MBA1047 How Much Should You Test Your Product Before Launch? + Free Ride Friday!

Hey, today is Free Ride Friday, so make sure you hang on to the end of the episode to hear who won this week's Free ride. Every Friday we give away a lifetime membership to one of our programs. This month we're giving away easy course, our 30 day course on how to build an online course in 30 days. All you gotta do is leave us an itunes rating and review to enter our weekly random draw and listen in on Friday to see if you won the free ride. It's that simple. It's our way to say thank you for leaving us some love on itunes. All right, let's jump into today's episode. Hey O. Welcome to the Hundred Dollar MBA show, the business podcast that gives you answers on the daily every single day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the Hundred Dollar mba, a complete business training and community online. And in today's episode you're going to learn how much should you test before you launch your product? This is a very, very important topic because you want to make sure your product is solid before it goes on the market so your customers are satisfied. But at the same time, you don't want to spend too much time doing this. You don't want to spend weeks and months testing something because you might just be avoiding launching because it's safe before the launch. So I have a method when it comes to making sure you test properly and enough. But at the same time, don't delay what you need to do. Launch. I'm going to give you some ideas of how you can test your product, how you can get feedback and improve right before you launch and get that product in your customer's hands looking good. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. Today's episode of the $100 MBA show is supported by Podia. Podia helps thousands of creators earn money from their passion. It's an all in one digital storefront that you can sell courses, memberships and digital downloads in one place. It's the most creator friendly platform on the market with zero transaction fees and a super friendly 247 life support team no matter what plan you're on. So they're gonna take care of you even if you're just getting started. What's great about Podia is that it eliminates all the technical headaches. It takes care of every aspect of of selling your course or membership or digital download. If you've got video courses, they do the video hosting for you. If you want an easy way to charge your members on a reoccurring basis for a membership, Podia takes care of it. You want a secure way for people to download your products. When they pay for them, they take care of that too. They also offer free migrations on their Shaker plan. Best of all, Podia puts their money where their mouth is. They have a 30 day free trial with no credit card required. So if you don't love it, you don't pay a penny. If you're looking to start a online course, sell any kind of digital product, or start a membership site, check them out and support the show by going to podia.commba that's P O D I a.commba launching a product can be really exciting, but there's a lot of pressure. You want to make sure that you're launching a successful product, product that works, that looks great, that satisfies your customers. So depending on your product, whether it's a software, whether it's an online course, whether it's a book, or even a physical product like a T shirt, you're gonna have to invest a certain amount of time on testing the product before you actually sell it to live customers. Now, I highly recommend you get somebody other than yourself to test the product. Why? Because you'll be using this product in a different way. Because you're the creator, you know the insides and outs of this product and you may not use it the way a new person that has never seen this product before will use it. And you want third party feedback. So you need at least one person that's willing to test your product, ideally multiple people. If you're running a software product or a online course, and this is actually easier than you think, if you have an existing email list or audience, you can definitely email them and say, hey, we're looking for some beta testers, some people that test our new product we're about to launch. And of course you can incentivize them, give them a few free months of that product, give them a free gift like a T shirt, or give them a gift card like to itunes or Amazon. If you don't have a current list or an audience, you could definitely do this on social media. Get on social media and put it on Twitter, put it on Facebook, put it on Instagram. If you're part of groups and Facebook, this is a great place where you can ask for help. Hey, we need some beta users. And here's the benefit of being a beta user. You'll get a few free months. You got a glimpse of a great new product that's coming out. You'll get a gift card or something like that. What I like to do is make it easy for them to sign up for this process. So I create a Google form. If you have Gmail, this is absolutely free. You can create a form in about five minutes. And you can collect the important information you need, like their name, their email address. If you're giving them a physical product like a T shirt, you know their T shirt size, their mailing address, so you can send them the product. You also want them to agree to the terms. You're going to get them to test the product, but you want to make sure this is efficient. You're going to be giving them something in exchange, whether it's free access or a gift card or whatever. But you need really good information. You need to be very explicit about what kind of feedback you want. Do you want screenshots? How much feedback do you want? How much do you want them to use it for? If it's a physical product like a T shirt, do you want them to wash the T shirt? How many times you want them wash it? Do you actually want them to wear it out when they go out to friends and take some pictures, get them to answer some questions or get their feedback about how people reacted to the product? You have to detail what you want them to do, because if you just leave it open, hey, test my product. Tell me what you think you're going to get. Very, you know, useless information, not specific information. Tell them what information you're looking for so they can actually go ahead and narrow in and try to help you out. If you have a software or an online course, this is actually pretty, pretty easy. The easiest way to do this is to ask them to spend a few sessions using the software. You could say three sessions of 10 minutes a piece or 15 minutes a piece up to you. And then as they're using the software, ask them to do a screen capture. A screen capture video. And, and ask them to talk you through their experience. So, okay, I just signed up. All right. This is the process when I sign up. Well, that looks cool. I like that. Oh, this is a little bit confusing. What does this mean? I'll press it, see what happens. You could see what I mean right here. Right. So they're walking you through their experience. And then you can watch those videos and get the feedback from them. And you can take down notes or you can ask them to answer some questions after they send you those videos, the point here is you get to see how people use your software. You also get to see how people enjoy your online course. They might say, hey, I really like the quality of these videos, but these videos are too long. You might be saying, oh, I would love a workbook to go along with this video, or some notes or a checklist. They're going to give you some great feedback so you can iterate improve a little bit before you launch. Now, word to the wise, you don't have to take on every piece of feedback and implement