Making it real, with Jennie Johnson MBE

Lots of people get stuck on the big idea, whether it's for a new business or a next step at work. It’s easy to believe that what separates the successes from the failures is that moment of inspiration. But the reality is that the answer often lies much more in execution. In hard work. It’s that cheesy but accurate Thomas Edison quote: it’s 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. Loads of people have good ideas. But they will remain just ideas unless you learn how to execute. How to take that idea from your mind, beyond a powerpoint presentation or a business plan, to something real and functioning.

Helping us to explore this topic in this episode, we have someone who has taken their ideas and made them real to great success, not once but twice. Jennie Jonson MBE is the CEO of My First Five Years, the next-generation parenting app designed to combat anxiety and give parents evidence-based tools, knowledge and support. Within a year of founding in 2021, MFFY had raised over £1.5m in seed-funding and is now growing at a fantastic rate. 

Prior to My First Five Years, Jennie founded one of the UK’s largest nursery groups, Kids Allowed, running it for 17 years before successfully exiting in 2020. She was the first female to win the UK Private Business Awards CEO of the Year and was voted UK’s Businesswoman of the Year in 2019. 

We took loads away from our conversation with Jennie. Here are the top tips for making it real:

• Validate your ideas with your personal experience - or someone else's. Sense check: will this work?
• Check what's already there: is someone else already trying to solve the same problem?
• If they are, that doesn't necessarily mean you shouldn't do it - maybe it's validation of the need. But maybe you should work with not against them.
• Find your 'brains trust': who's experience and talent can you leverage?
• Work fast: minimise wasted time and effort by filtering ideas quickly
• Accept feedback: Listen to what people are telling you. You don't have to agree with everything you're told but sometimes you need to accept the weight of feedback and make a change or walk away
• Can you make it real on your own? Or do you need a co-founder or sponsor?
• Make it simple: you need to be able to explain your idea very quickly and in a way that people can just 'get' whether it's in a few sentences or a couple of slides (and maybe even just one line)
• Be resilient: Take feedback, change as needed, but don't be dissuaded if you still believe there is the core of a good idea.
• What's your measure of success? Set yourself some goals and targets that you can benchmark against.