Ch. 2: The 3 Game-Changing Decisions You Must Make to Succeed

Validate Your Offer: Keys to Business Success

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In this episode of 'The Market. Your Message Show', host Jonathan Milligan discusses the importance of validating your business offer before fully committing. Drawing inspiration from Sal Khan's journey with Khan Academy, Jonathan introduces three critical decisions for validating your offer: choosing the right offer type, selecting a focused topic, and setting a tight timeline. He emphasizes the potential pitfalls of creating without validation and provides a step-by-step guide to effectively test your idea using a minimum viable product. Additionally, listeners are encouraged to reflect on past failures to improve future ventures. This episode urges entrepreneurs to work smarter, not harder, by aligning with their strengths and following a targeted approach to market validation.

00:00 Welcome to the Market Show
00:11 Introduction to 'Validate Your Offer'
00:30 Special Offer for Podcast Listeners
01:13 Chapter Two: Pillar One - Decide Your Three Key Decisions
01:19 The Story of Sal Khan and Khan Academy
02:34 The Importance of Validating Your Offer
03:22 Common Pitfalls in Product Creation
04:50 The Savvy Shortcut to Success
05:46 Three Key Decisions for Validation
09:29 Reflection Exercise
12:04 Key Takeaways

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Transcript

0:40

Hello and welcome to the market. Your message show. I'm your host, Jonathan Milligan. And we are going through the third book in the series. Validate your offer. This is an important book because a lot of people will start their business online. And then they're trying to figure out how do I create something that people will want and how do I do it without wasting time? And that's what this third book in my book series is all about. Now as a thank you for being a loyal podcast listener, I am making the audio book available one chapter at a time every single week. And as you're listening to this, we are currently going through that. Validate your offer. Now, if you ever want the audio book or you want the book or the workbook, you can go to platform growth, books.com again, it's platform, growth books.com, and you could order one of those. And of course, listen, as you go through the book or use the workbook to implement what you hear. In each episode. So with that being said, let's jump right in to today's chapter. Chapter two, pillar one, decide your three key decisions. When Sal Khan started tutoring his cousin in math back in 2005, he had no grand plans to build an online education empire. He just wanted to help his family member learn. So he recorded some short video lessons and threw them up on a little known site called YouTube. Then, something unexpected happened. Total Strangers started watching Sal's videos, and they loved them. The comments gushed about how clear and helpful the lessons were. Sal was blown away. He realized he might be onto something much bigger than family tutoring sessions. So he kept making more videos and more and more. Before long, he took a leap of faith and quit his cushy hedge fund job to go all in on his online teaching idea. Fast forward to today and Khan Academy reaches millions of grateful students worldwide. But here's the crazy part. Sal didn't spend months building out a fancy academy first. He started by validating his concept through a few simple YouTube videos. Those early comments proved there was real demand for what he wanted to teach. Only then did Sal pour serious time and effort into fleshing out his vision. He proved the market first, then built to meet it. And that made all the difference. Sal's story perfectly captures what you'll learn in this chapter. The key to turning your ideas into income isn't to go big right out the gate. It's to choose a focused offer type and topic, validate it quickly, and let the market guide your next steps. Get this right, and you can save yourself months of wasted effort. Building offers no one wants. You can gain confidence to go all in on winners and you can grow your business with far less risk and guesswork. So let's dive into the three crucial decisions that make speedy validation possible. Shall we? Your offer type, your topic, and your timeline. Nail those and you'll be well on your way to Khan Academy level success. Minus the hedge fund detour, the painful path most people take. Pop quiz. What's the usual course of action when a lightbulb idea strikes? Most people do this. They start dreaming up the best, biggest version of their product. You dive headfirst into creation mode, toiling away for weeks or months to bring your grand vision to life. Finally, after pouring your blood, sweat, and tears into this labor of love, you unveil it to the world, awaiting the inevitable avalanche of sales. Crickets. Turns out, there isn't much of a market for your masterpiece after all. Despite all your hard work, you're left with a giant pile of content, and a giant hole in your wallet to match. Why most makers crash and burn. Where did we go wrong? The fatal flaw is creating a full blown product without first validating that people actually want it. We assume our idea is brilliant and everyone will happily throw money at it, but assumptions are dangerous things in business. Building a complete offer with no proof of demand is like playing Russian roulette with your time and money. If your guess is off, all that effort goes down the drain. Even if the idea has potential, you've wasted precious resources creating more than the market calls for. Worst of all, it's soul crushing to see your magnum opus collect virtual dust. After such a lackluster launch, most people throw in the towel, convinced they're just not cut out for this. The savvier shortcut to success. But there's a better way. Before you get swept away in the excitement of a new idea, pause and make three critical decisions. Your offer type, your topic. And your timeline by strategically choosing a focused minimum viable version of your offer. You can validate demand much faster in as little as a week or two. This speedy feedback loop lets you test the waters without sinking the ship. If you're scaled down, offer gets a positive response. You'll have the confidence in cash to build it out further. And if it falls flat, You can scratch it and move on to the next idea without losing your shirt. The key is to sell before you