WEBVTT 00:00.240 --> 00:07.470 You have what you think is a great business idea but you're not sure if there are people that will actually 00:07.470 --> 00:09.450 want your products and services. 00:09.540 --> 00:13.280 The next step is to actually validate your business. 00:13.320 --> 00:17.290 And there's two different ways that I suggest doing this. 00:17.320 --> 00:22.850 First you have saaf allocation which is what you can do right now without an audience. 00:22.900 --> 00:26.180 Literally as I teach you how to do it. 00:26.230 --> 00:27.760 The SEC is hard validation. 00:27.760 --> 00:29.410 And I'll talk about that coming right up. 00:29.410 --> 00:35.530 But first let's talk about Scafell addition which basically means doing just a little bit of market 00:35.530 --> 00:36.870 research yourself. 00:36.880 --> 00:45.350 I like using tools like Google Facebook and YouTube to see if a topic is popular. 00:45.460 --> 00:51.520 Now I'm a digital media company so this might look a little different than what you might do if for 00:51.820 --> 00:54.400 example you're creating a brick and mortar business. 00:54.460 --> 00:59.650 You still have to do digital even as a brick and mortar business. 00:59.800 --> 01:06.220 But whereas I for this example I'm going to be looking to see if personal finance for millennials is 01:06.280 --> 01:10.220 a great topic for a business or a great business idea. 01:10.390 --> 01:19.870 You might be looking at oh is there a another Burt beer brewery in my city or how have breweries done 01:19.910 --> 01:28.360 in the local cities around me that might be the kind of market research you do to see what type of competition 01:28.360 --> 01:29.310 is out there. 01:29.800 --> 01:36.190 If there is an audience for that competition it's relatively easy to go online and see what companies 01:36.190 --> 01:38.070 are doing what you're doing. 01:38.110 --> 01:41.080 How are they doing it and are they successful. 01:41.080 --> 01:45.640 If there's another company that's doing exactly what you're doing and it doesn't seem like they have 01:45.850 --> 01:52.660 a lot of followers on social media they it doesn't look like they have a lot of business going to their 01:52.660 --> 01:53.250 Web site. 01:53.440 --> 01:57.010 Then it might mean that your business idea is not valid. 01:57.010 --> 02:03.580 Not necessarily because some companies are really really good without that social media presence but 02:03.580 --> 02:08.790 it's a easy indicator for a lot of online products and online businesses. 02:08.920 --> 02:12.260 So let's dive in and actually do a bit of validation. 02:12.400 --> 02:19.900 For example as I mentioned I'm thinking about a business geared towards millennials about personal finance. 02:19.900 --> 02:26.860 I know personal finance is a huge topic but I feel like there is a niche or an area that's not being 02:26.860 --> 02:32.230 served as much as it could be and that's finance for millennials. 02:32.650 --> 02:36.760 So the first thing that I would do is go to Amazon and search for your topic. 02:36.760 --> 02:44.470 So I literally typed in personal finance for millennials and I see a few books pop up so I don't have 02:44.470 --> 02:51.760 this I'm not the first person with this idea but right off the bat I can tell that this idea might not 02:51.760 --> 02:56.190 be the best idea in terms of how we position it. 02:56.260 --> 03:03.310 Millennials might not be the ones searching for personal finance advice and what happens when millennials 03:03.310 --> 03:10.760 grow up and does this idea of personal finance for Millennials just not exist anymore. 03:10.990 --> 03:18.760 Maybe a better idea is personal finance for young adults or personal finance for kids even because on 03:18.760 --> 03:25.270 Amazon if I just type in let's just type in personal finance for example we type in personal finance 03:25.270 --> 03:28.330 you see a lot more books with a lot more reviews. 03:28.330 --> 03:35.650 Now the total number of books is an indicator but better yet the number of reviews that can indicate 03:35.890 --> 03:38.930 whether a topic is popular or not. 03:39.040 --> 03:42.900 Let's do one more search for personal finance for. 03:43.000 --> 03:47.790 And sometimes I like to see what the auto search results pop up. 03:48.100 --> 03:50.140 So you see Personal Finance for Dummies. 03:50.140 --> 03:53.160 Personal Finance for teens personal finance for kids. 03:53.250 --> 03:56.490 So let's do for teens there's a decent amount of books. 03:56.650 --> 04:03.370 Some with more reviews than the millennial ideas so this automatically tells me that personal finance 04:03.370 --> 04:06.400 for teens might be a better idea. 04:07.380 --> 04:12.460 Young adults let's just see now here. 04:12.470 --> 04:14.830 Personal Finance for young adults. 04:14.840 --> 04:17.740 We've got more books with more reviews. 