A Good Idea Isn’t Enough

Before you build the brand, build the business.

One of the easiest mistakes to make when you’re starting something new is jumping straight to the exciting parts. You choose a name, buy the domain, start an Instagram account and begin thinking about what the logo should look like.

I completely understand why. Those are the things that make an idea finally feel real.

But before you decide what the business looks like, you need to understand what the business actually is. What are you selling? Who is going to buy it? Why would they choose you? What are people prepared to pay for it? Who are you competing with, and is there actually space in the market for what you’re trying to build?

You don’t need a 60-page business plan before you’re allowed to start. In fact, I think it’s very easy to spend so much time planning a business that you never actually build one. But you do need enough clarity to start making good decisions, because almost everything you do afterwards is going to be influenced by those answers.

This is also where knowing your customer becomes incredibly important.

When you’re starting a business, there’s a temptation to make your potential audience as broad as possible. It feels safer. If everyone could potentially buy from you, surely there are more opportunities to make money?

Usually, the opposite happens. You end up trying to speak to everyone and being particularly interesting to no one.

This matters even more if you’re trying to build a premium business. Your ideal customer isn’t simply “someone who needs an interior designer” or “someone looking for accommodation”. You need to understand what that particular person values, what they’re frustrated by, what they’re already willing to spend money on and what makes them trust one business over another.

Once you understand that, so many other decisions become easier. Your pricing makes more sense. Your messaging becomes clearer. Your brand has direction. Your website knows who it’s talking to. Even the way you respond to an enquiry can be designed around the type of client you’re trying to attract.

Positioning changes what people are willing to pay.

Two businesses can offer almost exactly the same product or service and charge completely different prices for it.

Hospitality is probably one of the easiest places to see this. One property is selling somewhere to sleep. Another is selling privacy, beautiful interiors, exceptional food, personalised service and the feeling of escaping somewhere nobody else knows about.

Technically, they’re both providing accommodation. But they’re not really selling the same thing.

The same thing happens in service businesses all the time. If you want to compete at a premium level, simply looking expensive isn’t enough. The value has to run through the entire business. Your offer, your messaging, your customer experience, your pricing and your presentation all need to support the position you’re trying to occupy.

That’s why I believe positioning needs to happen before visual identity. We need to know where the business belongs before we can decide what it should look like.

Once we know that, branding becomes much more powerful.

We’re no longer choosing colours because they’re beautiful. We’re asking what they communicate. We’re not designing a logo in isolation; we’re creating an identity that makes sense for the people we’re trying to attract. We’re not simply following whatever visual style happens to be popular at the moment.

There is a reason behind the design.

And that’s what I think good design should do. It shouldn’t be decoration added to a business afterwards. It should communicate the strategy underneath it.

A website isn’t a business strategy either.

This is probably one of the biggest misconceptions I come across in my own work.

A business decides it needs more clients, so it decides it needs a new website. The website gets designed, everyone loves it, it goes live and then… nothing necessarily happens.

Because having a website doesn’t mean people are going to find it. And people finding it doesn’t automatically mean they’re going to become customers.

Before I build a website, I want to know how people are getting there. What are they searching for? What do they need to understand when they arrive? What might stop them from enquiring? What would make them trust this particular business? Where do we want them to go next? And what happens after they submit the form?

That’s why I’ve increasingly started thinking about websites as systems, rather than standalone pieces of design.

Your website sits inside a much bigger customer journey. Search, SEO, content, email, social media, referrals, analytics and your actual sales process all connect to it. If those pieces aren’t considered, you can end up with a beautiful website that doesn’t actually do very much for the business.

You probably don’t need everything on day one.

This is another place where I think new founders can waste an enormous amount of money.

You look at the established businesses you’re competing with and assume you need everything they have before you’re allowed to launch. The perfect packaging. A huge website. Professional content for six different platforms. Automation. Elaborate systems. Every possible piece of collateral.

But you’re looking at the finished result of a business that may have been building for five or ten years.

Your job isn’t to launch the final version of your business. Your job is to launch the right first version.

Spend properly on the things that matter. Build strong foundations. Make sure the customer experience works. Make sure you look credible enough to compete where you want to compete. Then get the business in front of real people.

Because that’s when you start learning things you couldn’t possibly have known beforehand.

Customers will ask questions you hadn’t thought of. One service might sell far better than another. People may misunderstand something you thought was obvious. Your enquiries might come from a completely different place than you expected.

That information is incredibly valuable.

I’d much rather build a strong first version of a business and improve it based on real behaviour than spend another six months behind the scenes trying to make absolutely everything perfect.

And then someone still has to run it.

This is probably the least glamorous part of starting a business, but it’s also the most important.

You can have a brilliant strategy, beautiful branding and an incredible website, but somebody still needs to answer the enquiries, make the sales, deliver the product, look after the customer, watch the numbers and make difficult decisions when things aren’t going according to plan.

And somebody needs to keep showing up after the excitement of launching something new has worn off.

I can help someone develop an idea, challenge their positioning, build their brand, create their website, work through their launch strategy and help them find the right people when we need specialist support.

But I can’t replace the founder.

That’s why I think the person behind a new business matters almost as much as the idea itself. A fairly simple idea in the hands of someone determined, resourceful and willing to adapt can become an incredible business. An incredible idea with nobody willing to do the unglamorous work behind it can very easily go nowhere.

So where do you actually start?

Start with the opportunity.

Is there something here that people genuinely want or need?

Then work out who you’re building it for. Decide what you’re going to offer them and why they should choose you. Understand how the business is going to make money and where you want it to sit in the market.

Then position it.

Then brand it.

Then build the systems around it.

Then launch it.

And after that, keep paying attention and keep building.

It sounds incredibly obvious when you write it down in that order. But you’d be surprised how many businesses build it almost completely backwards.

I’m going to put all of this into practice.

This thinking is a big part of why I’ve created The Founder Project.

After years of being brought into businesses at different stages, I want to start with one at the very beginning and document the entire process.

I’m going to select one founder with an idea I genuinely believe has potential, and we’re going to build the business together from the ground up.

We’ll start with the idea, the market, the customer and the commercial foundations. Then we’ll develop the positioning and brand around what we learn. We’ll build the website and digital systems it actually needs, work out how we’re going to take it to market and launch it.

And then, importantly, we’re going to keep watching.

I want to see what happens when the strategy meets real customers. What we got right. What we didn’t. What we change. What grows. And what building a business actually looks like when you see the process rather than only the polished result at the end.

I’m currently looking for the first founder.

So if you have one of those ideas that has been sitting in the back of your mind — the one you keep coming back to and wondering what if? — I’d love to hear about it.