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You can be smart, capable, and willing to put in plenty of elbow grease – but if your business idea isn’t viable, you’re in for a world of frustration. How can you save yourself time, heartache and be more confident in your launch? Join Terry...
You can be smart, capable, and willing to put in plenty of elbow grease – but if your business idea isn’t viable, you’re in for a world of frustration. How can you save yourself time, heartache and be more confident in your launch?
Join Terry and guest Pat Flynn for a discussion on the core items you must examine to make sure your business is set up to thrive.
This episode is brought to you by Chatterboss. A company that helps entrepreneurs make money, save time and avoid burnout by providing top notch executive assistants. www.chatterboss.com/launch
Advice for a friend (2:25)
What advice would Pat give to a friend who wants to start a business, but feels hesitant?
What’s stopping them? Sometimes we don’t even know what’s blocking us.
What’s the next step? Not the overwhelming big picture – what can you work on today? Practice just-in-time learning.
Who are you serving? Make sure you are talking to those people (online, offline, you want complete immersion into the needs of the people you’re trying to serve).
The Will It Fly? Method (5:10)
Don’t build your business in secret, investing all your time and money into an idea that hasn’t been proven yet.
Find the market map: What’s the lay of the land? What already exists, and where is there space for you and your idea in the market?
Three p’s of finding your target market:
Places (where are your customers?)
People (who has already spent time to earn trust with the people you want to serve?)
Products (what is being offered in this space already? what do people like/dislike? where are the gaps, and what is the pricing like?)
Mapping all this out may show you that you don’t actually like your idea as much as you originally thought – or you might get a series of smaller green lights along the way. Either way, this provides a way to test the idea on a smaller scale, before investing too much up front.
How to go from idea to first customer (9:50)
Being active in the community of people you’d like to serve means you get to hear about their problems, and present them with solutions. This may not turn into sales the first week, but after six months that community can help you build a product they will be excited to buy.
Confronting Failure (12:47)
Two facets:
If you’re building a business, at some point you will fail; that’s the point of the “Will it Fly?” method. It’s to incorporate feedback from small failures to make your product/idea better.
When do you know you have a good business idea? (15:50)
Pay attention to where you’re finding traction. When you remove the guesswork by knowing the people you’re serving and what they need, you get to move forward with confidence.
Start small, so you can build confidence in the idea and yourself as a business owner. Get one customer and one result, and build from there. Think of your first customer as a petri dish.
Learn to lean in to the positive possibilities and growth offered by the unknown. If you’re not a little nervous, you’re probably not pushing yourself enough.
What does success look like to Pat Flynn? (20:40)
Freedom, the ability to create when and what he’d like for the audience he’d like to serve. Mid-day trips to Target are also an added bonus.
About Our Guest
Pat Flynn wrote Will It Fly: How to Test Your Business Idea so You Don’t Waste Your Time and Money, and is the host of two podcasts: Smart Passive Income and Ask Pat.
Where else to find Pat:
