December 21, 2025 • 19 mins
This summer we're curating your playlist with some of our favourite episodes of BIZ - our podcast that gets your work life sorted!
Dreaming of quitting your 9-5 to launch that business idea? Before you hand in your resignation, our BIZ career coaches Michelle Battersby and Soph Hirst reveal what it really takes to succeed on your own.
Join Em Vernem to discover if entrepreneurship is truly for you, or if you're better suited to thrive elsewhere. Plus Michelle will share her crucial practical 3-step framework to validate your business idea before risking your savings
Whether you're contemplating your first side hustle or seriously considering going all-in on your startup dream, this episode delivers the unfiltered advice you need to make smarter career decisions—minus the entrepreneurial fairy tales.
Resources:
- Here is the site that Michelle used to make her questionnaire
- Here is Sunroom’s early ideation survey from 2020 and Sunroom’s creator research and feedback form, plus here is the Tiktok content she posted.
- Here is the link to Tech Ready Women that Soph was discussing.
Sign up to the BIZ newsletter here
Listen to more BIZ here.
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Support independent women's media.
Follow the Biz Instagram, Michelle’s startup Sunroom and Soph’s career coaching business Workbaby.
If you wanna see three of our favourite girl bosses in action, Mamamia Out Loud is going on tour! Jessie, Mia, Holly and BIZ’s own Em Vernem are heading to Perth, Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney in May to celebrate 10 years of Australia’s #1 women’s podcast. Buy tickets to The Mamamia Out Loud LIVE ALL OR NOTHING TOUR here.
Got a work life dilemma? Send us all the questions you definitely can't ask your boss for our Biz Inbox episodes - send us a voice note or email us at podcast@mamamia.com.au.
HOSTS: Michelle Battersby, Soph Hirst and Em Vernem
EXEC PRODUCER: Kimberly Braddish
AUDIO PRODUCER: Leah Porges
Mamamia acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the Land we have recorded this podcast on, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. We pay our respects to their Elders past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures.
https://www.mamamia.com.au/mplus/: https://www.mamamia.com.au/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
You're listening to another Mia podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Mama Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of the land. We
have recorded this podcast on the Gatagoul people of the
Eur Nation. We pay our respects to their elders past
and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and
Torres Strait islander cultures.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
Hello, m Vernoon here and I am the host of BIZ,
a podcast that gets your work live sorted. And this
summer we are curating your playlist with unmissable episodes full
of hacks, tips and tricks from our top expert guests
and hosts. And if you're looking for more to listen to,
every Mama Mia podcast is curating your summer listening right
across our network. From pop culture to beauty to powerful interviews,
(01:04):
there is something for everyone. There is a link in
our show notes. Hello, and welcome to BIZ Your work
life Sorted. I'm m Vernon, and today we're tackling the
question that's probably popped into your head during every terrible meeting.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
You've sat through.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
Should I just quit and start my own thing? Look,
whether you're dreaming of launching the next big tech startup,
I'm good for you, or if you're perfectly happy building
your career in a company and honestly both are completely valid,
then this episode is for you. There's so much pressure
these days to be entrepreneurial and sometimes we forget to
ask ourselves if that is actually what we want today.
(01:45):
Our career coaches Michelle Battersby and Soph Hurst break down
the real talk about both parts and when I say real,
I actually mean real. Michelle is an entrepreneur who launched
Bumble in Australia and now runs her own startup, and
Soph took the leap from Google to launch a coaching
program for people in their early career era. So they
both worked in some of the biggest companies in the
(02:06):
world and now they run their own businesses. So they've
literally lived both sides of this story. Plus, as a
little extra bonus for you, Michelle is going to share
three practical steps to avoid accidentally burning through your life
safe guilty. Here are your big questions and concerns.
Speaker 4 (02:27):
Have this amazing business idea, but everyone keeps telling me
I need more corporate experience first.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
How much experience is enough before you can actually back yourself.
Speaker 5 (02:35):
Everyone talks about finding the right co founder, but how
do you actually know if someone's right, like, do you
go of your gut or is there some kind of
friendship to business partner formula?
