MBA1935 Q&A Wednesday: How do I know if my idea will work?

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Hey oh welcome to the 100 RBA Show. Real World Business Lessons 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 Webinar Ninja, an independent software company I started with my co founder back in 2014 and today's episode is Q and A Wednesday. On Q and A Wednesdays I answer a question from one of you, one of our listeners. Today's question is from Brenda and Brenda asks hey Omar, Love the podcast. I've been working on my side hustle for some time now, about three months. I've been doing all the planning during my nights and weekends. But how do I know if my idea will work? I've been kind of scared to pull the trigger and get started and launch my idea to the world because I'm not entirely sure it's going to work out. Would love any tips or advice or maybe just a push of confidence. Thanks again. Love the podcast Brenda. Brenda, this is a very common question for a lot of new entrepreneurs and it makes sense. You want to make sure that hey, this idea will actually pan out. It will give me a return on investment. The time I spend the money I spend the effort. No one wants to launch a flop. So in Today's episode, I'm going to address this question. How do you know if this idea will work? What are some things you can do up to the point of launch? And what are some of the things you just simply can? I'm going to give you my best advice when it comes to having the confidence to launch, feeling like you have everything ready to go and that you have a pretty good shot at success. And if you ever wondered if your idea will work in the real world before you launch it, well, you're in for a great episode. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business.

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So Brenda asked the question in today's Q and A Wednesday, how do I know if my ideal will work out before I launch? This is a very common question, like I mentioned, and it's actually very, very natural to be a little bit timid, to be a little bit scared about putting your business, your idea, your effort out in the world without kind of knowing what the reaction is going to be. If it's going to be successful, is it going to make money? Is it going to allow you to make it your thing full time and not just a side hustle. So there are some things that you can do to get some idea of how well it will go. Okay. This is called idea validation. And I talk about this a lot in my trainings, in my webinars on stage, because the idea of idea validation is that you need to actually put your idea into the world. You have to actually find out if the marketplace wants what you want to offer and if you have enough of a demand to make this a viable business. Now, idea validation is going to get you to a certain level of confidence, but it's never going to give you 100% confidence. Nothing is like putting your business, your products, your services out in the world for real in the marketplace. This is like seeing somebody pick up basketball, shooting some hoops before the game, and they're hitting every shot and you're like, wow, pretty good player. But then during the game, game time situation, they're not that hot of a player. They don't perform as well in the real world. In a real situation, they're not trash, right? They're still a pretty decent player in a game, but not nearly as good as you thought when they were just, you know, shooting with no defense before the game. Real world situations have different factors in your business or different influences, and we'll talk a bit about that a bit later in today's episode. So let's talk a little bit about how can you validate your ide number one. The best way to do this is to release, to launch a minimal, viable version of whatever you offer. Now, I'm not talking about asking people, hey, would you buy this product? This is one of the worst forms of idea validation. It's not even idea validation. This is theoretical idea validation. Because if no one's actually parting with their dollars, with their yen, with their euro, whatever it is, it's not really a true validation. If people are willing to buy this product. A lot of people ask their family and friends, hey, do you think this is a good idea? This is one of the worst things you can do because it's actually going to give you false information. You know, a lot of people will be supportive and say, this is a fantastic idea, I love it, I definitely would buy it. But that's all lip service. Okay? What really matters is that would they actually buy it? You know, for example, if you said to somebody, hey, I create these custom tees, the one I'm wearing right now, would you buy one of these T shirts? And if they said, yeah, that's an awesome T shirt, I'd buy it at that moment, say, okay, great, give me $20 as a deposit and I'll get you the T shirt in two weeks. If they come up with an excuse, if they say, oh, I don't have 20 bucks or I can't get you 20 bucks, or I gotta run or whatever it is, that means your idea is not validated yet, okay? You need to actually have people part with their money. This is why I say have a minimal, viable version of your business. And this is going to require a little bit of sacrifice, a little bit of investment. It may require a few hundred dollars, a bit of time, a bit of planning, but it's a real world validation and it's going to save you a whole lot of headaches and money in the future. When you launch to the world and you hear crickets, the Whole point of this minimal viable product launch is one to validate, but two to refine. You want to make all the mistakes and learn a ton in this process before you go and scale and buy a whole bunch of inventory for your products or spend a bunch of money for your website or whatever it is. So if we continue with the T shirt example, I could create some mockups of my T shirts with Photoshop or even just use one of those T shirt printing suppliers online like Printful and Custom Ink and open up a Shopify store for $25 a month and have your customer order it as drop ship. You know, it's like sort of like a pre order. You only pay for the T shirt to be created when somebody buys this validates if somebody actually is going to buy it. And I actually did this in my own clothing line over a decade ago back in my young whippersnapper days where I would actually go to flea markets, I would go to conventions, I go to events and I would have a few pieces, example pieces of what I was selling on racks for people to see. And then I would have my laptop open and I would say, hey, you can just order online with the correct size and everything here what it looks like in real life. And in fact, when I did this, I had no inventory. I just told them it's going to take them two weeks. And in two weeks I produced it and shipped it to them. And in that process of having a minimal viable version of our business, it's not a full on site. I don't have hundreds of pieces of inventory. I don't spend tons of money on marketing or branding or logo design. I'm just trying to validate is my core offering something people want. And then once I have some validation and money changes hands, I start getting feedback. Okay. I realize people are saying they love these pieces, but they don't love these pieces or these pieces are not selling. These sizes are not that popular. These colors fly off the shelf, the proverbial shelf, of course, right. And I keep things minimal and very modest. While I'm validating, once I kind of fine tuned it and this may take a few months, I can now say now I can invest more money in my inventory, in my products, build my own website, get some custom branding going on with my logo and everything. Invest in some online marketing. Now that I know real people, people that I don't know, strangers are buying my product. They're giving me their hard earned cash for what I have to offer. This will give you the confidence that Your idea will work at scale. Now, of course, the research that you do beforehand, that is super helpful. Knowing your market size, knowing your demographics, knowing your target market, all that stuff is super, super helpful. And it's going to help you know what markets you want to hit first, second, third, all that kind of stuff. But at the end of the day, if people don't want to spend money on what you have to offer, product, service, online, course, coaching, whatever it is, then you don't have a business on your hands. You have a hobby, you have a money pit, right, where it's costing you more than you're making. By the time you get to this point where you validated your product for months, you've made sales, you've gained incredibly valuable insights about your business, about your products, about your services, you're going to feel a whole lot more comfortable and confident that your ideal will work. And launching is going to just feel like a natural progression. Putting it out in the world, announcing it, telling your family and friends, you don't need to make a big deal out of your MVP and make a big hoopla out of it. If you want to keep this to yourself, fine. If you want to share with others, that's also fine. But what I'm saying is that you don't need to make it so official in your head and say, you know what? This is going to be a huge business. It's going to be amazing, and it's got to work. No, smart entrepreneurs don't value their own opinions that much. They say, hey, my opinion is my opinion. I can't be my only customer. The real opinion that matters is the marketplace. Let me validate first, and then I'll know if I have a big business on my hands or not. Thy ticket lady, Jennifer of Coolidge. Well, many thanks, good sir. Here is my Discover card.

