I have been involved in launching two businesses, thenerve.tv and Rock Control, each of which had high hopes, dreams and intentions but both just simply didn’t work out. I now feel that I have some distance from these ideas in order to accurately reflect on why they did not work out in the hope that others who have a “big dream idea” can learn from my mistakes and turn their dreams into a successful reality. I will write this blog in two parts and will focus on thenerve.tv in this first blog post.

Firstly, it is important to provide a context. At the end of 2005 I conceived the idea for Tribewanted, which had a simple premise. A 200 acre island was leased in Fiji, an island that had nothing on it, and a website was launched that enabled the public to decide what they wanted to take place on the island. Paying visitors could then visit the island and help build and get involved in what was decided online. Now remember, this was pre-success of Facebook and slowly but surely the projects media profile started to gain momentum with highlights including a feature on Good Morning America, the Today Show and on the front page of the National Geographic. Tribewanted was also filmed for 18 months and became a Five part prime time BBC2 documentary. Tribewanted won a number of awards including beating MySpace to win ‘Best Social Network’ at the Broadcast Digital Media Awards.

Tribewanted gained a lot of media attention which enabled it do do well, however, it was the success of this first business and the media surrounding it which gave me an unrealistic expectation of how to hard it is to actually build a business!

thenerve.tv: After the success of Tribewanted and, as a consequence, a number of awards later I then had the idea for a crowd-sourced TV production company. The basic premise was that if I, an ordinary member of the British public had an idea which became a prime time BBC2 show then there would be other members of the public who would have equally successful good ideas also. The plan was for me to source these ideas and pitch them to relevant to production companies/broadcasters, with the intention of a 50/50 revenue split upon success.

Just to add, straight away, that thenerve.tv was launched just before we hit a global recession which clearly didn’t help. However, there were still flaws in this idea which, in hindsight, irrespective of a recession, I still do not think would have led to it’s success.  The main flaws in this idea, which I hope will bring some learning points to all entrepreneurs are:

1) Great ideas do not equal great TV shows (great ideas do not equal great businesses).

Heaps of people sit at home watching  TV shouting at the screen and telling anyone who listens that they have better ideas than the “rubbish that we see on TV”. This was exactly the premise of thenerve.tv, however, in the same way that millions of people are glued to the X Factor in order to watch the bad auditions I received 100′s of ideas for TV shows that were just not that good and so the actual number of ideas that could be pitched to TV channels were few and far between.

A number of people who had got in touch with me, regarding their ideas, had been trying to get their TV show idea off the ground for some time and in some ways I think I had perhaps offered this false hope of connecting these people with industry insiders. The introduction and connection between the two did not happen because there was a small number of good ideas that we could pitch.

2) One success does not equal a wealth of experience.

The success of Tribewanted was big, at the height of the media interest we were conducting media interviews in the UK, then America would wake up and we were interviewed on radio programmes and then Australia would wake up and we would do it all over again. Non-stop media interviews throughout the day. Tribewanted went on to win a number of awards and I, myself, won a number of awards including a Channel 4 4Talent award from the British broadcaster. I had always wanted to get into TV and for some crazy reason, in the midst of the hype, I thought that one fluke prime time TV show resulted in experience in TV development, it didn’t!

I went on a one man crusade to find the award winning TV show ideas from the every day man in order to pitch these ideas to TV broadcasters and time and time again I hit the same brick wall – a lack of experience. TV Broadcasters are looking for the biggest forward thinking ideas that will generate an audience of millions and, more importantly, will become a TV format that could be franchised Globally – think Deal or No Deal or X Factor.

I am told that for every 100 ideas concieved (from talented and experienced TV development executives) may result in one successful TV show, the success rate is few and far between even for the professionals. My experience was limited, even if there was a nugget of good idea in one of the TV shows pitched to me it is a pure skill to craft that gem of an idea into something that would catch the eye of a TV commissioner. I just did not have this skill.

3) A serious lack of contacts

Tribewanted did open a number of doors for me and enabled me to go and meet with Heads of Departments of all the main TV channels in the UK. The success of Tribewanted resulted in an intrigue and industry TV Execs are genuinely interested to hear what is out there. However, it is people with the experience PLUS the contacts that truly make a TV show happen. TV production companies wine and dine broadcasters like crazy, they take them out for meals and they attend all the events where they will be seen, just like anyone would do to get ahead of the game in any other industry. Whilst there was intrigue in what I had achieved I did not have the depth of relationship with contacts in order to convince them that an idea that I was sitting on would become TV gold.

Good idea + experience + contacts = a great TV show, and, better still, an intentionally sold format.

In the midst of a global economic crisis the whole TV industry shut down with little TV programmes being commissioned. The commissions that were successful came from talented and experienced TV production companies with a whole heap of experience behind them, not from the man at home shouting at the TV screen.

I am not saying that never again will a member of the public will come up with the idea for a TV show but the reality is that if you have something that you are passionate about you go and knock on doors. If you have an idea for a TV show go and find a production company that are making similar TV shows and ask them for a meeting, they will listen to you and be honest with you about your idea.

In essence, as a business proposition, there is a lot of money and resources put into the development of TV shows and the limited money that I had was being burnt up pretty quickly to the point were it could just not survive any longer. One last point of experience with thenerve.tv was that, a few months after launching, I realised that it was just not going to happen, that a good idea did not equal a good business. I tried every way possible to make the business a success, to join forces with other production companies or agencies (which there were some really good meetings regarding). However, the reality is that in the climate that we were in no-one wanted to put money into an unknown. I paid out a significant amount of money to try and keep thenerve.tv afloat and was almost scared to shut it down because I did not want to let people down. If you know your business is over, as soon as you know, wind it down and don’t throw good money after bad.

If you have an idea, go for it, but go for it in a measured way and do not sell your house, your children and your soul. When we chase ideas there is a respect that people give you and my experience of thenerve.tv was not all bad. It was because of thenerve that I was offered a job in development for online TV programmes at Endemol, one of the biggest TV production companies in the world which took me on my next adventure.

I am learning so much about my own projects that have failed and, other businesses that have not worked out so well. When you are passionate about a belief that there is something that you want to achieve you don’t give up, you take all these experiences, mold them together and channel them in the direction of success. I will launch another start up, in fact, I am working on something right now.

I hope that this blog has given you some insight and if you have any questions please do not hesitate to email me.