Speaker 6 (02:44):
I see all these perfect startup stories on TikTok, but
no one talks about the missing middle part. How do
you actually go from thinking of an idea to starting
the actual business without losing your mind?
Speaker 5 (02:56):
The whole cost of living thing actually terrifies me. I
want to start my own business, but I can barely
afford rent. How do people actually make that leap without
family money backing them.
Speaker 7 (03:07):
It's something a lot of us dream about, you know,
quitting our job and starting a business, and there's so
much social pressure online to be entrepreneurial and breakaway from
the nine to five. But ye is working for yourself
for you. Michelle and I both currently own our own businesses,
but before that we worked at companies so Google, PwC,
(03:30):
City Bumble. In today's episode, we're gonna break down the
hard truth of both situations so you can make smarted
decisions for your career, and Michelle's going to give you
three practical steps that are gonna stop you wasting your
life savings. Michelle, you've worked for some pretty awesome companies
(03:50):
and now you work for yourself, So which is better?
Speaker 4 (03:53):
I think working at a company is better, particularly at
the start of your career. So I think if you've
landed a job at an organization where you believe in
the mission, you love the product, and you feel like
you have autonomy in your role that is just chef's kiss,
that can feel really amazing, and it can also set
(04:14):
you up with some really incredible skills that you can
then transition into entrepreneurship if you do choose to go
down that route later. But I also think it's worth
noting that entrepreneurship isn't for everyone, and you don't have
to go and start a business, and working at a
company can serve you amazingly throughout your whole career. But
I do think there is a definite value there if
(04:37):
you work for a company first.
Speaker 7 (04:38):
There's so many different factors at play here, and I
think what this episode is going to do today is
help people answer that question, is working for yourself for you?
And then if it is, how do you gone to it? Michelle,
I'm actually pretty surprised that you said that. You said
(05:01):
it is better to work for a company at the
start of your career and I feel like it's a
bit of a business hot take, because you know, it's
counter to the narrative that you see online right now,
which is all this stuff around like being a baby CEO,
all these inspirational career stories of entrepreneurs, and it feels
like everyone has a Shopify's store. There's also a lo
of anti corporate, anti company talk. Sometimes it feels like,
(05:25):
am I lame to work at a company? Explain yourself?
Speaker 4 (05:28):
Yeah, I see those same narratives online and I don't
agree with them. In my experience, there are three epic
reasons to work for a company first, and I think
the first one is really about flipping that narrative on
its head, like you are not a slave because you
work for the man. You know, all this stuff you
(05:48):
see online that you know it's almost less than it's
not as fulfilling if you work for someone else.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
I don't agree with that.
Speaker 4 (05:55):
There are so many incredible benefits to working for someone
else and flip that narrative and take from your employer.
You're working in these big companies with processors, policies in place,
and money to help you develop your skills. Do the course,
seek exec coaching, travel shadow people, take as much knowledge
(06:19):
as you can from that environment and build yourself on paper,
and you can then take that to the next company
and propel yourself forward, or you can take it into entrepreneurship.
So that's I think the first benefit for working for
an organization is just how much you can acquire new
skills and gain exposure to certain things. The second benefit
(06:39):
is it's stable. It's financially stable employment. It also helps
you build a network. Your network will pay dividends if
you do go on to start your own business. It'll
also help you if you want to progress in a
corporate environment. But an example of how my network benefited
me once I started my own company was my app
(07:01):
was about to launch and three days from launch, it
was rejected by Apple in the app Store for a way.
We'd applied a certain piece of technology and all of
our creators were on it ready to use it. All
of our media, we'd done, all our interviews, all of
our press was about to go live and we were panicking.
But we had someone on our cap table, so someone
(07:23):
who'd invested in us that had an app that made
a hell of a lot of money for Apple, and
we taped that person on the Shoulder someone from our
network and they were able to contact Apple, which is
very hard to do if you've got a baby app,
and they were able.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
To get that up approofd for us.
Speaker 4 (07:40):
So building a network will help you loads if you
do go on to start your own company.
Speaker 7 (07:45):
So you feel like if you were straight out of
UNI trying to do this, you wouldn't have had that
same connection.
