In this episode of the RBL Media Podcast, Pualena discusses the critical steps every entrepreneur should take to validate their business idea before launching. Whether you're in the early stages of planning or seeking to refine an existing business, these seven essential tips offer practical advice for preparing your business idea.
Pualena covers the importance of conducting thorough user interviews, performing comprehensive market research, and developing a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) to test your concept. She also explains how to create a Unique Value Proposition (UVP) that sets your business apart from competitors and why planning for scaling is crucial from the start. Pre-selling your product to gauge interest and generate early revenue is another critical strategy Pua highlights.
Through practical, actionable advice and examples from her experience, Pua offers a step-by-step roadmap. This roadmap will help entrepreneurs confidently advance their ideas and encourage building a solid foundation for long-term success. Whether you're just starting or fine-tuning your business strategy, this episode is filled with valuable insights to help you fully prepare for the journey ahead.
Resources discussed in this episode:
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Contact Pua Pakele | RBL Media:
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Transcript:
Pualena 00:00
I don't want to scare you, and there's always going to be a little bit of flexibility here. But if you just blindly go into this and say, this is a great idea, I know it's going to work. I have some savings. I have my credit cards. Let's go. I want you to have more of a plan than that.
Pualena 00:22
Hello, and welcome back to the RBL Media Podcast. I'm your host, Pua, and we are moving right along into our next episode. So, this is episode two of I think I said six last time, but I do believe that there are seven episodes in this foundational business-building series. These are seven, six or seven, I will figure out the right number of episodes to help inspire action to move forward with that idea that you've had to launch, that business that you've been wanting to launch, from a very strategic perspective. This is going to be sort of each of these episodes will provide you with some actionable, foundational steps, strategies, ideas that you can take and run with if you'd like. I do want to say, let this inspire you. But don't let that this podcast be the only guidance that you invest in or that you take action on. I encourage you to do additional research for yourself, and really, if you are like in it, to win it, wanting to go and create an incredible business or launch an idea, I highly, highly recommend looking at hiring either a business coach or joining some kind of group program, joining an incubator program. I'm about to start an incubator program, which sounds like it's just for startups, but the specific program that I'm about to join is they actually encourage you to be an existing business. You know, you've had clients, you've provided your service, you have products out in the world, so that there is a little bit of data for them to work with, so you don't have to be brand new to join something like an incubator. So, anyway, just wanted to throw that out there. Please don't let this be the one and only source of information for you. But I'm really grateful that you're here. I'm grateful that you've decided to invest your time into listening to this episode.
Pualena 02:31
So, without further ado, today is going to be all about validating the idea that you have for your business, your product, your service. This is actually a really fun one. The title is really boring, and I hope that you're still here because I think this is one of the most fun things about starting a business, and as long as you don't have the stress of, like, a lack of resources, so like, this phase can be kind of stressful if you've quit your job 18 months ago, and you've blown through your savings, and you're trying to make this work. And there's that, like the little thread of desperation when it comes to idea validation, that's a very different place to be. You just need this to work. You just need somebody to buy it. So, if you are in that place, I highly suggest that you sort of do some meditation around that. I don't mean to laugh, and it's 100% true, like, I want you to really do a mindset shift and understand that this is kind of a longer process to make sure that you can grow quickly after this. We don't want to be necessarily validating while we are launching, while we are in the throes of marketing and getting things out there, and then you're receiving all of this feedback that you would have gotten in the validation stage of products that are now out into the world, that have problems or that people don't like because of X, Y and Z or that could be better because of this and that. So, this phase will feel like it's slowing you down, but it is slowing down to speed up later. Okay? We want to make sure that your concept is viable, that it's good, and so this is going to be a really fun way for you to be able to take some action steps towards that.
