Transcript of a Freedom Fast Lane TV Q&A where Ryan Daniel Moran advises entrepreneurs to prioritize building an audience (email list, social following) and using paid advertising to drive eyeballs, then validating ideas by testing with "check writers" (actual potential customers). He recommends launching quickly (prototypes, Kickstarter/Amazon) to get feedback and sales from day one and summarizes a formula: audience + channel + good product = scalable business.
Chapters
Sierra Robinson asks, what are some strategies for launching a new business?
I was asked a question in the first ever episode of Freedom Fast Lane tv, where someone asked, what would you do if you only had $500 a month to start a business? And I said I would put every dime of that into building up an audience. It could be an email list, it could be a Facebook list, it could be an Instagram following. I don't care what it is, but spend your money on advertising so that you have leads and you have eyeballs. I think that is the best way to launch any business. I would combine that with a quote from one of my mentors, Dan Sullivan. He says, only test new ideas on check writers, meaning people who would actually be customers. Go to them and say, would you pay for X, Y and Z if we released a new product? If we released this service, whatever it is, actually ask them, would you pay for this? So those two things give you the feedback that you need to be able to launch quickly and effectively. It is a huge shot in the arm to launch a business with customers and take sales out of the gate. We will go through a case study later in this episode about doing exactly that. Because the biggest fear any new entrepreneur has is, I'm gonna put all of this work, I'm gonna put all this effort into a thing that nobody wants but me, and then we're gonna hit store shelves or Amazon shelves and gonna buy it. I'm gonna put all this blood, sweat, tears and money into this thing that nobody wants. The way we mitigate that is by building up eyeballs and asking them if they actually want it and releasing that as fast as possible and getting feedback. There's a difference between feedback and failure. Feedback means something can be changed. Failure means you gave up and you scrapped the whole thing and you lost. And even then, you'll learn something and you could reiterate the product and bring it back and be successful. But putting it out there in front of eyeballs is the thing that will make you launch fastest and be the most profitable because you have feedback and customers from day one. It's the thing that I think most people get wrong the most in business is they ignore the fact that they can collect leads and eyeballs and put a product out there really quickly. Look, it is 2017. You have things like Kickstarter. You don't even need to have an inventory order. You just need to have a prototype and you get in front of eyeballs, which, by the way, it's a lot faster and more profitable to do a Kickstarter if you've got eyeballs as well, because you can mail your list to the Kickstarter and really get things moving. We did a podcast episode about this with John Lee Dumas where he launched a book to his audience on Kickstarter and had a six figure launch of a fricking book on Kickstarter. Amazing times that we live in. This is the magic formula, people. This is a writer downer. Audience plus channel plus good product equals million dollar business. There you go. There's all the secrets. We've created over 100 millionaires with this magic formula and that's all that it takes. If you have eyeballs, which comes from a Facebook following, an email list would be preferable because the highest ROIs come from email. Actually email output, social like 5 to 1. Anyway, having the audience, having the eyeballs, having the channel, Amazon, Kickstarter retail, the place where you're taking the sale, where people are already going, combine those with a really good product people want to come back for. You have a million dollar business, you are knighted. Happy millionaire day. You get to be a millionaire. You have the formula. That's what it takes. That is the provable model to launching a new business. And every time you roll out a new product, it gets easier because you have more eye, you have more provable concepts, you have more of an established presence in that channel. The way you start is by collecting the audience, collecting the eyeballs to launch that first product. And that's where everything starts.