Speaker 4 (07:52):
Definitely not And your network will help you in so
many other ways, like raising capital, hiring people. I think
something people don't realize is it's very hard to hire
people when you start a company because they don't know
that your idea is going to work. They don't know
that your money's not going to run out. They might
not be willing to take a smaller salary and sacrifice
(08:13):
where they're at for your dream. So most of your
first hires are people that already trust and know you
that you have to pull from your network. You can't
just post a job ad and like get all these
people applying to this unknown company. So it also can
help you in that regard as well actually build a team.
(08:33):
The third thing that I think is really beneficial is
if you start your own company, you also automatically become
a leader, and not everyone has natural leadership capabilities. So
being in an organization, you're exposed to managers, to leaders,
to execs, to people with decades and decades more experienced
than you, and you will be exposed to good leaders
(08:56):
and bad leaders, and you'll know how it feels to
be an employee, and that is very, very important because
if you've had a bad manager, you know how shit
that feels, and you never want to make someone feel that.
So it helps you grow into the kind of leader
that you want to be, to have experienced both good
and bad. I actually thought of another thing that doesn't
(09:18):
fit into my three. But you also get to make
mistakes and it's not at your expense, it's on someone
else's dime. And that is a freedom that you do
not feel when you have your own company.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
So those are all my pros.
Speaker 7 (09:35):
As someone who now owns a business and I'm just
bleeding money from software mistakes that I didn't need to buy.
Make mistakes on someone else's money.
Speaker 4 (09:44):
Use it as a crash course if you are really entrepreneurial,
see how many projects you can get your hands on
and use them as a crash course to starting your
own company.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
Like what projects can you build from the ground up?
Speaker 7 (09:56):
Michaele, Those were some pretty good reasons to be an employee,
but most Australians still have some kind of desire to
start their own business. So I think the numbers around
seventy percent, and it's actually higher for gen Z. It's
like eighty four percent of gen Z say they want
to start their own business. On the Way next, Michelle
breaks down exactly what you need to know before you
(10:16):
start your own business. We're talking about the transition from
being an employee to owning a business. What do you
want our listeners to know and what is the scary
shit that no one really talks about.
Speaker 4 (10:38):
I think the first thing for anyone to be aware
of who's starting to work on a side project is
what is in your current employment contract. This may or
may not seem obvious, but a lot of employment contracts
actually don't allow secondary employment. Or if you come up
with an idea whilst you're working at the company, they
own that ip and they own that idea. So simple
(11:01):
things like using your personal laptop, using your personal email.
If you are starting to dabble in certain things, it's
a good idea to make sure you're not pursuing something
that's a conflict of interest. If something is a conflict
of interest, then that could end up in a pretty
big legal kerfuffle for you and potentially lost time and money.
(11:21):
I was mentoring someone who had spent a considerable amount
of money developing an app, and they'd then gone and
told their employer about that app, and it was deemed
a conflict of interest and they've not been able to
continue to pursue that side hustle. So thinking about where
you're at in your career, what your idea is, and
(11:42):
being aware of what's in your employment contract is a
good thing to look out for. Secondary to that is
the main thing that a founder is going to have
to sacrifice, a financial sacrifices and time. So you really
want to make sure that you're pursuing something that has legs,
and ultimately you want to figure out if it has
(12:02):
legs in the fastest, cheapest way possible before you start
to sacrifice too much time and money.
Speaker 7 (12:11):
I think that is actually where a lot of people
get really stuck. So the person who's sitting there thinking
like I have this amazing idea that's going to change
the world, or you know, you might have someone who's like,
I want to start a business, but I don't even
know where to start. How can you actually validate a
business idea?
Speaker 4 (12:27):
Yeah, I think this is what I want to make
super clear because I'm sure you've seen this as well.
So where someone comes to you for mentoring and they've
already spent their whole life savings developing an app or
some kind of product that they've never actually asked anyone
if they want, or maybe they've asked their parents or
their friends. That is a good start, but they're not
(12:47):
necessarily going to tell you the truth. So three ways
you can validate your idea without spending too much money
is surveying, So I recommend using a site called type
form generates really easy to use and interpret surveys generates
a link and you can send it out to anyone.
