New business idea

MattyT97

grumiofoundation said:

MattyT97 said:

It's just an idea and I wanted to know what other people thought and my business adviser recommending asking on here. I appreciate everyones thoughts and feedback and take them all into account.

Are you paying your business adviser? 

No, I'm not.

MovingForwards

My bank lets me keep track of budgets and spending for free. On top of that my phone came with a spreadsheet type package, again free.

I would never pay someone for doing it, especially as there's a whole load of information and free planning / budgeting tools online.

Zanderman

MattyT97 said:

grumiofoundation said:

MattyT97 said:

It's just an idea and I wanted to know what other people thought and my business adviser recommending asking on here. I appreciate everyones thoughts and feedback and take them all into account.

Are you paying your business adviser? 

No, I'm not.

What sort of business advisor is it?  If you don't pay them who does? 

Off-topic I know, but I'm curious as to what sort of business advisor suggests checking ideas on MSE Forum, particularly an idea that doesn't seem particularly viable. 

It seems more like a student project concept.

Ergates

MattyT97 said:

eskbanker said:

That doesn't answer the question of what value you'd be adding though, to justify paying you rather than using all the free tools and resources - why not try out your 'elevator pitch' on here, i.e. state in no more than a paragraph or two what you'd charge and why someone should pay you that?

This is just an idea at the moment so I don't have an elevator pitch right now. The this is just some market research to see whether or not there is a market for this service to decide whether I pursue this idea or not.

A fee between £15-£30 per month was my idea but it depends on what people would pay for it.

I'm open to any feedback on what anyone thinks and if there's a market for it I can pursue it and if not I can think about other ideas.

If this it to be a viable source of income for you, £15-30 per month would be less than an hour of your time.

The average wage in the UK is just around £31000, which is £2,583 a month.  
At £15 pcm you'd need 172 clients.  If we assume an average of 20 working days a month then you'd need to see 8.6 clients a day - call it 9.   So, even if you only spoke to each client for 30 minutes, that's 4.5 hours, which is just the tmie you spend speaking to them.  You'd also have to spend time looking at their budgets and their spending  - lets be optimistic and say you could do this in 45 minutes per customer per month (which isn't particularly realistic) that's another 6.75 hours *per day*.  This takes you to 11.25 hours a day - and that's before you spend any time on the administrative side of your business (at this rate of income you can't afford to pay an accountant), or need to take a break (lunch, loo, stretch your legs).   Plus on-boarding new customers (both attracting them, and doing the initial meetings) would take more time on top of that. etc. etc.   

Just doesn't add up.

At £30 a month it sounds fractionally less terrible as you'd only need to see 4.3 customers a day - except those customers are now paying £30 a month so would have higher expectations.  It also doesn't help with the fact that most of your clients aren't available during the working day so if you're going to have any kind of regular interaction with them then that's going to have to be done during evenings and weekends.  Or that I've not taken into account *any* business expenses.  Or the question of what insight you'd be able to offer with that little individual attention per client.

The only way you could make this work would be if you automated it - i.e. created some software to do the analysis for you - in which case you're then competing with all the other apps, many of which are free.

In short - No, I don't believe it's a good business idea.

If you're qualified to offer financial advice, get a job with an existing firm as a financial advisor.   If you're not qualified (which brings your idea into further question!) and this is a line of work that interests you, then look into getting qualified.

k_man

Regarding whether anyone would pay £15 a month, I don't see why not.
YNAB ($14/m) and Emma (£0, £5, and £10/m options) are both (especially the former) popular on these forums.
If you can add a personal service, then I think a subset of those users who pay for an app currently may be interested.

Whether it is sound business for you, is another matter.

Ergates

k_man said:

Regarding whether anyone would pay £15 a month, I don't see why not.
YNAB ($14/m) and Emma (£0, £5, and £10/m options) are both (especially the former) popular on these forums.
If you can add a personal service, then I think a subset of those users who pay for an app currently may be interested.

Whether it is sound business for you, is another matter.

Those are established apps and are all cheaper than the lower end of what the OP was thinking of.
As my back-of-an-envelope calculations above show - adding in a personal service for £15 just wouldn't be feasible.

General_Grant

Zanderman said:

MattyT97 said:

grumiofoundation said:

MattyT97 said:

It's just an idea and I wanted to know what other people thought and my business adviser recommending asking on here. I appreciate everyones thoughts and feedback and take them all into account.

Are you paying your business adviser? 

No, I'm not.

What sort of business advisor is it?  If you don't pay them who does? 

Off-topic I know, but I'm curious as to what sort of business advisor suggests checking ideas on MSE Forum, particularly an idea that doesn't seem particularly viable. 

It seems more like a student project concept.

I'd guess at the public purse.

SiliconChip

I'm afraid that if you went on Dragon's Den with such a proposal you would be completely ripped to shreds, and I hate to think what would happen if Claude Littner (who is back doing interviews on The Apprentice today) got his hands on your business plan!

Daliah

OP did the right thing to ask for feedback before investing any more time, effort, and perhaps even money in the idea. 

Better luck with their next project

Zanderman

General_Grant said:

Zanderman said:

MattyT97 said:

grumiofoundation said:

MattyT97 said:

It's just an idea and I wanted to know what other people thought and my business adviser recommending asking on here. I appreciate everyones thoughts and feedback and take them all into account.

Are you paying your business adviser? 

No, I'm not.

What sort of business advisor is it?  If you don't pay them who does? 

Off-topic I know, but I'm curious as to what sort of business advisor suggests checking ideas on MSE Forum, particularly an idea that doesn't seem particularly viable. 

It seems more like a student project concept.

I'd guess at the public purse.

Well, yes, that's probably a given. I was being curious about which public purse.