BUILD IT THEY WILL COME!

Not any more fine sir. The market place is packed with competitors, similar ideas, huge corporations fighting over 1% of market share, and there you are…the little guy. How in the hell do you know an idea is going to work? Well, this week I’ll show you a couple steps that can lead you on your way to building a successful business (keep in mind my wife, and I are doing an online biz) without spending a ton of money on marketing, etc…

Your idea at work

You have this idea, and you’ve played over the scenario in your head a million times on how it can work, and some of the road blocks. The good thing is – YOU ACTUALLY DECIDED TO ACT ON THE IDEA. That’s the biggest step. Now, we get into the fun stuff to test your hypothesis. In my case – an online fashion store for Canadians, and Canadians only.

First – we did a bit of research through family and friends. You can sign up for a free trial with Survey Monkey. Or choose another online survey program. We just happened to land on Survey Monkey as we used it in the past for a couple other ventures.

My wife compiled a few different surveys where we took the product we planned on selling and asked questions like: On a scale of 1-10 how much do you like this shirt, how much would you be willing to spend on said dress, etc… This is a great way to test your hypothesis while getting some interesting insights.

You have to take everything with a grain of salt, and don’t let the survey results sway your direction too much. It’s one thing for people to tell you how much they THINK they would pay, and it’s a whole other matter when it comes to actually opening their wallets.

The biggest thing you can take from these results is copy. The people we surveyed opened our eyes a bit on what makes people tick. We dove into the psychology of what makes people buy, and what doesn’t. Therefore, when we launch we will use the exact words we received from potential customers in our survey. For example – we had a few responses that said, “I would wear this dress for this (event)” BAM! That’s going to be in our copy when describing the dress online. If one person feels it, someone else probably does too.

You can get too much inside your own head when it comes to launching a biz, so get some outside perspective, and doing surveys will help.

Testing out the latest John Deere because I’m a man, and that’s what men do…

Checking out your competitors

There are a couple trains of thought when it comes to this. My wife is a heavy user of a couple of our soon to be competitors. Therefore, she knows what she likes, and doesn’t like about these services, and that’s how we found our niche. We analysed the competition from their aesthetic, their customer service (we’ve called them on many occasions), and even the colours they use in the logo. As you can tell – we’re big on researching our competitors.

On the flip side – I’ve seen successful business owners who don’t care what their competitors are doing. They just go about their business, and it seems to work for them.

Me – I suggest doing a bit of research on what your potential customers are doing. On top of that – you can also do a bit of research on a company or two that you admire. They may or may not be your competition, but you could pull some valuable insight from them. Example – we like the shipping model of a certain company that has nothing to do with our line of work, so we’re going to try and replicate it to see if it works in our field.

Never stop testing 

The BIGGEST thing to keep in mind when it comes to starting up your own biz – online or not – is to NEVER STOP TESTING. Consumer habits change, the economy changes, the weather changes, prices change, and everything happens at different times. Everything is changing, so that’s why it’s sooo important to keep on studying your customer, and getting their feedback. By doing this, you may be able to sense a change in the market before it actually happens. When I was doing some Real Estate consulting, I was able to key in on a trend from the latest generation of home buyers (I just happened to be one of them) that helped one of the agents I was working with.

We saw a dramatic shift (in a certain market) from personality driven agents to knowledgeable agents. In this market – the newest generation of home buyers didn’t care that much about connecting with their agent. They wanted someone who knew a ton about the market they were in. In this case, we flipped from personality driven marketing to a giving away free market information online through a blog. This was close to 10 years ago before blogging really exploded. Now, pretty much every Realtor has a blog speaking to their market knowledge. My client, and I were on this before it was cool because we constantly tested, and researched the market. The best part – we pretty much did this testing for free, and you have the same capability with the tech available to you.

Next week – banking and the product. Until then…

Love you,

Jordan ‘The Guy with the Bow Tie’ Rycroft

Ps. So far we’ve spent under $1000 from the Articles of Incorporation, to securing the domain name, to our physical e-commerce store / website.