You could start with your friends. You could ask your
(13:08):
friends to pass it on to friends of them. You
could share it on LinkedIn and ask your immediate network
to get around it and then it kind of spreads
from there.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
You could share it on social media.
Speaker 4 (13:18):
That is a really good way to test you've actually
identified a problem people have. You want to be asking
open ended questions where possible. You want to be asking
questions that aren't just going to give you the answers
that you want really broad industry insights. You need to
just start researching the space. So surveying is a really
big one. The second one in that vein is you
(13:41):
could actually start to generate content. And again you could
keep this really broad, like you're at the very start
right now. So let's just say you think that all
the influencers in the world right now are currently having
a huge problem managing their DMS. You could literally create
a video posted on TikTok and say to all the
creators out there, if you could hire one person in
(14:02):
your team to do one thing that would make your
life easier. What would it be that's just going to
tell you is DMS actually something that's coming up? Or
have they got other problems? You know, just little things
like that that will start letting you know if you're
actually onto something. Then the third one, and I love
this is competition is good. Competition indicates that there actually
(14:27):
is a need for the thing you're focusing on. So
go and find all the competitors, all the companies that
may have come and gone in this realm and hit
up the founders or ex employees or current employees maybe
at those companies and talk to them a similar method
to the surveying, but you're not going directly to your
(14:49):
potential consumers with this one. You're going to people that
have actually worked in it and have lived and breathed
it and potentially made mistakes, and you're figuring out, like,
what are the red flags of this idea, or like
is my idea innovative? Or have I iterated enough on
what these other people have done to make this successful?
(15:09):
And that last one is actually inspo from my co
founder because there's an idea that she had for a platform,
which was to build the next gen Facebook Events platform,
and she found many people had tried to build a
product that was going to be the next version of
Facebook Events, and she just hit up all these ex
(15:32):
founders who had tried, and she got on the phone
with them, and she very quickly realized that that wasn't
an idea that she wanted to pursue, and she moved
on to the next And so this method is tried
and tested. The surveying with type form is exactly what
I did with my business before I went all in,
none of those ideas actually cost a dollar exactly.
Speaker 7 (15:55):
It really feels like you're going from this idea is
in my head to now I'm actually getting it into
the real world and getting real feedback. I think that
point around not just your friends, it has to be
people you don't know, friends of friends, because I think
your friends are probably gonna they're gonna be pretty nice
to you about your idea, so you want to make
sure you're validating it with other people.
Speaker 4 (16:14):
Another thing that can often come out of this surveying
approach as well. Something that happened with me and Son
is as I started doing the surveying, consumers were starting
to say to me, I'll invest in this, and that
for me was the light bulb moment where I thought, oh, okay,
I think we might be onto something with this. These
people are telling me they'll use it, and they're also
(16:35):
telling me they'd give me their own money for me
to go and build it.
Speaker 7 (16:38):
So, Michelle, you were talking about the survey questions, do
you actually have the survey that you did for Sunroom
that you can show people. I do.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
Let's put it in the show notes.
Speaker 4 (16:49):
I will share the original Sunroom validation survey. And I
also have a TikTok that I posted about another app
that we were developing at Sunroom, where I was trying
to check the power of parasocial relationships. So I'll show
an example of content that I posted to validate if
an idea was good or not.
Speaker 7 (17:10):
Michelle, I actually wanted to add one more point, which
is around this idea of sort of proving or disproving
your idea. I went through a similar situation where I
was leaving my company job and I wanted to figure
out what my business I did was going to be.
I still feel like I just wanted a bit more handholding.
I did a really great program, sort of a founder
(17:30):
program for women, and I just want to share with
you guys. It was called tech Ready Women. It totally
fit into my life. I think it was like a
six or seven week program, super cost effective. I think
it only cost me seven hundred dollars and it's partly
subsized by the government. It's run by this amazing woman,
Christy Whitehill. So we'll put that in the show notes
as well. I definitely recommend if people just want a
(17:52):
bit more support and coaching, that's a program I did,
all right, let's close this out with some action points.
