💡 Adam's Ideas Issue #2 - Capitalise on the sober revolution!

Welcome to the new joiners, and thank you to those of you who provided me with some great feedback last week!

I’ve added a couple of new sections this week, in this issue we’ve got:

• The Deep-Dive - an opportunity to capitalise on the growing sober revolution.

• Steal This Idea - an idea for the UK market to cater to the growing number of freelancers and contractors.

• What I Learnt This Week - you may think creating short-form videos with an AI avatar is rocket science, I know I did! Turns out you can do it in 30 minutes, for free.

Estimated read time - 5 minutes.

The Deep-Dive

The Sober Revolution Is Here

The UK is leading the way with the growth of the no and low alcohol market.

The market is predicted to be worth £450m by the end of 2024, half of the UK adult population bought a no or low-alcohol product in 2022, and a third of UK pub visits are now alcohol-free.

A whole industry has developed around this with companies such as Club Soda who have an alcohol-free tasting room and host an alcohol-free festival.

There are also several influencers popping up in this area including Millie Gooch who has a series called Wholesome Fun where she shares alcohol-free activities.

What’s The Opportunity Here?

This is a growing area, and as it grows people are going to be looking for ways to spend their time that don’t involve alcohol.

The opportunity here is to capture that market.

Influencers such as Millie Gooch have already started to capitalise on this, but this is only the start of this trend and there’s plenty of room.

Countless blog articles exist around no-alcohol activities but there isn’t a central directory of them.

The Idea

Build a website covering all no-alcohol activities available in the UK.

The MVP of this is a simple directory, perhaps with an accompanying blog review of each listing - this is easily monetised with relevant display ads.

But I think there are bigger opportunities for expansion here:

• Reviews - build your own review platform, there’s clear value for those seeking no-alcohol activities to read reviews specifically from those who also don’t drink.

• Bookings - offer a booking platform with the activity providers.

• Partnerships - partner with no-alcohol brands to deliver one-off events.

This is a growing industry, and ripe for someone to position themselves as the authority on the subject.

How To Start

For anyone not technical this may seem like a difficult opportunity to approach but there are many no-code tools out there which, with a bit of effort, can easily produce an MVP.

Here’s a couple of articles to get you started:

• Wordpress - a simple directory and accompanying blog can be built fairly easily on Wordpress.

• Bubble - a bit more involved but using Bubble you can build a review site without the need for code.

You will likely grow beyond these solutions fairly quickly, but they’re great options for throwing an initial MVP together and proving the concept.

Steal This Idea

I love finding ideas which are successful in other countries that can be replicated in the UK.

Today’s idea is Better With Benji.

Better With Benji is an AI chatbot that helps freelancers find tax write-offs from their bank statements.

It’s currently only for the US and Canadian market so the opportunity to build a UK version is clear, especially with growing self-employment in the UK.

There are a few options I can see for monetisation of this idea:

• Charge directly - the most simple model is to charge users directly to use the platform, but I think the earning potential here is capped somewhat.

• White-label - build the platform then white-label it to accountancy practices to offer to use as lead generation. This could be lucrative but may eventually saturate the market.

• Partnership - find an accountancy practice and partner with them using your tool as a unique form of lead generation. I think this could be the most lucrative option if you can agree a percentage of revenue generated.

What I Learnt This Week

After seeing a rise in AI generated avatars used in videos I spent some time playing around with it.

I had assumed this would be a lengthy process but it’s not!

I stumbled across this video which shows you how to create a talking AI avatar using only free tools. It took me about 30 minutes for the initial one and now I can knock out videos in under 10 minutes.

Give it a go!

I hope this has been a useful issue with the additional sections.

As always I’m very open to feedback, just reply to this email!

Coming up next week - an untapped opportunity in the UK tour market.