Free and easy...

... and I'm not talking about my last date (I wish!).

My rollercoaster continued today as I researched one of my business ideas.

Surfing the web I came across a number of services that offered something pretty close to what I had imagined I would offer... and my heart sank! They all looked very professional, very sleek and talked about their benefits. Bollox! Why did I think I could do this? They look good, they know what they're doing and they're already up & running (one company talked about being established back in the day of 1988!).

I was up against the proverbial ropes, but I had put myself there. I had allowed my doubt to eat away at my confidence. I felt I had been there before, there was something re-assuring in my doubt... surely I looked into this before I had this idea? And then I remembered the whole reason behind my idea - the opportunity that all these other supplier had conveniently left out though left out a critical element... their price!

My whole point (my USP, as a poncy management guru might say) is my service is FREE! Now I know just how powerful that word is - according to Asda its the most powerful word in a marketeer's thesaurus (and "New" is the second most powerful word, by the way!). Now being free means I have to get scale (i.e. a high number of people to use this service) in order for the business model to work and to get that scale I need to make it remarkably easy to use for all - so easy that my granny should be able to use it. But what the research did tell me was that I also need to offer absolute reliability.

So I need to remain focussed & single minded behind the real power of my idea... free, easy to use and reliable - and ignore any distractions of confidence!