So action point number one is you really have to
be willing to sacrifice. So what are you going to
sacrifice in terms of your pay and in terms of
your time. Something that I did was just writing a
list down of what those sacrifices would be, so you're
(18:13):
going into this with your eyes fully open. Number two,
if you have an idea for a business, you really
want to start with validation. So what's the cheapest and
fastest way to prove or disprove your idea? And hint,
that's probably not building out a full app. Again, Michelle's
really helpful steps are going to be in our newsletter.
And action point number three. I sort of wanted to
(18:36):
end the episode with something that I think summarizes this
really well. It's something I heard the other day. So
making money is your reward for putting value into the world.
So don't think of it in terms of what do
I want to build, think of it in terms of
what people actually need.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
So my absolute favorite thing about this episode is being
assured that it's okay to love your corporate job. I'm
sure Mama Mia is very happy about that. Sometimes we
want to girl boss and sometimes we just don't. And
for anyone sitting there with the business idea burning a
hole in their brain, please please please check out our
newsletter this Michelle's broken down exactly how to validate your
(19:24):
idea without spending ascent. I'll chat to you in our
Biz Inbox episode that drops this Thursday, where we answer
all of your career dilemmas and see you next time.
You're listening to another Mia podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Mama Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of the land. We
have recorded this podcast on the Gatagoul people of the
Eur Nation. We pay our respects to their elders past
and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and
Torres Strait islander cultures.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
Hello, m Vernoon here and I am the host of BIZ,
a podcast that gets your work live sorted. And this
summer we are curating your playlist with unmissable episodes full
of hacks, tips and tricks from our top expert guests
and hosts. And if you're looking for more to listen to,
every Mama Mia podcast is curating your summer listening right
across our network. From pop culture to beauty to powerful interviews,
(01:04):
there is something for everyone. There is a link in
our show notes. Hello, and welcome to BIZ Your work
life Sorted. I'm m Vernon, and today we're tackling the
question that's probably popped into your head during every terrible meeting.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
You've sat through.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
Should I just quit and start my own thing? Look,
whether you're dreaming of launching the next big tech startup,
I'm good for you, or if you're perfectly happy building
your career in a company and honestly both are completely valid,
then this episode is for you. There's so much pressure
these days to be entrepreneurial and sometimes we forget to
ask ourselves if that is actually what we want today.
(01:45):
Our career coaches Michelle Battersby and Soph Hurst break down
the real talk about both parts and when I say real,
I actually mean real. Michelle is an entrepreneur who launched
Bumble in Australia and now runs her own startup, and
Soph took the leap from Google to launch a coaching
program for people in their early career era. So they
both worked in some of the biggest companies in the
(02:06):
world and now they run their own businesses. So they've
literally lived both sides of this story. Plus, as a
little extra bonus for you, Michelle is going to share
three practical steps to avoid accidentally burning through your life
safe guilty. Here are your big questions and concerns.
Speaker 4 (02:27):
Have this amazing business idea, but everyone keeps telling me
I need more corporate experience first.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
How much experience is enough before you can actually back yourself.
Speaker 5 (02:35):
Everyone talks about finding the right co founder, but how
do you actually know if someone's right, like, do you
go of your gut or is there some kind of
friendship to business partner formula?
Speaker 6 (02:44):
I see all these perfect startup stories on TikTok, but
no one talks about the missing middle part. How do
you actually go from thinking of an idea to starting
the actual business without losing your mind?
Speaker 5 (02:56):
The whole cost of living thing actually terrifies me. I
want to start my own business, but I can barely
afford rent. How do people actually make that leap without
family money backing them.
Speaker 7 (03:07):
It's something a lot of us dream about, you know,
quitting our job and starting a business, and there's so
much social pressure online to be entrepreneurial and breakaway from
the nine to five. But ye is working for yourself
for you. Michelle and I both currently own our own businesses,
but before that we worked at companies so Google, PwC,
(03:30):
City Bumble. In today's episode, we're gonna break down the
hard truth of both situations so you can make smarted
decisions for your career, and Michelle's going to give you
three practical steps that are gonna stop you wasting your
life savings. Michelle, you've worked for some pretty awesome companies
(03:50):
and now you work for yourself, So which is better?
