Book: Will It Fly?: How to Test Your Next Business Idea So You Don’t Waste Your Time and Money . Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.

I like this book and have a bunch of notes to share.

Here are my raw notes about the book:

  • Grab a piece of paper and divide it into four sections. Then, identify the four most important parts of your life. Your categories might be, for example, Family, Career, Well-being and Money.
  • If, during this process, you start to think that your idea won’t generate enough money to make this scenario realistic, set aside time right now to improve it.
  • Is there one thing that you’re exceptionally good at? If so, you should learn to use it to your advantage!
  • Do brainstorming. A mind map may be a good tool
  • The next step is to distill your idea into a single cohesive sentence that helps you pare it down to its essence. Then, once you have categories, write 400 to 500 words that cover them all.
  • What’s in it for me? Get your entrepreneurial idea ready for take-off.
  • Becoming a successful entrepreneur means creating a business that’s in line with your lifestyle goals.
  • Successful entrepreneurs spot their advantages by looking to the past.
  • Map your idea and distill it to its essence.
  • Share your idea, ask for feedback and research your market.
  • Understand your audience’s issues and how they describe them.
  • Strengthen your idea by collecting customer anecdotes and tuning into their needs.
  • Smart entrepreneurs test the commitment of their potential customers and investors.
  • Final validation comes through interacting with potential customers and inviting them to invest.
  • Share your idea, ask for feedback and research your market.
  • OK, now your idea is in a shareable format, but before you launch your business, it’s essential to research how the world will respond to it.
  • Your idea will be improved by sharing it and learning from the feedback. In fact, even casual chats at work or at home can lead to valuable feedback that can help you refine your concept. But you must also be sure to speak with potential clients.
  • For instance, the author had the idea to build a website for people who want to run food trucks and started contacting people who already had food truck businesses. The food truck owners immediately asked him if he owned a food truck – and he would reply that he didn’t.
  • This experience forced him to think more closely about his idea and why somebody would take his advice if he wasn’t in the business. Eventually, this reflection led him to reshape the idea entirely, branding himself as a curator of a community for food truck owners.
  • The next step is to determine how your market currently operates and attempt to add a new dimension to it. A good tool for doing so is a market map.
  • To make one, just create a spreadsheet with different pages for places, people and products.
  • Your customer PLAN stands for your customers’ problems, language, anecdotes and needs. To get started on yours, add a page to your spreadsheet called P.L.A.N. and make four columns, one for each of the above categories.
  • Identify problems. Talk with the people you listed and ask questions about what you’re planning to do.
  • Understand how those people speak and enter in their world. Speak like yours customers, become one of them.
  • Catch your customers anecdotes (stories) and learn about them. Interesting stories will make you think about your product.
  • Be heard. Talk about it, write about it for free and get people’s attention.