Day 3: Audience/Problem/Solution

It’s Day 3. You have 27 days left to finish and launch your product. Today we’re going to talk about the big picture: your audience, the problem, and your solution.

Make something people want.

Get the word out.

Ship the product.

These are the main steps we’ll guide you through in this challenge.

Start by watching the video above, then continue from here for the rest of today’s lesson and action plan.

A NOTE ON VALIDATION

The biggest risk an entrepreneur faces is in creating something no one wants. The longer you spend on a product (and the more money you put into it), the greater the risk.

Lots of entrepreneurs obsess over the idea of “validating” a product to reduce this risk. This means gaining some assurance that people will actually want the thing you’re planning to build, before you actually build it.

It’s impossible to remove all of the risk in creating something people don’t actually want (and we’re already reducing the risk by spending just 30 days on this product), but that doesn’t mean we should ignore validation.

There are three big points of potential causes of creating a product that doesn’t sell, and each corresponds to ouraudience, product, solution paradigm I already introduced.

1) Audience: does this group of people exist as you envision it? Can you actually reach these people and present your solution to them?

If you already have a blog, podcast or other platform, this step is straightforward, assuming you’ve already built at least a modest audience.

If you’re starting from scratch, you can look for evidence that your proposed target audience exists by finding other communities where these people already gather online.

2) Problem: do you really understand the problem? How do you know it exists?

Talking to people and reading forums and blog posts and comments are great ways to validate that the problem you’ve identified really exists.

The more time you spend getting to know your target audience, the better you’ll understand the problems people face.

3) Solution: does your solution solve the problem in a compelling way? Will customers feel like they’re getting plenty of value in exchange for the purchase price?

You can partially validate the solution by sharing your ideas with potential buyers before you launch. We’ll focus on this over the coming weeks.

Today’s Action Plan: Day 3

• Watch today’s lesson video above.
• Set a date for your product launch. I know, you have little idea what your product will be right now. That’s OK. Setting a date is important. There is nothing more powerful than a deadline. Plus, we’ll adjust the amount of work you have to do to make sure you hit the date. Pick a date approximately 27 days from now. I recommend launching on a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday.
• Choose an audience, problem and potential solution. Spend the next three days brainstorming and validating your ideas. By the next time you hear from me, you should have a pretty good idea of who you’re serving, and what problem you’re helping them solve. This can change somewhat, but try to lock something down.

RESOURCES:

If you haven’t listened already, here are two must-listen podcast episodes:

• Choosing & Vetting A Business Idea (Fizzle Show Episode 8) — if you’re struggling with how to find an idea, or how to evaluate it, listen to this episode.
• A Walk Through Making Your First Product in 7 Steps(Fizzle Show Episode 27) — this is a complete overview of building and launching your first product, from psychology to technology to timelines. We’ll be compressing much of this into the next 27 days.

OK, that’s it for now. In the next installment, we’ll start figuring out how you’re actually going to build this product and reach the intended audience.

Questions or comments about this lesson? Leave a comment on this post. If you’re a Fizzle member, join the discussion in the forum and start a Progress Log to track your challenge.