Speaker 4 (03:53):
I think working at a company is better, particularly at
the start of your career. So I think if you've
landed a job at an organization where you believe in
the mission, you love the product, and you feel like
you have autonomy in your role that is just chef's kiss,
that can feel really amazing, and it can also set
(04:14):
you up with some really incredible skills that you can
then transition into entrepreneurship if you do choose to go
down that route later. But I also think it's worth
noting that entrepreneurship isn't for everyone, and you don't have
to go and start a business, and working at a
company can serve you amazingly throughout your whole career. But
I do think there is a definite value there if
(04:37):
you work for a company first.
Speaker 7 (04:38):
There's so many different factors at play here, and I
think what this episode is going to do today is
help people answer that question, is working for yourself for you?
And then if it is, how do you gone to it? Michelle,
I'm actually pretty surprised that you said that. You said
(05:01):
it is better to work for a company at the
start of your career and I feel like it's a
bit of a business hot take, because you know, it's
counter to the narrative that you see online right now,
which is all this stuff around like being a baby CEO,
all these inspirational career stories of entrepreneurs, and it feels
like everyone has a Shopify's store. There's also a lo
of anti corporate, anti company talk. Sometimes it feels like,
(05:25):
am I lame to work at a company? Explain yourself?
Speaker 4 (05:28):
Yeah, I see those same narratives online and I don't
agree with them. In my experience, there are three epic
reasons to work for a company first, and I think
the first one is really about flipping that narrative on
its head, like you are not a slave because you
work for the man. You know, all this stuff you
(05:48):
see online that you know it's almost less than it's
not as fulfilling if you work for someone else.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
I don't agree with that.
Speaker 4 (05:55):
There are so many incredible benefits to working for someone
else and flip that narrative and take from your employer.
You're working in these big companies with processors, policies in place,
and money to help you develop your skills. Do the course,
seek exec coaching, travel shadow people, take as much knowledge
(06:19):
as you can from that environment and build yourself on paper,
and you can then take that to the next company
and propel yourself forward, or you can take it into entrepreneurship.
So that's I think the first benefit for working for
an organization is just how much you can acquire new
skills and gain exposure to certain things. The second benefit
(06:39):
is it's stable. It's financially stable employment. It also helps
you build a network. Your network will pay dividends if
you do go on to start your own business. It'll
also help you if you want to progress in a
corporate environment. But an example of how my network benefited
me once I started my own company was my app
(07:01):
was about to launch and three days from launch, it
was rejected by Apple in the app Store for a way.
We'd applied a certain piece of technology and all of
our creators were on it ready to use it. All
of our media, we'd done, all our interviews, all of
our press was about to go live and we were panicking.
But we had someone on our cap table, so someone
(07:23):
who'd invested in us that had an app that made
a hell of a lot of money for Apple, and
we taped that person on the Shoulder someone from our
network and they were able to contact Apple, which is
very hard to do if you've got a baby app,
and they were able.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
To get that up approofd for us.
Speaker 4 (07:40):
So building a network will help you loads if you
do go on to start your own company.
Speaker 7 (07:45):
So you feel like if you were straight out of
UNI trying to do this, you wouldn't have had that
same connection.
Speaker 4 (07:52):
Definitely not And your network will help you in so
many other ways, like raising capital, hiring people. I think
something people don't realize is it's very hard to hire
people when you start a company because they don't know
that your idea is going to work. They don't know
that your money's not going to run out. They might
not be willing to take a smaller salary and sacrifice
(08:13):
where they're at for your dream. So most of your
first hires are people that already trust and know you
that you have to pull from your network. You can't
just post a job ad and like get all these
people applying to this unknown company. So it also can
help you in that regard as well actually build a team.
(08:33):
The third thing that I think is really beneficial is
if you start your own company, you also automatically become
a leader, and not everyone has natural leadership capabilities. So
being in an organization, you're exposed to managers, to leaders,
to execs, to people with decades and decades more experienced
than you, and you will be exposed to good leaders
(08:56):
and bad leaders, and you'll know how it feels to
be an employee, and that is very, very important because
if you've had a bad manager, you know how shit
that feels, and you never want to make someone feel that.
