ESYB2 005 - How to Get Feedback on Business Ideas
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[00:00:00] With this video, let's begin the section of the course where we're going to focus on how to get feedback for your business ideas. And most first time entrepreneurs, they skip this, or if they don't skip it, they do very little of this because naturally it's boring. It's not fun. And it requires A lot of stepping out of your comfort zone because you literally have to go and approach other people who might not know you or might not know you well and they might give you negative feedback and that's really discouraging.

So there's a reason why people don't do this. Honestly, you cannot skip this process. It's an imperative part of planning because if you catch any problems or errors early on, this is the cheapest time to fix them. If you don't find problems early and if you let them creep into your plan and then you start with some strategy problems, those blind spots can be incredibly damaging and much more expensive.

To share my [00:01:00] past, every time I skipped the process of getting feedback or I didn't do it well, it really came back to haunt me and was really damaging to the business as I used to start. So I know how painful it can be to not get feedback, and that's why I'm strongly encouraging you to really take this process very seriously.

So, how do you start to get feedback? Well, first of all, friends and family. They're always available for you, they may lack expertise in your industry, and they probably lack objectivity because, you know, they want what's best for you, they don't want you to get hurt. They're not objective, but at the same time they're always available, and they can easily spot your blind spots.

It's just something that naturally happens, often we have blind spots that are just very easy for everyone else to see. So friends and family will immediately help you catch a lot of errors in your strategy. Of course, they're not the only people you should talk to. You should talk to your [00:02:00] business peers.

How do you get access to business peers? Well, you can go to networking events, reach out to industry contacts you may have, you may ask for referrals. Now, business peers, if you're starting out, your peers may also not be experts, but really, how do you get deep feedback? Well, there's a couple of ways. The first is naturally to go to who you think your potential clients might be and simply tell them about your solution that you're planning and ask them, will this help you?

Because nobody knows better about how they'll address their problems than them. So this is actually a really important process to seek out your potential customers before you start your business. Now, when you ask customers for feedback or anyone else for that matter, you have to listen more than talk.

and synthesize the feedback they're giving you, which may not always be positive, but you have to take the nuggets of insight out of it and keep thinking of [00:03:00] more insightful questions to ask them. And if it so happens that a lot of people say, great job, you're great, you're amazing. It's very easy for people to say that.

And in business that can be actually hurtful because if they're just saying that to be nice, But, that's not accurate, that will hurt you. So, what you really want to end up asking, especially if they're potential customers, is to, so to speak, put their money where their mouth is. Like, if they say this is great, and they keep talking about how amazing it is, well, the next question you might ask them is, would you buy this?

Would you pay for it ahead of time for a discount? And then, aha, you see, right away, you'll see how they really feel if they say yes or no. So those are all the great ways to get feedback. Now, there's another source from which you should get feedback. And these are actually industry experts who have created similar businesses to the business that you are planning now.

The problem with industry [00:04:00] experts is that they have no time and you can't easily get access to them. It's really hard to get a lot of feedback from them because they're successful and they're busy and probably a lot of people just like you are trying to pick their brain. So let me actually show you a little technique for how to easily get advice from industry experts.

Using social media and professional networking groups online. Let's say you have an idea for a podcast and you want to get feedback on it. It can be anything. It can be a new widget, anything, but let's say that podcasting is your thing. All you do is search for something like podcast group on Facebook and you get a bunch of groups that come up.

All of these have many members, or you can even. Let Facebook auto complete your search, so if you search for podcast, this podcaster's world comes up, which is very popular, so you can just go there directly. And it's a basic networking group with, you see, over 4, 000 members, all podcasters, some of [00:05:00] them very successful.

There are many podcasters here who make over 6 figures, some make over 7 figures. I know because I used to be actually a part of this group. And the culture of this group, this is a place where people help each other, so. The way you network here is don't just come here and post links to your products or podcasts or whatever you want, whatever you're promoting.

First, be a good, helpful, contributing member. How do you do that? Well, first of all, just comment on people's posts intelligently and helpfully. Also, introduce yourself. Start engaging with other members in the comments. And that will help you get to see who are the nicest members and the most knowledgeable members.

Then you can actually become friends with those people and message with them privately as an advanced kind of a tip which you can also do is ask them privately whether they're members of any kinds of podcasting masterminds or private groups where there's maybe more insightful dialogue happening. And the [00:06:00] example is just for podcasting, but you can do this with any industry, any business almost.

There are plenty such networking groups for a lot of different industries. And one of the great things to do here is not to just get help and leave or get help and that's it, but to form long lasting, blossoming business relationships with people whom you help sometimes and who help you sometimes. And that help grows and grows over the months and years.

Which will ultimately give you many more benefits than just basically getting feedback, but if you want feedback on your ideas You can easily find specific networking groups where people have a culture of actually helping each other So what you can do after you've established yourself as a good member start posting your questions and get help So this is very easy to do.

It's free and The great thing about it is that there are many real great experts who precisely because of the helpful culture of [00:07:00] some of these groups will give you much more help than you can find elsewhere.