04:17.750 --> 04:25.850 Now this isn't an end all be all sort of test to see if a topic is perfect or not but I know just from 04:25.850 --> 04:32.600 some of these and some of the authors that I see that personal finance for just young adults might be 04:32.600 --> 04:34.260 a better target audience. 04:34.370 --> 04:36.290 Let's do the same on YouTube. 04:36.320 --> 04:41.060 So I searched for personal finance for millennials and I already see that the first whistle is actually 04:41.060 --> 04:43.820 from a channel called Millennial money. 04:43.820 --> 04:46.570 So this is exactly my idea. 04:46.700 --> 04:50.210 And let me just go to their channel just to see what they're actually doing. 04:50.450 --> 04:56.720 But I'm guessing this is a channel that is geared towards millennials. 04:56.720 --> 05:01.880 Let's just see if it's actually a relevant channel if they're posting a lot because they see the reviews. 05:01.880 --> 05:08.860 Subscribers is very low and they're posting a few videos but not that many. 05:08.910 --> 05:11.150 Now this is a good sign. 05:11.460 --> 05:14.090 Did it just not work with there not an audience for it. 05:14.100 --> 05:18.890 Or did she just not push far enough or harden enough to make it work. 05:18.900 --> 05:19.940 Who knows. 05:19.950 --> 05:23.720 Let's go back and let's search for just personal finance. 05:23.800 --> 05:25.750 Lots more views on these videos. 05:25.770 --> 05:34.840 When you get to personal finance what I also do is just search for channels instead of videos to see 05:35.290 --> 05:37.720 what types of channels there are. 05:37.990 --> 05:46.620 What I've actually personally heard is that personal finance is an area on YouTube that is underserved. 05:46.630 --> 05:48.850 That's something I've heard through some other research. 05:49.000 --> 05:53.990 So that's partly why I think YouTube does need some more personal finance channels. 05:54.160 --> 05:58.140 But I don't think again that personal finance for millennials is a great idea. 05:58.910 --> 06:00.910 Lastly let's go over to Facebook. 06:01.070 --> 06:06.410 Search for personal finance for millennials know groups and I'm searching for groups because that will 06:06.410 --> 06:06.900 tell me. 06:06.920 --> 06:14.990 Are people interested in this topic let's just search for personal finance like we always do groups. 06:14.990 --> 06:23.540 Lots of groups lots of groups with lots of members and investing groups personal budgeting groups lots 06:23.540 --> 06:26.930 of different groups here about personal finance. 06:26.930 --> 06:32.840 So at this saaf allegation tells me is that personal finance might be a good idea for a company but 06:32.870 --> 06:39.320 not necessarily geared at quote unquote millennials because that leaves out a lot of people who might 06:39.320 --> 06:42.920 be interested in my business or services. 06:42.920 --> 06:47.230 So let's move on to hard validation which is a little bit different. 06:47.240 --> 06:52.110 This will give you an even better idea if your business is valid with hard validation. 06:52.140 --> 06:58.730 I'm talkin about cold calling people sending out surveys sending out emails to people and literally 06:58.730 --> 07:01.640 asking them either one. 07:01.640 --> 07:06.320 Is this a good idea or asking them what they want from you. 07:06.380 --> 07:12.980 If you are able to build up a reputation on Facebook or on social media if you have any sort of e-mail 07:12.980 --> 07:18.430 list you can ask the audience or your audience what they're looking for. 07:18.440 --> 07:24.390 You can also post surveys online find social media groups related to that topic. 07:24.480 --> 07:32.070 For example personal finance and put up a survey Use Survey Monkey dot com or Google Forms to quickly 07:32.070 --> 07:37.410 and easily create surveys that you can just share online to get feedback. 07:37.410 --> 07:42.970 This could be just about your business itself or about a specific part of your business. 07:42.990 --> 07:48.630 A specific service that you're going to provide and that's what I've done with my audience right now 07:48.630 --> 07:51.870 because we put out a lot of online courses and media. 07:51.870 --> 07:55.170 And so we'll ask our audience what courses do you want. 07:55.170 --> 07:56.960 What videos do you want. 07:57.090 --> 08:03.030 What types of social media posts do you want what types of podcasts blog articles do you want in in 08:03.030 --> 08:03.800 the next lesson. 08:03.800 --> 08:10.530 I show you an actual example of a survey that I sent out including all the survey copy the results we 08:10.530 --> 08:10.940 got. 08:11.070 --> 08:15.230 And it shows you exactly why sending out surveys can be so powerful. 08:15.360 --> 08:19.140 So these are two very easy ways to do market research. 08:19.140 --> 08:24.760 You could take an entire class about actually doing market research and that would take many hours. 08:24.960 --> 08:27.940 But if you want to just get started and jump right in. 08:28.050 --> 08:30.190 These are a few ways that you can get started today.