So it helps you grow into the kind of leader
that you want to be, to have experienced both good
and bad. I actually thought of another thing that doesn't
(09:18):
fit into my three. But you also get to make
mistakes and it's not at your expense, it's on someone
else's dime. And that is a freedom that you do
not feel when you have your own company.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
So those are all my pros.
Speaker 7 (09:35):
As someone who now owns a business and I'm just
bleeding money from software mistakes that I didn't need to buy.
Make mistakes on someone else's money.
Speaker 4 (09:44):
Use it as a crash course if you are really entrepreneurial,
see how many projects you can get your hands on
and use them as a crash course to starting your
own company.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
Like what projects can you build from the ground up?
Speaker 7 (09:56):
Michaele, Those were some pretty good reasons to be an employee,
but most Australians still have some kind of desire to
start their own business. So I think the numbers around
seventy percent, and it's actually higher for gen Z. It's
like eighty four percent of gen Z say they want
to start their own business. On the Way next, Michelle
breaks down exactly what you need to know before you
(10:16):
start your own business. We're talking about the transition from
being an employee to owning a business. What do you
want our listeners to know and what is the scary
shit that no one really talks about.
Speaker 4 (10:38):
I think the first thing for anyone to be aware
of who's starting to work on a side project is
what is in your current employment contract. This may or
may not seem obvious, but a lot of employment contracts
actually don't allow secondary employment. Or if you come up
with an idea whilst you're working at the company, they
own that ip and they own that idea. So simple
(11:01):
things like using your personal laptop, using your personal email.
If you are starting to dabble in certain things, it's
a good idea to make sure you're not pursuing something
that's a conflict of interest. If something is a conflict
of interest, then that could end up in a pretty
big legal kerfuffle for you and potentially lost time and money.
(11:21):
I was mentoring someone who had spent a considerable amount
of money developing an app, and they'd then gone and
told their employer about that app, and it was deemed
a conflict of interest and they've not been able to
continue to pursue that side hustle. So thinking about where
you're at in your career, what your idea is, and
(11:42):
being aware of what's in your employment contract is a
good thing to look out for. Secondary to that is
the main thing that a founder is going to have
to sacrifice, a financial sacrifices and time. So you really
want to make sure that you're pursuing something that has legs,
and ultimately you want to figure out if it has
(12:02):
legs in the fastest, cheapest way possible before you start
to sacrifice too much time and money.
Speaker 7 (12:11):
I think that is actually where a lot of people
get really stuck. So the person who's sitting there thinking
like I have this amazing idea that's going to change
the world, or you know, you might have someone who's like,
I want to start a business, but I don't even
know where to start. How can you actually validate a
business idea?
Speaker 4 (12:27):
Yeah, I think this is what I want to make
super clear because I'm sure you've seen this as well.
So where someone comes to you for mentoring and they've
already spent their whole life savings developing an app or
some kind of product that they've never actually asked anyone
if they want, or maybe they've asked their parents or
their friends. That is a good start, but they're not
(12:47):
necessarily going to tell you the truth. So three ways
you can validate your idea without spending too much money
is surveying, So I recommend using a site called type
form generates really easy to use and interpret surveys generates
a link and you can send it out to anyone.
You could start with your friends. You could ask your
(13:08):
friends to pass it on to friends of them. You
could share it on LinkedIn and ask your immediate network
to get around it and then it kind of spreads
from there.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
You could share it on social media.
Speaker 4 (13:18):
That is a really good way to test you've actually
identified a problem people have. You want to be asking
open ended questions where possible. You want to be asking
questions that aren't just going to give you the answers
that you want really broad industry insights. You need to
just start researching the space. So surveying is a really
big one. The second one in that vein is you
(13:41):
could actually start to generate content. And again you could
keep this really broad, like you're at the very start
right now. So let's just say you think that all
the influencers in the world right now are currently having
a huge problem managing their DMS. You could literally create
a video posted on TikTok and say to all the
creators out there, if you could hire one person in
(14:02):
your team to do one thing that would make your
life easier. What would it be that's just going to
tell you is DMS actually something that's coming up? Or
have they got other problems? You know, just little things
like that that will start letting you know if you're
actually onto something. Then the third one, and I love
this is competition is good. Competition indicates that there actually
(14:27):
is a need for the thing you're focusing on. So
go and find all the competitors, all the companies that
may have come and gone in this realm and hit
up the founders or ex employees or current employees maybe
at those companies and talk to them a similar method
to the surveying, but you're not going directly to your
(14:49):
potential consumers with this one. You're going to people that
have actually worked in it and have lived and breathed
it and potentially made mistakes, and you're figuring out, like,
what are the red flags of this idea, or like
is my idea innovative? Or have I iterated enough on
what these other people have done to make this successful?