Pualena 04:25
So, the first thing that we're going to look at is the product market fit. Is there a space in the market for your idea, for the product or service that you have in mind and something that people either love or hate? But I must bring it up early, is the idea that you're going to talk to other humans, you're going to do user interviews, and you're going to do them many, many times along the way. So, I would, if I were you, start thinking about who those people could be for you and you're going to do user interviews before we create a concept. In the middle of creating a concept or a prototype, you're probably going to do 1, 2, 3, maybe more rounds of interviews in the prototyping phase. And then once you've launched, you're going to want to do, you know, series of interviews shortly after launch, it's it's smart to do them every so often, surveys are a little bit different. And I think post-launch, what you're going to want to rely on more is surveys than interviews. But interviews are going to be really, really good no matter what because feedback is data, right? Feedback is something that we can iterate on. And once you've launched, you can do things called development cycles, where you have a pool of feedback. And bigger tech companies I know, will have like a kind of like a public billboard of ideas, feedback, feature requests, so you can see what other people have requested. And if they're really great, I love the transparency of having things that are publicly viewable for people to say, like, Oh, this is in development, or this is next in the queue. They're working on this. They're going to launch this soon. So, you can think about that post-launch. But while you're still in the idea phase, we want to figure out, we want to ask people like, is this something that you would buy? Is this something that you would use? Is this a service that you would invest in? So, I'm going to refer sort of back and forth between the prototype or, like, the concept phase versus the kind of pre-idea phase. And in your idea phase, it's a little bit harder to get good feedback. So, talk to people say, I'm thinking about putting this together. Here's a few questions I wanted to ask you. If people say, like, oh, you know what, I don't know if I would buy that, great feedback. Don't even make a prototype. If enough people say that, if people are like, yeah, that's kind of cool. You know, make move forward with your prototype. And when I say prototype, that does not have to just mean a physical product. We will often prototype websites, apps, digital platforms. You can prototype pretty much anything and then allow people to sort of navigate through the prototype. So, when we're doing user interviews, let's say we are, and this is something that I do quite often. We've built a website, a web experience, and in that user interview, I'm going to jump onto Zoom, I'm going to give the person the link to the website, and then ask them to share their screen and navigate through it. And this okay, I'm sort of jumping around. I apologize. In web design, we have the design phase, the prototype phase, and then the actual website build. So, we're getting into the weeds here. But in this case this is your zone of interest, I do want to share this with you. In the prototype phase, we will build in a platform called Figma, and Figma allows you to create kind of a working prototype where you can assign actions to different links and buttons and sort of navigate through things, but it's not a live website. So, for example, if I have a page and I have five buttons on the page, and I have, it's a prototype where I'm just building up the functionality for the top of the page, I'm going to have the buttons connected to where I think people might want them to go, but I'm not going to have the rest of the buttons connected yet. So, when I do the user interview for that specific part of the page, I'm watching to see if people understand where to click, if it's intuitive to use, if it's easy to use, if they look like they're navigating through it, well, if they're interested in staying on the page, where they're going, where they're clicking, right? So, back to our Zoom. We're on Zoom. They have the link to the prototype. And I say, you know, just you know, could you show me what you would do if you were trying to get to the first podcast episode of this series? So, they would be on the prototype homepage. They would click on podcast and then scroll down to the first episode. That shows me that it's very clear to them how to achieve that goal. And it can be kind of tricky to not lead the witness in this. So, if you are prototyping a cup that can mix your drink while you're sitting at your desk, and you can have that prototype that you've had created, or that you've developed put it in front of somebody and say, could you turn this on for me? And they're looking for the on button, and it's really hard for you to be like it's right there on the handle. We want to see how people are using the product, which is why I think you're in the prototype phase of your idea, this process can be really fun and really informative.
