Dragons’ Den – how do you measure up to their key questions?
If you watch programmes like Dragons’ Den or Shark Tank you’ll have realised there are ten main questions investors ask to understand if a company is a solid business or something that’s ill conceived, not scalable and won’t stand the test of time.
• What’s your idea, business or concept?
This is your elevator pitch. You need to be able to deliver it in less than a minute, explaining what your business does, why you’re doing it and how it can help other people; what problems does it solve?
• What’s your route to market?
Different businesses use different ways to attract customers. If you have a physical club it’s likely to be face to face walk-ins, flyers, digital marketing and your impact sales team. For a digital brand it will be online and media-based. You need to identify how you’re going to find and attract customers.
• What do you sell and for how much?
What’s your sales forecast? How do you work out your pricing? This is the most difficult step because, as you’ve seen on Dragons’ Den, people always think their business is worth more than it actually is when it comes to establishing value.
It’s finding that balance – the sweet spot between what you believe it’s worth and what others think it’s worth. It’s also about cost of delivery. What does it cost you to deliver your product or service?
Going through this process will give you a solid understanding of what business you’re in. One of the biggest challenges we see in the industry is operators getting sidetracked by trends, thinking ‘we could do that too’, which often takes away from the core product.
I truly admire John Treharne. He came up with The Gym Group concept and hasn’t changed it fundamentally.
Sure he’s tweaked, evolved and improved the product, but he decided to do one thing and do that really well.
• Differentiate or Die
As we’ve said before, the fitness industry offers consumers an endless number of choices that range from wildly different to virtually identical.
Understanding your position in the market, by identifying who you’re looking to attract and delivering solutions to meet their needs, is key to understanding how you can differentiate yourself from the competition. This is the only way to retain and gain customers in this increasingly competitive environment.
John Treharne had a clear vision in building The Gym Group