If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my 18 years of being a Designer + Digital Strategist, it’s that us business owners bite off more than we can chew.

(Myself included. Guilty. As. Changed.)

From overestimating how much time you have in the day, and committing to doing too many things, to launching several digital products all at the same time, whilst going through a re-brand, and creating a new online course and virtual retreat.

Sound about right?

I totally get it–your ideas are brilliant, you want to put them out in to the world, and you wanna have your own “six figure launch” because everyone else on the internet is doing it, too.

(Side rant: Am I the only one who’s SICK TO DEATH of all the “six figure” this and “six figure” that out there? I mean, seriously. It all just makes me barf-y…)

So, you invest tons of money on your product idea’s features, spend loads of time writing out curriculum for your services, or you’ve thunked down thousands of dollars for event space to run your retreat, etc…

But here’s the thing: You’re missing some steps in between “bright, shiny new idea!” and “let’s launch the new ______!”

The first thing you gotta do, is test your idea to see if it’ll sell. How?

1. Let’s say you have several ideas for upcoming digital products you wanna make. You can create a survey using a free tool like SurveyMonkey and send it to your e-mail list and social media accounts so your subscribers can vote for which one they’re most interested in.
2. Within the survey, you can ask questions around what topics should be covered, how they’d like to consume the information (video? text? audio? all of the above?), what problems are they most frustrated with, what are some of the goals they have when interacting with your product/service/event, etc…
3. You can conduct one-on-one interviews about your idea with potential customers and get their feedback, their thoughts on what they want to learn, their fears, etc… Oh, and P.S.: All of this information is great to include on your sales page/marketing materials when you create one!
4. You can create a Facebook ad campaign around your new product/service/event that sends people to a killer landing page design that collects e-mail addresses of people who are interested in purchasing once your product becomes available.
5. You can even use that expertly designed sales page to pre-sell your new product/service/event before you build it, so you’re totally 100% sure you’re on the right track with an idea that’ll sell from the get-go. After all, nothing is a bigger gauge of if your idea has merit than when you ask people to put their money where their mouth is.

All of these ideas are built around the idea of the MVP (Minimum Viable Product), which is really just a jargon-y way of saying “What is the absolute bare minimum you can do to put your idea out in to the world to test its viability before you waste your time and money creating something that hasn’t been proven to sell (yet!)”

By using an MVP approach with your ideas, you reduce your risk of accidentally creating something no one will buy.

You save yourself loads of time, money and sanity — you can quickly run a few surveys, talk to a few ideal customers, collect a few e-mail addresses, and see if your idea has legs.

If no one signs up on your e-mail interest list? No biggie. Move on to your next idea knowing full well you didn’t waste anymore time, money or resources than necessary.

If people do sign up, and you pre-sell your program? Well, my friend, that’s all the validation you need to know that you’ve got one great idea on your hands and you can now start to run with it!

You can work with me to design that logo! Create that online course! Design that sales page! Have that six figure launch! <—- Ick! I just threw up a little writing that…