(15:09):
And that last one is actually inspo from my co
founder because there's an idea that she had for a platform,
which was to build the next gen Facebook Events platform,
and she found many people had tried to build a
product that was going to be the next version of
Facebook Events, and she just hit up all these ex
(15:32):
founders who had tried, and she got on the phone
with them, and she very quickly realized that that wasn't
an idea that she wanted to pursue, and she moved
on to the next And so this method is tried
and tested. The surveying with type form is exactly what
I did with my business before I went all in,
none of those ideas actually cost a dollar exactly.
Speaker 7 (15:55):
It really feels like you're going from this idea is
in my head to now I'm actually getting it into
the real world and getting real feedback. I think that
point around not just your friends, it has to be
people you don't know, friends of friends, because I think
your friends are probably gonna they're gonna be pretty nice
to you about your idea, so you want to make
sure you're validating it with other people.
Speaker 4 (16:14):
Another thing that can often come out of this surveying
approach as well. Something that happened with me and Son
is as I started doing the surveying, consumers were starting
to say to me, I'll invest in this, and that
for me was the light bulb moment where I thought, oh, okay,
I think we might be onto something with this. These
people are telling me they'll use it, and they're also
(16:35):
telling me they'd give me their own money for me
to go and build it.
Speaker 7 (16:38):
So, Michelle, you were talking about the survey questions, do
you actually have the survey that you did for Sunroom
that you can show people. I do.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
Let's put it in the show notes.
Speaker 4 (16:49):
I will share the original Sunroom validation survey. And I
also have a TikTok that I posted about another app
that we were developing at Sunroom, where I was trying
to check the power of parasocial relationships. So I'll show
an example of content that I posted to validate if
an idea was good or not.
Speaker 7 (17:10):
Michelle, I actually wanted to add one more point, which
is around this idea of sort of proving or disproving
your idea. I went through a similar situation where I
was leaving my company job and I wanted to figure
out what my business I did was going to be.
I still feel like I just wanted a bit more handholding.
I did a really great program, sort of a founder
(17:30):
program for women, and I just want to share with
you guys. It was called tech Ready Women. It totally
fit into my life. I think it was like a
six or seven week program, super cost effective. I think
it only cost me seven hundred dollars and it's partly
subsized by the government. It's run by this amazing woman,
Christy Whitehill. So we'll put that in the show notes
as well. I definitely recommend if people just want a
(17:52):
bit more support and coaching, that's a program I did,
all right, let's close this out with some action points.
So action point number one is you really have to
be willing to sacrifice. So what are you going to
sacrifice in terms of your pay and in terms of
your time. Something that I did was just writing a
list down of what those sacrifices would be, so you're
(18:13):
going into this with your eyes fully open. Number two,
if you have an idea for a business, you really
want to start with validation. So what's the cheapest and
fastest way to prove or disprove your idea? And hint,
that's probably not building out a full app. Again, Michelle's
really helpful steps are going to be in our newsletter.
And action point number three. I sort of wanted to
(18:36):
end the episode with something that I think summarizes this
really well. It's something I heard the other day. So
making money is your reward for putting value into the world.
So don't think of it in terms of what do
I want to build, think of it in terms of
what people actually need.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
So my absolute favorite thing about this episode is being
assured that it's okay to love your corporate job. I'm
sure Mama Mia is very happy about that. Sometimes we
want to girl boss and sometimes we just don't. And
for anyone sitting there with the business idea burning a
hole in their brain, please please please check out our
newsletter this Michelle's broken down exactly how to validate your
(19:24):
idea without spending ascent. I'll chat to you in our
Biz Inbox episode that drops this Thursday, where we answer
all of your career dilemmas and see you next time.
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