build and let the market be your guide. Work smarter, not harder. Right? So let's break down how to pick the optimal offer type. topic, and timeline for fast and fruitful validation. Your bank balance will thank you. Your three key decisions, type, topic, timeline. In order to successfully complete pillar one, you need to make three primary decisions. We will cover each of these in more depth in the next chapter, but let's briefly take a look at each one. Decision one. Pick your validation offer type. First, you've got to decide what minimum viable product will be your vehicle for validation. There are four core options, each perfectly suited for different natural talents. If writing is your jam, a low content book, think workbook, journal, or planner, could be your golden ticket. Have a knack for breaking down complex topics into bite sized lessons. A mini course might be your best bet. Love helping people work through challenges in real time. Consider a group coaching bootcamp, or if you're a gifted speaker, a live workshop could be your winning play. Think about it like this. You wouldn't put diesel in a gasoline car and expect peak performance, right? The same goes for your offer to create a truly magnetic MVP. You need a format that runs on your unique brand of fuel. So, take a beat to reflect on what medium allows you to shine brightest. By playing to your strengths, you'll be able to whip up a high quality validation offer in record time. And that's what we're all about. Decision two, select your validation offer topic. Now that you've got your offer type locked in, it's time to choose a specific in demand topic for your MVP. The secret sauce? Steering clear of broad, beginner to advanced concepts in favor of laser focused ideas. Four proven frameworks reveal these magnetic topics. They tackle the first problem beginners face, solve a common challenge, promise a quick win, or focus on a crucial subtopic of a larger subject. This ain't just theory, either. An in depth study of 100 top selling courses found that the narrow, Outcome oriented ones outsold the expansive start to finish options by a whopping three to one. The takeaway is clear specificity sells by niching down and drilling into one pressing pain point. You can create an irresistible offer that practically sells itself. Plus, a tightly defined topic is far easier to whip into a MVP than an epic catch all opus. Decision three, choose your validation offer deadline. Last but not least, you need to put a firm expiration date on this validation mission. And trust me, you want to keep it snappy. 30 days or less is the name of the game. Why the rush? Because free time is the enemy of shipping. Given an open ended runway, most of us will tinker and tweak until the end of time, trying to reach that mythical state of perfection. However, as best selling author John Acuff knows, Constraints can be a creator's best friend. He wrote his wall street journal bestseller in a mere 30 days, proving that a tight timeframe is a powerful antidote to an action. And remember your goal right now, isn't to craft a flawless masterpiece. It's to get a minimum viable product. Out into the world at lightning speed. Perfection is a fairy tale, but progress is very much within reach. By setting a hard 28 day cap on your validation venture, you'll force yourself to strip your offer down to its most essential, impactful core. No time for bells and whistles, just pure concentrated value. So light a fire under yourself and commit to going from zero to sold in under a month. Your future self will thank you when those first sales notifications start rolling in. Today's exercise, a reflection exercise. All right. It's time for a little tough love and self reflection. I want you to think back to the last time you had a brilliant idea for a product or offer that never quite made it across the finish line. We've all been there. So don't be shy. Got it in mind. Now let's put that stalled out project under the microscope and diagnose where things went off the rails. Grab a pen and paper or your favorite digital notetaker and jot down your answers to the following questions. Type trouble Did you choose a clear specific format for your offer or did you try to be everything to everyone? Were you forcing yourself to create in a medium that didn't align with your strengths like writing a book when you're really a born speaker? Topic tangle. Was your topic broad, vague, or just plain boring? Did you try to cover too much ground or did you zero in on a juicy, urgent pain point your audience was desperate to solve? Timeline trap. Did you give yourself a firm deadline to complete your offer or did you leave things open ended? Were you allowing yourself to endlessly tinker and perfect or did you set a hard stop to force yourself to ship? Chances are one or all of these three elements was missing or muddled Maybe you tried to create an epic all encompassing course instead of starting with a quick win mini offer Perhaps your topic was too generic to truly resonate with your target market or it could be that without a clear due date You let perfection paralysis take the wheel. This exercise is not about beating yourself up. It's about getting valuable lessons so you can do better next time. By identifying where you went astray, you can course correct and set yourself up for validation victory. So take a good, honest look at your past misfires and write down your key takeaways. What will you do differently this time around? How will you ensure you choose the right offer type, nail down a crave worthy topic. And stick to a strict timeline, write out your action plan for each of the three decisions, then commit to putting these insights into practice as you embark on your next validation adventure with this newfound clarity and resolve, you'll be unstoppable. Remember, every failure is just a stepping stone to success. If you take the time to learn from it. So pat yourself on the back for having the courage to reflect and improve your next offer. We'll thank you for it. Key takeaways. Testing your offer with a focused minimum viable product is faster, easier, and smarter. It's better than jumping straight to building a full product. Align your validation offer to your natural strengths as a writer, Teacher, coach, or speaker to leverage your gifts. Choose an urgent specific topic and set a firm 28 day or less timeline to create and launch quickly, avoiding the temptation to overbuild.