MBA2154 How Much Time Should You Give Your Idea Before You Quit?

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Welcome to the $100R. No fluff, just the good stuff. 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 intimate software company I started with my co founder back in 2014. And in today's episode you'll learn how much time should you give your idea before you quit? Many people wonder if they're backing the wrong horse, if they're putting down good money after bad money, or if they should just grind it out and persevere and they're just being impatient. Well, in today's lesson I'm going to explain how best to know when it's time to let go of an idea. Let go of a business or a product or service idea that you are working on. I'm also going to show you how to do it without investing so much time and money beforehand so you're not so scared to quit this job so you don't have that sunk cost fallacy where you feel like hey, I invested so much time and energy and money in this, I can't quit now. This stops you from thinking critically as well as objectively. If you're in this rut, I got your back in today's lesson. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business.

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Ideas are great when we conceive them, when we start implementing them, when we start building them. But when the rubber hits the road and we put it out in the market, sometimes they can be painful because you're not seeing buyers, you're not seeing customers, and you start questioning this business idea, this offer, this concept. Is it actually something people want? Is it time to move on, close your doors and come up with your next idea? Or should you double down and focus and make the idea work? That's what today's lesson is all about. The first thing I want to mention is that idea validation is one of the most critical steps in any business venture. You need to validate business ideas well in advance, very early on, before you invest too much time, money and energy. There are many people I know personally that invested years of time and thousands of dollars working on a business idea. They launch it to the world without validating it and having zero customers and going through a slog and not understanding what's going on. This is a brilliant idea.

Why is nobody buying?

This is why you have to find that out and validate your idea way before you even launch. It doesn't matter what you're offering. Idea validation is basically proposing your product or service to customers and getting them to prove to you that they are willing to buy. Many people try to do this by, you know, express interest Waiting lists Join my email list and I'm a big believer that all of that does not Work that does not validate the idea. What that validates is that people are willing to give you their email address to learn more. It doesn't actually validate the fact they're willing to part with their cash, with their money for what you have to offer. So in order for you to truly validate an idea and you need to get people to actually spend money, it doesn't need to be the total amount of the product or service, but it has to be something like a deposit, a holding fee or some capital. They have to part with their cash knowing that, hey, this is going to be the price. Give me some of that money to reserve your spot or reserve your product. This is where people mess up. People skip this step and then they are really sorry that they did another mistake. People do is that they think they have to do a whole lot of work and they have to have a fully fledged product before they can even offer that validation step where they ask for money up front to validate their idea. No, you don't put any money into this project. You put a bit of time and effort, you collect money and then you start working your idea. And the value of your idea can be conveyed with very little amount of money. A simple landing page describing what you are going to offer, what problem your product or service solves, how it solves it uniquely, and how it does it with minimal pain. You can shoot a video and talk people through it. You can create some sort of infographic or simply write. Right. Great copy always converts. So writing about how you solve this problem with your product on your landing page is going to make a huge difference in enticing people to sign up and put down some money. Now, I'm not speaking hypothetically. I actually walked the talk or I actually did this. This is how we launched our software company, Webinar Ninja. I had a simple one page landing PA describing what Webinar Ninja is, why it's better than what's out there, what problem it solves, how it makes it super simple for you to create a webinar. It takes 10 seconds and it has all the things you need. It's like five tools in one. And I pre sold Webinar Ninja. I actually asked people for $250 upfront to buy a membership. And when I got the response and people were willing to part with their money, I knew this product was worth working on and building. And now I had the funds to do so. Now I'm not saying this is a beat on my own chest. I actually learned this the hard Way, I actually launched projects before this that flopped, that I spent four months on. Lots of cash, lots of effort, and it's because I didn't do the idea validation step first. This will allow you to quickly validate. If you have a market for what you want to build, it doesn't even need to be built, actually, it shouldn't be built yet. You're just validating the demand for your idea. And this can literally be done in a week or two. I actually pulled this off in about one week for Webinar Ninja. And once it was validated, then I had the green light to go ahead and build upon that momentum. So the question of when do I know when to quit? Well, after you validate the idea, if there's no interest, people don't want to buy this product. Try to get feedback and find out why. Maybe you can change it, pivot, alter it, maybe change the messaging, validate it again. Any other buyers? Any more buyers? Yep. Okay, let's keep going. No buyers still quit this idea, right? Move on to the next one. And in the process, you don't lose a ton of money. You don't lose a lot of time. Now, the beauty of doing this idea validation stage every time you have an idea is that you don't waste a lot of time. You can have many validations. You can go through 5, 6, 7, 8 validations in a year, even more. And these are not failures. These are experiments. You are testing the market, you're testing the waters. You're figuring out what is going to resonate, what's going to land. And by the way, I still do this in my business. I just don't do it for a whole new business. I just do it for new products or new services or features within our software. I first validate them with customers. I see if they're willing to upgrade their plan to get this new feature. If they are, I know that there's interest. I give them a great deal in exchange of that validation, and I get my team to start working on that feature, deliver it to them before anybody else, they get early access. This allows me to make sure that I'm only spending my time and my team's time on things that matter, that things that actually move the needle, that things that actually help our customers. Some of us, we think our opinions and our ideas are the best, that we are the best person to ask, or we are the ultimate user or customer. I've learned the hard way that I am not. I'm the founder of the company, but I am not the person with the best opinions because I am actually not the customer. I know it too well. I know my products and services way too well. I build products and services for people that don't know it well and that's why I'm of value. It's easy to use. I do the work for them with my software. So in fact the software is not really built for me. It's actually built for people that have different needs and different wants and different preferences than I do. And therefore just relying on my own opinions is not really a smart idea.

