All right, everyone quick break. This episode is sponsored by marketing Against the Grain. A really cool podcast, hosted by kit bottner and Kieran Flanagan and brought to you by the HubSpot podcast network, if you want to know what's happening. Now in the world of marketing, what's ahead, how you can lead the way then this podcast is for you. So basically Kip is HubSpot CMO and Karen is an SVP of marketing here and they're going to share their marketing expertise which means all the unfiltered details the truth. And like no one tells you a few recent episodes are
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Now, I don't really understand what this means, testing your business ideas. The only thing I can think of is
maybe running multiple ads and comparing the performance but beyond debt,
I really don't know what to do. So could you first of all, tell me how you have seen this done successfully in
the past and second of all, or I can become better than thank you.
I feel like I could rule the world and no way, I could be what I want to.
Any like a Days on the Road? Less Traveled, never looking
back. All right, the guy asked Sean, he said I hear you talking about testing ideas. What does that mean? Does that mean just like running ads to like a page and getting sales? And the answer is yes, that is our way. But he wants to know about testing ideas and how do you do
that? Alright, so we can share a couple of things that I think you talked about this in the last one question Friday. But the first is customer conversations and the mom test. There's a book called The Mom test worth reading if you want to get better.
ER, at the stuff. But here's the premise, which is talk to customers and your rule is don't make the mistake. Everybody does don't pitch your product and just wait for them to politely be like, yeah, sounds really interesting. Let me know. Because that's like a false positive. You're only allowed to talk to them about their problem. So you do what's called a problem interview. You just talk to them about their life. You ask them questions. You try to see a is this a real problem for them? Be how big of a problem is it? Like, dude, this is the biggest issue in my life right now, or it's nice to have.
And you can suss that out by trying to figure out. Okay. So what have you done to try to solve this and if they don't really say anything? Well then it's probably not actually that big of a problem. They haven't been trying to solve it if they've tried like eight Solutions and none of it's working and there's banging their head against the wall, you know. It's a real problem and so you try to figure out the problem. You try to figure out how big of a problem. And you try to figure out the words they use to describe it as a problem because that's what you're going to use to create your solution. And then separately you could say well I'm working on a way to solve that it'll be a XYZ. Are you interested in trying it?
Then they say. Yes. You say great. And then you make them pay some price whether it's literally paid money, or give your information or connect your account. So I can have your data or whatever, make them do something that has some friction. So you can gauge if they're really interested or not, that's one way you could test an idea.
And that's exactly what you did this weekend. We just talked about the basketball camp thing that Shawn. Did you told me what the idea is? And you goes, if you're if this interests, you venmo me $800 right now and we all did, and there was no website, there's nothing. It was just a phone, call text Twitter thing,
And that's the way I typically do things. Oftentimes, it'll take maybe 20 or 30 calls and I can probably get one person to show interest, but that's where a lot of people fail as they actually don't talk to enough people. So for my latest thing, I've actually talked to like 300 people and you have to talk to a lot of people. I'm guessing this one company and they're trying to get customers and I'm like, well I'm gonna talk to you like well we talked to like one person last week and then a person the week before I'm like oh dude it's got to be from like 8:00 a.m. till like 7:00 p.m. in.
Ian calls all day that way. I think typically works but most people don't have enough density around
it. There's another way which is you take a pretty valid valid idea. So you take an idea that's already working and you just you change it in some way. So oh it's working in the US but there's no version of this in Europe. There's a pretty good bet that the behaviors in the US are going to translate to let's say Europe or wherever it. So you can skip the validation point that way I actually think validating and idea is really really hard. I actually don't think you're ever going to get this clear signal that like yep check
I know that people want this it's just like a spectrum you're just increasing your confidence level that there's a real there there but you never 100% until many many months in too far. In the second thing is another way to skip the line is just work on something where you know, you're the customer because if you're the customer for, I guarantee you on an internet scale that there are at least another hundred thousand people that are just like you that have the same problem as you. That feel the same way you do, you may not be able to find them. You may not be able to Market to them, but they definitely exist and so one way.
Way to validate your idea is to just build something that solves a problem for you. Very rarely will that be too small where it's only you or only you in 10 other people that have that problem. Almost always, there's a huge
group and there's sometimes or a lot of times, like, let's say, like, HubSpot or some type of software, like, Riverside, what we're using now, where it's like, it's a little bit challenging to get customers before. The thing is actually built now, definitely exists and there's this company that I talked to called Zu /, Zu P, ER dotco and their headline is
Our your field service and deliver better customer service basically. It's an app where if you're an electrician, all your electricians who work for you, they go out and they, it's like timetables and all this stuff and he was like, I was like, how did you do this? And he said, well, I just spent all my nights and weekends talking to these business owners, and I basically kind of intern for them, and I got to know them really well. And I honed in on the problem, very specifically and I got like, pre-commitment didn't pay me, but they told me if I can do X. Y, and Z. They'll be my customer and so I didn't validate it in the
Sense of I collected money, but I knew with a high degree of certainty. What the problem was because I spent a year working with these people and talking to them. And then when I built, it took about six months to get my first customer and I know another guy who did that owl from next Health. It's like a billion dollar company. Now, he did the same thing, he built software for doctors and he goes, I quit my job and I became a secretary at a doctor's office for six months to learn exactly how they do things. So I knew very specifically, the software that I was building how is going to solve a problem and so I didn't validate it in the sense of I collected.
Honey. But like I validated it in my mind of I had a higher degree of
certainty, such summarize three ways that you can validate your ideas, the worst way that it sort of least Fidelity way go talk to as many customers you can throw, 925, go Shadow them. Try to talk to them about their problems. Figure out how big of a problem it is. And what they do to solve it today. The second higher Fidelity way you actually have an offer. It's a landing page. It's a, it's an ad. It's a flyer, it's an email and you try to get people to pre commit to a solution that will
also validate that there's demand to this. And then the best way of all the ways is, you know, there's demand because you have the problem and if you have the problem, you know it. Well, you know, what solution would work, you have a place to test it, you can be patient zero and you can test it on yourself. And if you do all that you're not guessing is this problem real or not? Because, you know, it's real.
And all of these, take a lot of Courage, a lot of people don't do them because they're afraid, everyone's afraid, you just got to do it and you can get a lot done by just having some courage and actually following these steps. So that's one question.
I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to put my all in it. Like all Days on the Road, Less Traveled never looking back.
