Seven Steps to Instant Market Testing From the Book The $100 Startup by Chris Guillebeau

I love this book by Chris Guillebeau so I thought I would post a part I thought really helpful to the starting entrepreneur. If you like it, check it out on Amazon through this affiliate link.

The $100 Startup: Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love, and Create a New Future 

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“Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work.” —PETER F. DRUCKER

"There’s nothing wrong with planning, but you can spend a lifetime making a plan that never turns into action. In the battle between planning and action, action wins. Here’s how you do it.

A marketable idea doesn’t have to be a big, groundbreaking idea; it just has to provide a solution to a problem or be useful enough that other people are willing to pay for it. Don’t think innovation; think usefulness.

Seven Steps to Instant Market Testing

1. You need to care about the problem you are going to solve, and there has to be a sizable number of other people who also care.   

2. Make sure the market is big enough.

3. Focus on eliminating “blatant admitted pain.” The product needs to solve a problem that causes pain that the market knows it has.

4. Almost everything that is being sold is for either a deep pain or a deep desire.

5. Always think in terms of solutions. Make sure your solution is different and better.

6. Ask others about the idea but make sure the people you ask are your potential target market.

7. Create an outline for what you are doing and show it to a subgroup of your community.

KEEP COSTS LOW. By investing sweat equity instead of money in your project, you’ll avoid going into debt and minimize the impact of failure if it doesn’t work.

GET THE FIRST SALE AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.

In a microbusiness built on low costs and quick action, you don’t need to do much formal planning. Mostly, you need the elements we’ve discussed throughout the book: a product or service, a group of customers, and a way to get paid."

The $100 Startup: Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love, and Create a New Future