How do you know if an idea actually has legs?

Some ideas look brilliant when you’re sitting around a table talking about them. Then you put them in front of actual customers and... nothing.

I’ve definitely been guilty of getting too attached to an idea before there was much evidence for it. You can convince yourself of almost anything, especially if you’ve been thinking about it for six months. You start saying things like “the market is ready” and “there’s definitely a gap”, and suddenly everyone in the room is nodding.

There’s no perfect test. But after years of building products, including a few that didn’t work, there are some things that make me pause now.

Start with what’s changing in the market

This is usually where I begin. Not so much is this a clever idea? More: why does this idea make sense now? Is something shifting? Are people behaving differently? Is there a change happening that creates an opportunity?

I don’t mean a short-lived trend because someone famous did something and everyone copied it for six months. I mean the slower changes.

One I’m noticing at the moment is people wanting to do more things offline again. We’ve spent years doing everything digitally, and I think there’s a swing back towards in-person experiences, paper, notebooks, things you can physically experience. I even bought a printer recently. I hadn’t owned one in about ten years, and suddenly I wanted to print things out and write on them again!

Small changes in behaviour like that are often the first sign of a bigger shift. When something has moved strongly in one direction for a long time, it usually starts tipping back the other way.

So ask yourself: is my idea riding a slow shift that will still be there in five years, or a spike that will be gone by next season? A trend doesn’t need to be your whole business. But the right one can give you a very good place to start.

Pay attention to your first reaction

If something feels really promising, or something feels off, don’t ignore it. Gut feeling isn’t some random sensation that appears from nowhere. It’s years of talking to customers, watching markets, getting things wrong and seeing what sells and what doesn’t. You start recognising patterns without consciously running through a checklist.

So if your first reaction is yes, there’s something here or hmm, I’m not sure, pay attention. Then ask yourself: what am I noticing that’s making me feel this way?

The harder part is knowing whether something genuinely feels wrong, or whether you’re just nervous because it’s new. For me, there’s a clear difference:

• Nervous but excited: it scares me, but I still want to move towards it.

• Something feels off: there’s a repelling feeling, and I don’t want to move towards it at all.

The kit I didn’t want to launch

At Mad Millie, my father-in-law was really into sausage making and wanted us to create sausage-making kits. My first reaction was: absolutely not.

To be fair, part of that was simply that I’m vegetarian. But we did it, and it didn’t work. We sold some, but it never became a strong part of the range and we eventually phased it out.

Looking back, my reaction was picking up on more than my feelings about sausages. The customers we were attracting were interested in healthy, trend-led food, and sausage making just didn’t fit their world.

“Could this work?” and “Should I build this?” are different questions

We had another idea around beautiful retro caravans. My husband and I had renovated one ourselves, and we wondered whether there was a business in building caravans with that traditional New Zealand look but much nicer interiors.

There was interest. We tested it through media and watched how people responded to the caravan, the aesthetic and the lifestyle around it.

But then the questions got a lot less exciting and a lot more practical:

• How much capital would we need?

• How much would each caravan cost to produce?

• What happens if we build one and it doesn’t sell?

• How much of our time would it take?

• How much risk were we comfortable with?

We left it. Not because it was a bad idea, but because it didn’t make enough sense for us, given the resources and risk involved.

A good idea can still be the wrong idea for you.

No competition can be a warning sign

People often say “Nobody else is doing this!” as if that proves there’s a huge opportunity. Sometimes it does. But sometimes nobody is doing it because:

• nobody really wants it

• the business model is hard to make work

• the customer is hard to reach

• people don’t even know they have the problem yet

That last one gets expensive quickly. If customers don’t understand the problem or the category, you may have to spend a lot of time and money educating them before you can even start selling.

Sometimes the problem isn’t the product, it’s the reason people buy it

When we started out selling cheesemaking kits to people who wanted to make cheese, the market was tiny. Most people don’t wake up thinking, today I’d really like to make mozzarella.

So we had two options:

• spend a lot of money teaching people that they could make cheese at home

• position it around something people were already buying

We chose gifting. People were already looking for gifts. We didn’t have to teach anyone why they needed to buy someone a present. Same product. Completely different reason to buy it.

Once we realised gifting was the real opportunity, it changed what we made, how we packaged it, where we sold it and how we talked about it.

If your idea isn’t landing, the product might not be the problem. You might be selling it to the wrong people, or for the wrong reason.

Find your minimum viable market

I talk a lot with clients about finding their minimum viable market: the smallest part of the market you can become really relevant to, while still having enough demand to build a viable business.

Small enough that you can make an impact and become known for something. Big enough that there’s a business there.

Mad Millie is a good example. “People who want to make cheese at home” was too small to build on. “Everyone who likes food” would have been far too broad to stand out in. “People looking for a fun, different gift for the foodie in their life” was the sweet spot: specific enough to design, package and market for, and big enough to grow a business around.

Finding that sweet spot forces you to answer a much more useful question: who really cares about this?

Because the danger with a new idea usually isn’t that nobody likes it. Plenty of people will tell you it sounds great. The real question is whether enough of the right people care enough to actually buy it.

Test demand before you commit

You don’t need to build the whole thing to find out whether people want it. A few simple ways to test first:

• Talk to the people you think will buy it. Ask how they solve the problem today and what they currently spend on it, rather than whether they like your idea.

• Try to pre-sell. A deposit, a pre-order or a waitlist tells you far more than a compliment.

• Put up a simple landing page. Describe the offer and see who signs up.

• Watch how people respond in public.

When we were launching new products, we often tested them at trade shows before we even had a prototype. Sometimes all we had was a flyer or a poster showing the box design, what was inside, what it makes and the price point. We’d say, “This is a new product idea we’re looking at for next year. Here’s the price. Do you think this would work in your store?” Sometimes we’d end up selling it straight off the poster.

The more expensive the product and the more you need to invest before launch, the earlier you need to test the idea.

The rule of thumb: watch what people do, not what they say.

Got an idea you’re turning over at the moment? I’ve created a “Does your idea have legs?” Scorecard to help you sense-check it before you commit too much time or money.

It gives you a simple set of questions to work through, so you can see where the idea feels strong and where there are gaps before you spend six months building it.

Sign up below and I’ll send it to you.