it. You may not need to do that right now. Right now you just need to launch. What you're doing here is you're testing to make sure there's not anything major that's broken with it, that's not working, that's super, super confusing. Nice to haves can be added later. What you're doing here is you're just trying to weed out, make sure everything's working perfectly, there are no bugs, there's no issues and the product is usable. That's when you know it's time to launch. That's when you know you've tested enough. You're going to get a list of great feedback, what you can add after you launch. Launching is just the beginning. You don't need to do everything before launch. Launch first, then add all the nice to haves or the, you know, new iterations or the features that they requested during their testing. Personally, I would recommend putting a time limit to your testing. So one, you're putting a time limit to the testers saying, hey, I need this feedback, I need these test results, these answers within the next week or the next three days or whatever you want to say. Then you need to analyze and make these corrections within the next week as well. So you're saying like in two weeks I'm going to be fully tested and ready to go. I know there's going to be things I want to change. I'm going to have to hold back and say, you know what, they're not urgent. I can change these things later after launch. Now I talked about, you know, compensating, rewarding people for helping you out with these tests. You need to make it explicitly clear to them that they're going to be rewarded with whatever you're going to give them regardless of their feedback. Say that they're getting their reward regardless. You don't want the feedback to be tainted in any way. You don't want people to be like, well, I better give good feedback and not point out any of the problems or I might not get my reward. Make that super clear. In fact, you could say, hey, be as brutal as you like because we don't really benefit when you have nothing to say. Just be honest. If you love the product and there are no issues with you, just say that. You don't have to, you know, exaggerate or overemphasize. You're gonna get your reward regardless. Now, if you have a bigger team where you have, you know, customer service agents, you have developers, you have other people involved, you can get them to test as well, along with the third party testers, the people that you are reaching out that are brand new. And in fact, I would get them to test before you get somebody out there to clean up any obvious things, misspellings, typos, just little ticky, tacky things that we might miss just as we're working and developing the product. It's like a dry run. And then once that's done, you can get those people from the outside, from social media, from your email list to opt in and test for you. And even though I said you can reward them, you can compensate them, you don't have to. There are plenty of people that ask their audience, hey, we're launching a new product. We'd love for people to help us out with some testing. This is going to require about an hour of your time, three sessions of 20 minutes. If you'd love to help us out, we would love that. And they'll get a response, enough of a response to be able to get a good pool of testers. And if you're able to do that, if you have a large enough audience and a responsive audience to do that, I would recommend that this keeps that whole skewed feedback in check. And some people will just love to do that because they are curious about what you're building. Guys, I got more on today's topic, but before that, let me give love to today's sponsor. How do you stay up to date on the latest business news? If you're still relying on traditional news outlets, keeping up with the news feels like a chore. But it doesn't have to be that way. Business news can be enjoyable, even something you actually look forward to. How? It's called Morning Morning Brew. It's a free daily email newsletter that delivers the latest business news directly to your inbox every weekday morning. I'm a subscriber and absolutely love it. The writers at Morning Brew, they carry the top business stories that you should know about and deliver them in a conversational tone that I really like. It's really witty and it's a really quick read. It's only about five minutes every day. Seriously, imagine getting all the information you need to start your day in just five minutes and you'll enjoy every minute of it. Recently I loved their little write up about how the NBA has conquered the calendar. There's no more like NBA season anymore. People are following the NBA 12 months out of the year because of all the different things that go on in the off season. And the takeaway was how can you transcend your marketplace and not just be a sport like in the NBA's case, to be a source of entertainment and controversy. It really had me thinking. So what are you waiting for? Sign up for Morning broadcom/mba. That's Morning broadcom/mba to start your daily dose of business news. Testing your product to make sure it's ready for launch is really important. You want to make sure that you have a great product in your hand so it sells itself. But there's a difference between ready for launch and perfection. You're never going to get to perfection. So your job here is to make sure it works. Works, it does what it promises to do. Whatever your product is, you can always improve. You can always add features, you can always add modules. You can always improve. And that's the beauty of business. And again, launching is just the beginning. Get it out in the world, get more feedback and iterate and improve as you grow. This is why having this testing phase, being time bound is so important. Test but get it out there asap. Alright? Thank you so much for listening. Today's lesson is over but the episode is not. Because it's Free Ride Friday. I gotta give away a lifetime membership to easy course, our 30 day course on how to launch an online course in 30 days. Let's see who won this week's Free ride. And the winner is. Watching it. That's the handle. Watching it. Quick, short and informative. 5 stars. Quick and informative for somebody who doesn't have a business but loves learning about them. Thanks for the short and sweet review. Watching it. You are a Freeride Friday winner. Your mission is to email me over@omar00mba.net so I can hook you up with the Free ride. If you want to win a free ride to one of our courses. Easy Course is valued at $500. Just leave us an itunes rating and review and you enter our weekly random draw. And you enter automatically every week until you win. It's our way to say thanks for leaving us an itunes rating and review. Alright, that's it for me today. But before I go, I want to leave you with this. When you give your product up for testing, when you allow people to test your product, this is a time for you to put the final touches on your launch. Your sales pages, your homepages, making sure your checkout works, that you're actually charging a credit card properly. You want to get everything aligned, everything working, all your email copy for the sales, all your automation. You want it all to work so that when the product is ready to go, you get your feedback and you make those changes you need. You can launch on time with no worries. So even though you're outsourcing your testing, while they're working on that, you're working on getting ready for launch. Alright, I'll check you in Monday's episode, a must read episode where I share with you a book that has greatly influenced me and why you should read it too. I'll be sharing the Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod. I'll see you on Monday for that episode. Check you then. Take care, Sam.