Pualena 10:06
The other thing we want to keep in mind is asking open-ended questions, again, not leading the witness, not giving us a yes or no, because we want to be able to take the responses and get as like, extract as much out of them as possible so that you can iterate on that feedback as you need to. Remembering also that one person's feedback is not necessarily enough to iterate on. We want to have sort of an average, right? So, if somebody's like, oh my gosh, this is so hard to use, a question can be, you know, do you use this kind of technology a lot? And they could say, No, I've never used this before. You can say, Okay, well, then people who are used to using this type of tech will understand that, like the Create New button is usually in the upper right in a different colour, but for this person who's never used this before, they're having a little bit of a harder time navigating both really great pieces of feedback because it depends on your target market. If you are marketing to brand new users, you do need to make that an easier process. If you're marketing to people who use this kind of tech, then maybe that positioning is okay, right? So, it really depends on who you are, who you're marketing to, what your product is, etc. Some examples of questions that you could ask is, describe your typical day and how you use this tech in your day-to-day. What are your main goals of using this platform, or service, or product? What was the learning curve when you first started to use a product like this? How did you get used to it? Were you excited? Were you really, did you want to use it every day? Did it become an integral part of your day-to-day? Did you have to kind of create habits around it? Did you have to create boundaries around it? Something that is kind of controversial, but this is a question that I like to ask, how easy or difficult is it to find information or complete this task? So, for example, that task about finding the podcast episode, how easy or difficult was it for you to find that? Could you navigate this easily? Tell me more about that experience. And people will say, I like that you labelled it podcast and not the name of the podcast because I may not know that that was the show, you know. So, we can gather information. People will tell us what they understand and what they don't understand. And this is really important because when you are in a specific industry, or this is your day-to-day life, you understand things a little bit differently than somebody who's just using this as a tool. Okay? So, for example, if you're creating the cup and you're like, turn on the vortex. They're like, the what? And you should call it the mixer, right? It's like that, you understand what that means, but they don't. Okay. And then you know it really depends what you're building, if it's an app, if it's a tech product, if it's a physical product, your questions will be different, and I do want you to take feedback well and also with a grain of salt. People will be either depending on their relationship with you, if it's families or friends, they might be too nice. They may not be fully honest because they don't want to hurt your feelings. Some people may like something and someone else may not like that same exact thing. It's important to get a good range of feedback, look at sort of the average answers and iterate on the things that you feel are most important for user experience and for sort of speed to market. So, if someone's like, I really wish that you made this in green, but the product itself is ready to launch, but it's pink, launch it in pink, and then do a round of green later, right? So, but if something's like, really not working and people are really frustrated with it, fix that first, okay? And then, similar rules apply to surveys. Again, it's sort of a kind of more passive way to get feedback, but it still works. It can be a little more difficult, because then you're relying on people to do it on their own time. And a lot of times, even people with the best intentions will say, Oh my god, I will totally do this survey for you, and then they'll never do it. And it's not because they hate you, it's because they just forgot. So, you could either remind them, you could incentivize it. You could sit down, sit down with them. Say, like, could you fill out the survey with me real quick? So, it's totally up to you. There's tons of platforms for surveys. My favorite form builder of all time is Typeform. I think that they are priced a little weird, but the user experience, the customizability, the way that you can brand them, the way that you can sort of create conditional questioning. I just integrate with many things. I really love Typeform, but there are so many Google Forms. Is always available. It's always free. It's always not as customizable as we want, but it works really well. So, there it is. Okay. That was user interviews.
Pualena 15:29
Next, you want to look at demand. We want to figure out, is this already in the market? If it is, what does it currently look like there? How are people using it? Are people using it? And there are a lot of ways to do this kind of market research. When I was just out of college, I think this was in 2010, 2009 or 2010, I lived in China for a few months, and I worked at an international marketing firm and as one of two native speakers in an office full of native Chinese speakers, I was tasked with creating market reports, and these were massive, like 60 to 100-page reports for specific industries. And this firm it was specifically for, like, agricultural products and food products. So, the two companies that I worked with, Lay's Potato Chips, which was a really like funky project, because they have different flavors in China than they do in the US. They also have different ingredients, different labeling requirements. It was a whole thing. But any time a new product was coming into the market, we would create these reports, and then the client would come over. We would take them to these dinners. We would do like supermarket tours and trade shows. And it was a really fun job. And so in the reports, I was going to like 20 different markets from little like 7-11, types of markets to supermarkets to like big, huge, you know, the equivalent of like Target or Walmart grocery store type markets, and just looking at everything that was already on the shelf. From price point to like the package design, to labeling, to ingredients, to flavors, and then we would research like, what is selling, who's buying what, and where and when. And these were so in-depth, but it was a really important step in the process because it helps these companies to figure out what flavors do we create for what markets, how many bags of chips, and what size do we provide to each market? And I'm talking about both like supermarket, but also like the general Chinese market. So, yeah, that is like the very in-depth end of the spectrum, but I do recommend doing some kind of research like that for yourself. Like if you're creating a digital platform, find every single platform that already exists that does anything remotely similar to what you're doing, even if it's a bigger platform that offers what you're creating as part of a bigger package. Figure out what that is. Figure out what the demand is. If you can, get on the phone with their sales reps, like, seriously, you can pretend that you want to buy the product, if you want to get information that way and ask, you know, have a list of questions to ask. I worked on a project last year, earlier this year, and we were looking to partner with local hotels, and it was a sustainability project. So, I called 30 hotels, and I pretended to be an I was like, Oh, hi, I'm thinking about coming and staying at your property. I am I like to stay at hotels that are environmentally conscious. Can you share a little bit with me about your sustainability practices? They don't need to know that I was never gonna stay there, right? Like it's a great way also to hear what people on the front line of the sales process have in their arsenal to share with you. So, anyway, market research, go do it. It's very important. It's very eye opening, and you might get some ideas truly, like it's it's kind of a cool process. It does take time, so make sure that you've budgeted for that time.
