A few weeks ago I read a great book called The 7 Day Startup by Dan Norris. The premise of the book is that it's possible to get a profitable business up and running in just a week. When starting a business or launching a new product, people (myself included) often take way too long. We get bogged down by things such as full specifications, product roadmaps, market testing etc etc. The next thing you know, you're six months down the line and still haven't got a product out there.
This book is all about getting on with things and launching something quickly. You'll soon know if the business or product is going to be a success or a failure. If it's going to be a success then great and you can dedicate more time to it. If it's not then you've not spent months on the idea and will have learnt valuable lessons along the way. The thing I really liked about the book is that it's all actionable and is like a blueprint for going through this process. It's not just theory either; the author did just this and within a week had paying customers. This business (http://wpcurve.com/) now generates nearly $70k per month in recurring revenue.
So that's the first part of my challenge over the next week. I'll be re-reading and following the book, and going through the whole process to build a business in a week. This process starts with generating business ideas on day 1 (today, Saturday 15th August 2015) and ends (the initial 7 day process at least) with the product launch on Friday. Exciting stuff!
As I like to push myself, I decided it would be way too easy to do this from the comfort of my home or office. So I'm combining this with something else I've wanted to do for a while. I've recently been watching a guy called Derek Cowan on Periscope (entrepreneuroaj on there as well as Twitter). He's been travelling from one end of Vietnam to the other on a motorbike. It's been fascinating and combined with the fact that I also re-read Vagabonding (another great book) recently it got me thinking. I'd really love to do a similar thing, and my plan is to do that trip next year. However, I have the travel bug now so decided to do something on a smaller scale. My initial idea was to do the "4 corners" of the UK, that is the most Northerly, Easterly, Southerly, and Westerly points of the UK. Because of other commitments and the time it will take, this wasn't really practical either.
In the end I've decided to have a trip to the most Northerly point of the UK mainland which is Dunnet Head in Scotland. This is still a 1500 mile round trip as I'll be heading up the East side of UK and back down the West in a loop. I'll be doing this over the next 8 days.
Again, staying in hotels with comfort and great wifi would be too easy so I'll be camping. I'm hoping that getting back to nature and the amazing scenery, will be inspiring and help my creativity whilst building a new business. Other rules I've set myself are that every day I have to do some kind of activity. Things like mountain biking, surfing, etc. I'm not allowed to use motorways either! Motorways are great for getting around the country quickly. But if you really want to see places properly, then you can't beat taking the smaller roads and exploring.
And on top of all this, I'll still be running my main business Appware. This will be kept to a minimum though with just a couple of daily catchups with my team. Yes, I like to keep myself busy :)
I'll be sharing my journey via blogs, on social media, and on Periscope. You can find me on most platforms as "richardjeaton" so do come say hi on Instagram, Twitter, or Periscope.
I'll be blogging on here at the end of every day with an update on my progress. If that's of interest, make sure you're following this blog to get automatic updates. To do that, just go to my name and photo atthe top of this page, and hit "become a fan"