Step 1: Market Feedback (Aka, Do People Even Care?)
If your idea requires the participation of others in order for it to succeed—an exchange of any kind—then caring by all parties involved is a requirement. Step 1: Make sure that other people care.
30-second read (+3:12 video)
We often make the mistake of automatically assuming that because we care about our thing, others care about it too.
In the business world, this is seen when building products to recruiting devs to marketing and selling, well, everything.
This assumption often leads to taking action without first asking others if they do indeed actually share your care.
A person (or group of people) has an idea that they think is amazing. So they run full steam ahead with it. No UX research. No market feedback. Why? Because that step is hard and uncomfortable and takes time. It makes you slow down and be diligent.
Instead, they jump in, blindly spending money on their idea. Investing emotionally in their idea. All to find out that nobody actually cares.
Hey, I get it. It’s emotionally safer to just run with something rather than risking having to scrap it (and hurt your ego).
But if your idea requires the participation of others in order for it to succeed—an exchange of any kind—then caring by all parties involved is a requirement.
Step 1: Make sure that other people care.
Rigorously test your assumptions. Get hard and truthful feedback from a variety of perspectives.
Then, if enough say they care, Step 2: designing, building, and investing time and money in order to turn your idea into a thing.
BTW, Step 3 is taking what came out of Step 2 and running it back through Step 1.
Fun times.
Feedback mechanisms include:
Posting bold ideas on social
The comments are a treasure trove of insight.
Get comfortable with posting ideas that aren’t fully formed. This isn’t a popularity contest. This is about challenging legacy models. And that means a willingness to be wrong in public.
Asking (Who’d have guessed?)
Stop assuming. Get out of your comfort zone. Ask your target market.
Access
A strong network of smart people. Echo chambers and agreeableness are the death of ideas.
P.S. Episode 11 of The Content Recruiter pod is available. You can listen here.