Pualena 19:35
The other thing, when we are looking at product demand, is, can you pre-sell this? And this is getting us into a little bit of a conversation around an MVP, a Minimally Viable Product. I wish that I researched this before I jumped on here. I actually tried for a couple of minutes, and I couldn't find it. But I think that I saw this on YouTube once where there was someone who was on, I don't know if it was like a talk show, or if it was a like a podcast or some kind of interview, and it was a founder of this, like toothbrush, it was special. They had, oh, remember from our first episode; they had a unique value proposition or a unique selling proposition. And there was something special about this toothbrush. I don't remember what it was. And the host, they were like, Oh, what are you launching? And they were like, Oh, well, we have some prototypes. You know, we still have some tweaking to do, but I brought some for you guys to check out. It was, it reminded me of Shark Tank. It was not Shark Tank, but the host was like, why don't you just start selling these and see what happens? And I remember that it was like, a little pricier. It was like, I'm just gonna say $20 a toothbrush because that sounds like a little bit absurd like it was a little absurd. And they were like, We need to get the price, we need to get the material cost down so that we can lower the price of the product. And the host was like, Well, why don't you just try to sell it right now and see what happens? And so the host was like, he's like, what's your Venmo? And the guy or Paypal or something, and the guy says it, and they, they say it out loud, and then, like, all these orders start coming in live. And he was like, Cool. You just proved your concept so that, like, let that inspire you, that you don't have to have it fully fleshed out yet to sell it. We do this all the time in the online course space. You can have a course, you have the curriculum planned. You know the outcome. You know that you can sell this course. You know that you can provide people with the outcome that they desire, with the results that they desire, right? You're not just selling like an idea out of the sky. You're you've planned this. You've gotten results for people before. Maybe you're a one-on-one coach, and now you're creating a program with your methodology. So, you create it, you're in the middle of creating it. It's an eight-week course, and you've done three weeks, and then you start selling it. It is my favorite accountability tool to actually finishing your course content because people have bought it, and now you have to launch it when you said you were going to launch it, so you have to create the content. So, pre-selling is very powerful. It is a great way for you to see right off the bat if people would actually buy this because you can say in your user interviews, would you buy this? And people be like, Yeah, I'd totally buy it. And then you can say, like, well, I have a link here, would you like to buy it right now? And they can say yes or no, right? So, you can say yes, but the act of actually buying it is, like, so much more powerful, right?
