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all right, everyone quick break

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your your podcast is called the marketing against

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the grain

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canada

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that is gonna from berlin germany

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my question is about testing your

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business ideas

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the i put a bunch of people when your podcast

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talk about this or any and how is part

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of what made them successes

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i don't really understand what this means

1:02

testing of business ideas the only

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thing i can think of this may be

1:06

running was the ads and comparing to

1:08

performance the on that i

1:11

really don't know what to do could

1:13

you system or

1:15

hey

1:16

oh you seen this don't success

1:18

in the past and second of all

1:20

i can become better than basic

1:32

there's travel never looking back i

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the guy in ass son he said i

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hear you talk about tossing ideas what does that mean to let

1:38

me just like running ads to like a page

1:41

and getting sales and the answer's

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yes that is our way but

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he wants to know about testing ideas and honey do that

1:47

so we can share a couple of things that

1:50

i think he talks about this in the last one was right

1:52

about

1:52

the first is

1:53

the summer conversations and the mom

1:55

test there's a book called the mom test

1:58

worth reading if you wanna get better

1:59

the

2:00

the air the premise which is

2:02

the arctic isomers and your route of rulers

2:05

don't make a mistake every does don't pitch your product

2:07

and just wait for them to politely like yeah

2:09

sounds really interesting let me know because that's

2:11

like a false positives you're only allowed

2:13

to talk about the problem see do what's

2:15

called a problem interview you just talk to them

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about their life

2:19

you ask them questions he try to see

2:21

hey is this a real problem for them

2:24

how big of a problem is it like this

2:26

is the biggest issue in my life right now

2:28

are ah it's nice to haves and you can suss

2:31

that out by son of figure out okay so what have you

2:33

done to try to solve this if they don't

2:35

really say anything have been is probably not accepting the

2:37

prom have been trying to solve it is this

2:39

side like eight solutions and none of it's working and is

2:41

bringing their head against the more you know it's a real

2:43

problem the you try to figure out the prom

2:45

you try to figure out how big a problem and he said if we got the words

2:48

they use to describe as a problems as that's

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what you're going to use to create a solution and

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it separately you could say i'm

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working on a way to solve that it'll be a x

2:57

y z are you in some

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trying it in and to say yes he's a great the

3:02

you make him pay some price whether it's literally

3:04

paid money for given give your information

3:06

or connect your accounts i can have your data

3:08

or whatever make them do something that has some friction season

3:11

gauge of the really answer knocks that's one

3:13

way you could test side

3:15

and that's exactly what you did this weekend we just talked

3:17

about the basketball camp thing that sean

3:19

did you told me what the idea was and

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he goes if you're if this interests you venmo me eighty

3:23

hundred dollars right now and we all dead and

3:25

there was no website there's nothing it was just a phone call

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attacks twitter thing and

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that's the way i typically do

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things often times it'll take maybe

3:35

twenty or thirty cause and

3:37

i can probably get one person to show interest

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but that's where a lot people fail as they actually

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don't talk to enough people so for my

3:43

latest thing i've actually talked to like three hundred people

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and i'm you have to talk to a lot

3:48

of people i'm guessing this one company in they're trying to

3:50

get customers and my comedy talked you're like well

3:52

with auto like one person last week and then a person

3:54

to be before i'm like oh it

3:57

it gonna be from like eight am to like seven

3:59

pm in your

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called all day

4:01

that way i think typically works for most people

4:03

dot don't have enough tent city around

4:05

the other way which is you take have a prayer out

4:07

valid his ideas you take an idea that's already

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working he just he cheated some myself

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oh it's working in the u s but there's no version of this

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of europe is a pretty good bet that

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the he behaviors in the us are going to translate to

4:18

less a europe or wherever as a you can skip

4:20

of as about a some point our i actually think validating

4:23

an idea is really really hard i

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actually don't think you're ever going to get this clear signal

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that like check

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i know that people want this is just like a spectrum

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you're just increasing your confidence level that

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there's a real their there but you never in one

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hundred percent so many many months

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and to foreign the second thing is the

4:41

other way skip the line is the

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work of anywhere you know your the custom if

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you're the customer for i guarantee you and

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an internet scale there are

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least another hundred thousand people that are

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just like you the have the same problem as you the

4:54

feel the same way you do you may not be able to find

4:56

them you may not be able to market to them but they definitely

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exist and so one way to validate your

5:00

idea is to just build something that solves

5:03

the problem for you very rarely

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will that be too small where it's only you are

5:07

only you and ten other people that have that problem

5:10

almost always there's huge

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and there's some times are a lot of times

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like what they like hub spot or some type of software

5:16

like riverside what we're using now where it's like it's

5:18

a little bit challenging to get customers

5:21

before the thing is actually built and that

5:23

definitely this and there's this company that i talked

5:25

to called zipper the u p e r

5:27

dot co and their headline

5:29

is power your field service and deliver

5:31

a better customer service basically it's an app

5:34

where if you're an electrician all your electricians who

5:36

work for you they go out and they it's like time tables

5:38

and all this stuff and he was like i was like

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how did you do this and he said well i just i'm

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spent all my nights and weekends talking

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to these business owners and i basically kind of interned

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for them and i got to know them really well and

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i honed in on the problem very

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specifically and a i got

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like pre commitments i didn't pay me but they told

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me if i can do x y and z there'll be my customer

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and so i've been validated and then the my quoted

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money but i knew with a high degree of

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certainty what the problem was because i for

6:04

the year working with these people talking to

6:06

them and then when i built it it's about six months

6:09

to get my first customer and i know another guy who did that

6:11

last hour from next south it's like

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a billion dollar company now needed same thing

6:15

he built software for doctors that he goes i quit

6:17

my job and i became a secretary at

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a doctor's office for six months to learn

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exactly how they do things so i knew

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very specifically the software that

6:25

was building how was going to solve the problems and

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so i didn't validate his innocence and i collected money

6:30

but like i validated in my mind of

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i at a higher degree of certainty said summarize

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three ways that you can validate your ideas

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the worst way or those horrible least

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fidelity way

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though talk to as many customers can go nine to

6:42

five for shadow them try to talk

6:45

to them about their problems here to have a girl from it is

6:47

and what they do to solve it today the second

6:49

higher fidelity way you actually have an offer

6:52

is a landing page it's a at it as

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it's a flyer it's an email and

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you try to get people to pre commit to a solution

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that was about a that there's demand to this and

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then the best way of all the ways is you

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know there's demand because you have the problem

7:06

and if you have the problem you know it well

7:08

you know what solution would work you have a place

7:10

to test it you can be patient zero and

7:12

you can test on yourself and if you do all

7:14

that you're not guessing is this problem real

7:16

or not to you know it's real and all of these

7:18

take a lot of courage on of the what i'm doing

7:21

because they're afraid everyone's afraid you

7:23

just gotta do it and you can get a

7:25

lot dom i just have them kurds actually falling

7:27

his stuff so that's ,

7:29

classified as as

7:31

that know what

7:35

oh

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let's travel never know teabags