How to Develop a Business Idea You Know Will Work Before You Start

The power of tribe-building before you need one

All creators need a tribe of loyal customers willing to buy their work. Without a tribe, most business ideas become gambles — we build it and hope someone will buy it when we’re done. This is an expensive gamble, both in money and time.

What if we dug the well first?

What if you had a group of people you could count on, consistently, not only to buy your best work, but to help you tailor the work to meet their needs? You can have this group, and it’s not as hard as you might think. Yes, tribe-building takes time, but once you find your best process, it’s a method of rinse-wash-repeat.

Not only is a tribe a powerful sales asset, but you can also use your tribe to develop your first big product before you waste a bunch of money launching a dud to an empty room.

We can’t our tribe directly, but we can ask them what they don’t want.

So, instead of gambling our time and money on ideas no one wants, we’ll start with a hungry crowd, ask them what they want in a way they can tell us, survey them for more details, have them prove our concept by asking for money, and delivering exactly what they ask for.

We start with the end and work backwards.

Our tribe, if chosen well, will lead us in the direction we want. Now, they won’t create the product for us. As entrepreneurs, the creation and innovation is our idea. But we don’t have to (and shouldn’t) create our biggest products in a vacuum.

It’s time to stop gambling and start developing sure-things.

How to uncover a successful product before you make it

Using measured feedback from your tribe, we’ll develop a targeted product your customers want, using their language, delivered in a way they want to consume it.

1. First, we choose who to serve

We start by choosing our niche. Who do you want to serve? I serve writers and creators. Maybe you serve plumbers or coders. No one can pick our niche for us. Your tribe is a personal decision. What group of people winds your watch? Who would you like to serve the rest of your life? What topics light your fire, even though it’ll take an insurmountable effort to make your business a success? Find your niche first. Without a group of people, we can’t target our ideas.

2. Next, we dig the well

This is the list-building part. We start with 10 subscribers, then 100, then 1,000, then 10,000. Once we find a list-building method that works for us, we repeat the process and never stop. We develop a free, valuable product (Easy Invite) we can give our people, in exchange for the privilege of contacting them through email.

3. We set-up an automated welcome sequence

Early, during this sequence, we use the most-important question, highlighted by Ryan Levesque's book, Ask. Ryan calls this the deep-dive survey:

With regards to [your niche here], what’s the single-biggest hurdle/frustration/paint-point, where if you could wave a magic wand, you’d fix it today?

We collect these answers and divide them into larger buckets (3–5 buckets max). The longest answers are the ones you should pay most-attention to. Once you have 3–5 big categories where you can serve your audience, choose one broad idea you believe will serve 80% of your tribe.

Once you develop these larger buckets, create a 5–10 item survey that will help narrow your ideas to develop a beta idea for a product (the idea we’ll use in step 5).

4. We grow our email list to 1,000 people

Once we’ve got our first 1,000 tribes-folk, this gives us a testable audience we can use to extrapolate future results with a bigger audience. Return to step two. Once you find a method to grow your list, keep repeating it. Even if you add more list-building funnels over time, never forget the first one. If you stop using the first method you used, that’s like turning-off one faucet and turning-on another. The bucket won’t fill any faster. Turn-on both faucets, simultaneously.

5. Pre-sell your first idea before you build it

(Make sure you wait until you have at least 1,000 people on your list. Any fewer and you may not get an accurate representation of future results when you launch the final product at a large scale.)

Pre-sell your first big idea to most-valued customers. Pre-selling means you ask people to pay real money for your idea, before you build it. In exchange for a deep-discount and the chance to help develop the final version of your work. Asking them if they’re interested isn’t enough. They have to prove their interest with their wallets, or we can’t prove the idea.

Let’s say you want to offer a $497 course when you make your big launch.

Create an enticing, broad course description and offer it up for pre-sale. Tell your tribe exactly what you’re doing. Tell them the truth, that it doesn’t exist yet, but if they order the course now, they’ll get the opportunity to help make it what they’d like, lifetime access, and the chance to be a case-study.

Offer the pre-sell for a fraction of the final number. This is a must. You’ll have a hard time finding people to pay you full-retail for something that doesn’t exist. $197 should be a good number in this example.

Decide upon a number you can live with. Ten percent closing rate? Five percent? Maybe you’re happy with one-percent.

This is your first monetary landmark. If you can’t sell the one-sentence pre-sell product at a huge discount, dump the idea and try again. The only thing you’re out is a little pride and the time it took you to send the email.

If you’ve made a couple pre-sells, refund their money, there wasn’t enough interest, and tell them a better idea is coming in a few weeks. Give your list some time to breathe between these pre-sells.

6. Build the beta product and launch it to your pre-sell buyers

Get their honest feedback. Use your subsequent, deeper survey to develop course modules that serve the exact needs of your tribe. Remember, we’re looking for an 80% solution here. You’ll never serve your entire list.

Your subsequent products will help fills the gaps and overlap a different 80% solution. Use your beta testers for testimonials and case-studies. Tell them which modules worked and which modules need help.

Answer all their questions. Bend-over backwards to serve these people as best you can, because they’ve taken a huge leap of faith with you. As long as your honest with your intentions and you explain the process in advance — if you’ve got a great idea, you’ll have plenty of pre-sell takers. These folks love being first in line and can’t wait to share their opinions.

7. Return to the lab

Using all the feedback from your beta-testers, return to your lab and tweak the course where necessary. Develop the final product and launch it to your beta testers, thanking them for all their feedback, re-iterating their lifetime access to all updates.

8. Launch the final product as big as you can

Using as many different launch strategies as you can, launch your final product on a large scale. Not only will you launch your product to your greater list, but you’ll also pay for ads, use joint ventures, sell with an affiliate program, do the podcasting circuit, and any other method you can muster to build a massive launch.

Starting a business is hard enough. We don’t have to gamble

When you start with the people you want to serve, versus end with them, the process gives you a better chance of success.

While you can’t directly ask your customers what they want, you can ask them what they don’t want. Their dislikes will help uncover what they do want. We’ll give it to them. You’ll look like a total genius. You’ve served your customers in the exact way they wanted to be served.

If we can create predictable results on a smaller scale, we can extrapolate it to a bigger scale.

Maybe this will work for your niche too. You don’t have to create a course. You can use this method with physical products. Look at the success of Kickstarter — a similar method.

Maybe you offer a service. Ask first. Don’t go into development with pre-conceived ideas. Have your list tell you their biggest problems and you provide a solution. Help your tribe get what they want and they’ll help you get what you want.

We’re waiting for you.

(Enroll in My Free Email Masterclass: Get Your First 1,000 Subscribers)

August Birch (AKA the Book Mechanic) is both a fiction and non-fiction author from Michigan, USA. A self-proclaimed guardian of writers and creators, August teaches indie authors how to write books that sell and how to sell more of those books once they’re written. When he’s not writing or thinking about writing August carries a pocket knife and shaves his head with a safety razor.