Pualena 22:31
Okay, so on that note, let's talk about your unique value proposition or your unique selling proposition. They are sometimes interchangeable. This is going to set you apart from everything that already exists. And the only way that you can know if your USP or UVP will set you apart is if you've done your market research. Because if you haven't, you could say that this is so special because of X, Y and Z, and yet everybody else out there is also doing that, so it is no longer unique, but you didn't know because you didn't do your research. So, I looked this up, and I really liked this definition a USP highlights two key differentiators. Here is an example of a USP, the world's thinnest smartphone with a battery that lasts two days. Okay? Those are two things, two key differentiators, the thinness, right? Apparently, people like that because in user interviews, people say, Gosh, I wish my phone was a little thinner. It doesn't really fit in a lot of the pockets that I have. And, man, why does my phone battery die so fast? So, those are two things, and let's say you're doing user interviews early, early on, you can get this feedback of what people don't like about what's currently out there so that you can innovate on those things to create a use a USP for yourself that maybe didn't exist when you first thought of this idea. So, talking to people, doing your research, doing your user user interviews is so, so important. Okay, another example of a user-unique value proposition, experience the future of clean energy with our solar panels that increase efficiency by 30%, reduce costs by 20% and come with a 25-year warranty. Okay, so this is a great opportunity to also start thinking about this is a great like subtitle for the header of your website. It's a great elevator pitch, right? The world's thinnest smartphone with a battery that lasts two days. Wow. Now you have to actually, like this hatch has to be true. So, you can't just say it's the world's thinnest smartphone and know that there's another phone out there that's thinner than yours. You can't just pull things out of the sky. They must actually be true. I mean, you could. Then people would find out, and then you'd get reamed. Okay, so fun assignment for you. Start to craft your USP. And if you feel that you can't craft it yet because you don't have the information yet, start to do your research. Right? Let's see, sorry, before we move on. You know what? I'm not sorry. I have this thing where I apologize too much. I am just going to keep going without apologizing. But please know that I have your best interest in mind. Three key elements in creating a USP or a UVP, are unique features and benefits. We talked about this. What makes the product or service different from others? Number two, customer needs. How does it address specific needs or problems of the target audience? And three, clear and concise, it should be easy to understand and easy to remember. Memorability is really, really big, right? That's why we have these repeat messages. That's why. So, I just saw this thing, this um Instagram reel of three commercials, if you grew up in the 90s, that that you probably remember and played over and over and over. One was Clear Eyes with Ben Stein, the Clear Eyes commercial, Clean Your Eyes. The other was. The second one was the Muzzy commercial where they're like, “Je Suis La Jeune Fille”, and, oh my gosh, what was the third one? I don't remember. So, I guess that one was the least memorable for me. Oh gosh. It's right on the tip of my tongue, it was like, I think it was like, some kind of, oh, it was the air conditioning commercial where there's like, the couple, and they're sitting in the kitchen, and they're like, it's gonna be another hot one. Okay, I don't know that one, that one was the least memorable for me, but I still remembered it.
Pualena 26:46
Operational viability. So, an idea is really awesome, even a prototype, super awesome. And the entire reason why we have things like GoFundMe or Indiegogo or all of these like fundraisers, what is it? What are they called? I'm googling right now, fundraisers for products. Okay, that's just a whole lot of Google ads. Gosh, there is one that I'm thinking about, Kickstarter. So, we have all of these crowdfunding things, and the reason is, we, as innovators, need resources. So, it is so, so crucial that you have the resources to invest in the long-term process of creating a product or service. So, this is a part of this phase that you need to make sure that you either have already or have a plan for. Do you need to create a Kickstarter? What do you need to create that? You need to create a video. You probably should have a prototype to put in the video. It needs to, do your research. How do you create a compelling Kickstarter campaign? Do you have investors? Do you have have they invested enough? Or do you have savings that you're willing to put into this? Now, if you are using your own savings, understand that you are not a bottomless pit of money, and your credit cards will max out at some point, and you don't want to go there, believe me, like you do not want to do that. So, this is a very, very important part of this process. Get your spreadsheet out, get your budgeting software out, your trackers, whatever that is, really figure out. How much do the materials cost? How much will your labor cost if you are planning on sort of putting yourself in a hole with the faith that your product and service or service will sell, is your marketing plan bulletproof? Can you pre-sell? What does your pre-sell launch look like? What does your main launch look like? What is your timeline? I don't want to scare you, and there's always going to be a little bit of flexibility here. But if you just blindly go into this and say, this is a great idea, I know it's going to work. I have some savings. I have my credit cards. Let's go. I want you to have more of a plan than that. Okay, do your research. Hire a coach. I am not a financial advisor.
