The expensive mistake I keep seeing Someone has a good idea for a new service. They spend three months building it out. New page on the website, new pricing structure, maybe even new hires. Then they launch and nothing happens. Or worse, it cannibalises what was already working. I have watched this play out with clients more times than I would like. The instinct to go all in feels like commitment. It feels like taking it seriously. But commitment without evidence is just gambling with extra steps. The people I work with through ALIRA. tend to be busy. They are running their own thing, often with small teams or alone. They do not have months to waste on ideas that do not land. So we test first. Always. What testing actually means Testing does not mean thinking about it harder. It does not mean asking your mates if they would buy it. It means putting something in front of real potential customers and seeing what they do with their time and money. The simplest version: can you get someone to pay you for this thing before you build the full version? I worked with someone last year who wanted to add consulting to their product business. Instead of creating packages and pricing tiers and a whole new section of their site, they sent three emails. Direct emails to existing customers who had asked complex questions. "Would you pay £200 for an hour of my time to solve this properly?" Two said yes. One actually booked. That is a test. It cost nothing but an afternoon. It told her the demand existed. The 72-hour rule Before any new revenue stream gets more than a few hours of my attention, I want to see evidence within 72 hours. Not a polished launch. Just a signal. This could be: A landing page with a waitlist (did anyone sign up?) A direct message to ten potential customers (did anyone reply with interest?) A post describing the offer (did anyone ask how to buy?) A prototype you can show in a call (did their tone change when they saw it?) If you cannot get a signal in 72 hours, you are either solving a problem nobody has or reaching the wrong people. Both are worth knowing before you invest further. Price testing matters more than you think Here is where people get squeamish. They want to validate the idea but not the price. So they ask "would you be interested in this?" instead of "would you pay £150 for this?" Interest is worthless. I am interested in learning to sail. I have been interested for years. I have not spent a penny on it. When you test, test with a real price attached. You will learn far more from one person saying "that's too expensive" than from twenty saying "sounds cool". I have seen price testing alone save people from building the wrong tier. One client at alira.london ran a quick test on two price points for the same service. At £75, plenty of interest. At £150, crickets. That told her the market saw it as a commodity, not a premium offering. She adjusted the positioning before wasting months on the wrong pitch. Minimum viable offer, not minimum viable product The tech world loves talking about MVPs. Minimum viable products. But for most people running their own thing, you do not need a product at all. You need an offer. An offer is simpler. It is: here is what I will do, here is what it costs, here is how to say yes. You can test an offer with a Google Doc. You can test it with a voice note. You can test it in a conversation. The point is to find out whether people will exchange money for the thing you are describing. Everything else comes after. I helped someone structure this using the Decision Matrix tool on alira.london. They had four potential new services. We scored each one on demand signal, delivery effort, and margin potential. Two scored high on demand but would have destroyed their margins. One scored high across all three. That is the one they tested first. What the numbers should tell you After your 72-hour test, you want to answer three questions: Did anyone show genuine buying intent? Not likes. Not "let me know when it launches". Did someone try to give you money or book a call to discuss? What objections came up? These are gold. They tell you what to fix before you scale. What was the conversion rate? If you reached 100 people and 2 showed intent, that is a 2% signal. Enough to keep going. If you reached 100 and got nothing, pause. One number I find useful: 3% intent rate from cold outreach is a decent signal for a new offer. Below that, something is off. Above 5%, you might have something worth building properly. When to commit Commitment comes after you have repeated the test. One positive signal could be luck. Three positive signals from different sources starts to look like a pattern. I typically want to see: At least five people who expressed genuine buying intent (not just interest) A clear understanding of who those people are and where to find more of them Confidence that you can deliver without breaking what already works Only then do you build the systems, the proper pricing, the marketing. Not before. With UK borrowing hitting £23.3bn in May alone and public finances under pressure, the broader economic picture is uncertain. That makes testing even more important. You do not want to bet on a new revenue stream right as your existing customers tighten their belts. Test the demand now, in real conditions, before committing resources. What to do this week Pick one potential revenue stream. Not three. One. The one you have been thinking about longest. Write the offer in one paragraph. What it is, who it is for, what it costs. If you cannot do this in under 100 words, you do not understand it well enough yet. Send it to ten real potential customers by Friday. Not friends. Not family. People who might actually pay. Track who responds, what they say, and whether anyone tries to buy. That data is worth more than any amount of planning.