They accept Discover at Renaissance Fairs?

Yeah, they do here. Discover is accepted at the places I love to shop. Get it with the times.

With the times.

You're playing the lute. Yeah. And it sounds pretty good, right? Discover is accepted at 99% of places that take credit cards nationwide, based on the February 2025 Nielsen report. To wrap up today's Q and A, Wednesday's question, Brenda asking how could she know if her ideal will work? Idea validation. MVP ing your product. Sure, you are actually capturing funds for your product or service, doing it over and over and over. My advice is try to get 100 sales during this MVP process. You're going to learn a lot in that process by talking to customers. By finding out what they like and don't like. If you can't get 100, go for 50. If you can't get 50, I say minimum 30. And of course, this is all contingent on what your product or service is. If you're selling a $10,000 product, 30 sales is pretty good. This MVP process, this validation process is going to make you feel a whole lot more comfortable when you make that big announcement and have that launch party. Thanks so much Brenda for asking your question for Q and A Wednesday. Hope that was helpful and congrats. You're about to embark on an amazing journey with your new business. If you got a question you want to ask, go ahead and ask it. Just email me over at omar100mba.net if you love it. You hear Hit subscribe so you don't miss an episode. Tomorrow we get into why we raised prices, why we raised our prices over at Webinar Ninja, our software company. What was the rationale behind it? Why did we decide to do this? How did we come to that conclusion, to that decision, and how did we implement it? That's what I share with you in tomorrow's episode. Hit subscribe so you don't miss it or follow or whatever that button says on your podcast app. The podcast app you like to use. But before I go, I want to leave you with this. It's scary to launch a new business, a new idea, a new product, new idea to the world. I am. I totally get it. Okay. Business is all about taking very thought out, calculated risks over and over and over. And you're going to get more comfortable with it every single day. Making decisions, taking risks that make sense for your business. The highest level entrepreneur, they're doing this day in and day out. So this is just your first step in that journey. Enjoy the ride. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

Want to buy a car your way? Of course you do. That's why CarMax offers an experience designed just for you. Want to start online, then visit the lot, then go back online? Sure. Want to talk to a real person or chat online? Either works. Want to take your time and compare all the makes and models? No problem. Then make up some time by filling out the paperwork at home and schedule express pickup or home delivery done. When it comes to how you buy, CarMax puts you in the driver's seat. Want to drive? CarMax delivery restrictions apply. See CarMax.com for details.