Pualena 29:25
Moving on, okay? I have here a feasibility study. One sentence. Conduct a feasibility study to assess practical aspects like manufacturing, distribution and scalability. This should be part of your plan, Okay, number six, scaling. Number six. I don't think I even numbered these before for you. So, if you're wondering, number one was product-market fit and user interviews. Number two was demand. Number three was your minimum viable product, your MVP. Number four was your unique value proposition or unique selling proposition. Number five was operational viability, and resources. Number six is scaling. Okay, so this you don't necessarily have to have a plan for before you start, but I do want to sort of mention that it is a great idea to have scaling in mind when you build this thing out. I have this conversation almost every single day with online course creators who have an idea for a course, or more so a membership, or like a course experience where there's a combination of, like, coaching and courses, or if you have a higher ticket course and you're doing, you know, consultation based selling things that require your time for client acquisition and for a service provider. And I fall into this category as well, right? So, as a web designer or web developer, I provide a service, and my time and energy caps out, so I can't bring on 100 clients a week. I just can't that would be great, but if I did that, I would need a plan to scale. What does that look like? I need to hire more designers and hire more developers and probably more account managers, client communication, client success managers. I would need to put a job listing out, conduct interviews, hire, train. It's months long, and if I have a marketing plan that is out to bring in 100 clients a day or 100 clients a week, and I don't have a plan for scaling like I am in a hole so fast, right? So, understanding like, what does this look like? What are your goals? If you have a specific product that you need to acquire resources for, or there's a product development cycle, you know what? What does this look like in terms of an overall timeline? Because, again, planning is everything. So, typically, when we first go to market, unless we have a ton of money that's going into marketing and advertising, we're going to have a sort of, like a nice, slow growth at the beginning. However, there are products and services that we don't realize are going to sell out like hotcakes. So, I had a client once, and she had a free Facebook group, amazing, super sweet, wonderful woman. She found a lot of success through the keto diet. And so she decided, out of the goodness of her heart, to create this Facebook group for support. And she had it for years. And you know, people, her target demographic, I think, was women in their like, mid-40s to 60s or 70s, and sort of wanting to either lose weight or get healthier and need accountability in some sort of community. So, she would just, she'd provide recipes, she would go live. She was super inspirational, really supportive. And one day she was like, I think I want to have a membership where people pay to be a part of this. And so we created the membership, and her goal was 200 members. And what we didn't do, actually, I can't remember, this was a couple of years ago. We may have actually discussed a cap, but the goal was 200 and so she started to tease this in her Facebook group and talk about it and get people excited about it. And we were building and building and building. And then she launched, she opened her cart, and within the first hour, she hit her 200 member goal. And I remember the first day, it was like climbing and climbing, climbing. She had hundreds of people coming in, and it got to around 500, and I was like, when do you want to close the doors on this? Like, do you want to cap this? And I think we just decided, like, let the people in. She had, like, an early adopter rate or a beta rate or something. And typically, when you launch something like your first round of online courses or your first membership, there's bugs to work out. There's some tech things people have, you know, some people might not be able to access things properly, and so that's why we want to do lots and lots of testing with small groups of people. Well, we didn't do testing with small groups of people for this. She ended up with, I think it was almost 1800 members, if I remember correctly, which was epic, like she made boatloads of money in her first launch ever to this group of people that loved her. And there were mountains of tech issues. Like, I mean, it was fine, we got through it, but it was so, like it was all hands on deck for days and days and days so. So, why am I telling this story scaling, test it, test it small, and have a plan for scaling and growth. Okay?
Pualena 35:09
And then number seven, which is our last point, is pre-selling, which we already kind of talked about, but really thinking about like, how do we weave all of this together into a marketing plan that can allow you to pre-sell, to get a little bit of income, a little bit of a cash flow to support the full launch, and get some feedback from your pre-sales, figuring out, you know, is this viable? Can you pre-sell it? Are people buying it before it's available that speaks to your messaging, that speaks to your prototype that you've put out into the world? People trust a video. People trust testimonials, right? So, do you have all of these in your marketing, weaving your user interview data into this pre-selling plan? So, all of this weaves together. I know this was a lot in one sitting. I hope you could pause and play and take notes as you need to, or listen to this again. As always, please feel free to reach out if you have any questions. If there's anything that you want to go over more, I am happy to do that, and thank you so much for being here. I'm really excited. I can't wait to hear about everything that you're building and creating. Next episode of this series is going to be on pricing, which is always really exciting and really confusing sometimes, so that'll be a fun one, and I can't wait to talk to you again. All right. Keep crushing.