would value joining a community of peers in a physical local location to gain entrepreneurial experience and work on ideas. The quickest, easiest, cheapest way to do this would be to conduct interviews in a small single location like Tottenham. Accessing young people from Job Centres, Colleges, community groups like football teams etc.
2. Define: I would analyse 10-20 interviews to deeply understand who my target customer is and what their needs are. For example, I could discover that it is specifically suited for 18-25 years who come out of the education system as the school doesn’t feel right for them. They currently have ideas but struggle to execute them and lack access to a network of experienced entrepreneurs.
3. Ideate: I would use exercises such as Crazy 8’s and sketching to come up with a shortlist of ideas such as using underutilised high street spaces in the evening, working with locally established entrepreneurs for a space or partnering with a college for space.
4. Prototype: I would select a small number of 18-25 year olds, perhaps just 5 people initially and create a 1 week sprint to work on their ideas with one day spent working with an established entrepreneur.
5. Test: After the week is complete I would get feedback from the space provider, entrepreneur and the 18-25 year olds.

I walked through this detailed example to show you the steps I take to execute ideas in a small, quick and measurable way that isn’t overwhelming.

I hope this serves as inspiration and encouragement so that you can take action on your ideas.

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Ideas are overrated but execution is undervalued.