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To wrap up today's lesson, let's talk a little bit about what if you are in a business that you did not validate, you know, an idea that you did not validate and you're kind of stuck right now your business doesn't have momentum. Maybe you don't even have any customers yet, or maybe just a few, but not enough to keep it sustainable or profitable. Your job is as fast as possible. I'm talking about as fast as humanly possible. You need to speak to your customers or any customers you can get a hold of that you have or had in the past and get feedback. Find out what they like, what they don't like, why they didn't buy. Again, why didn't they repeat? Ask people that are not customers but maybe on your email list and haven't bought. Ask them. Can I get on a call with you and find out how I can improve my product so that you can one day be a customer? This is not a sales call. This is more of an R and D call and I would love to compensate you in some way buying like a Starbucks gift card or something like that. The point here is you need to get data. You need information to base some decisions on. Right now you're kind of in a paralysis mode because you don't have any information to make a solid decision on to keep going or to quit. You need to gather this Information and maybe through those interviews, through those conversations with people that actually matter, that actually have the potential of buying your product or service will allow you to say, hey, I can pivot this business, I can change it, I can modify it. And guess what? You have to change it. You have to modify it because it's not working right now. If you do what you're doing right now and you're pushing hard and you're marketing and you're trying and you're doing everything you can, nothing's going to change if it doesn't change, right? You have to change something so you can get a different result. It could be your approach, it could be your audience, it could be the market you're trying to target, it could be the product itself, it could be the way it's priced, it could be the way it's offered, all that kind of stuff. But you need to speak to your actual customers and potential customers, get this information and give yourself enough. 90 day action plan. Say, hey, in these 90 days, I'm going to attack the top five things that people have said to me over and over that are going to allow me to get better results. I'm going to change these things, I'm going to modify these things, get into the gear, change these things, see if it makes an effect. And what we're looking for here is trends, not hockey stick growth. If, for example, you're getting one customer a month and now you're getting two or three or four, okay, we're moving in the right direction. We need to put our foot on the gas. In certain areas. You need to monitor and measure what you're doing so that you can be able to double down on what works. But if after the 90 days there is no positive trend, my opinion is to start thinking about validating a different business idea or product. Especially if your current business is costing you money and time. Even if it's not costing you a ton of money and time, it's opportunity cost. Things that you can be doing with your time. Right now, you could be starting an amazing business that is getting you a much higher return on your time and money investment. There you have it, guys. I hope today's lesson has helped you and has given you something to think about. If it did leave us an Apple podcast rating or review, we'd love to hear what you think of the show and what you thought of today's episode. If you thought this was useful, share it. Share with your friends and family over on social media. You can send them over to 100 MBA net so they can subscribe to the podcast and be a listener just like you. And hey, it's something that you can talk about with them. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. When I do episodes like this, I am reminded of how challenging starting and growing a business is. Getting that initial traction. Half of business is just getting that first momentum. Nailing an idea that actually resonates with an audience, with a customer base, knowing that you have a product that people actually need and are craving and are willing to spend money on. Once you find that out, once you get that click and that validation of your idea, things are a whole lot easier. From there on in. It's all pretty much downhill. Yep, you'll have other challenges down the road, but knowing you have something that people actually are really happy to spend money on and get value from is half the battle. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode Q and A Wednesday. I'll see you then. Take care.

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