Brandon Nankivell's Blog, page 13

Will It Fly by Pat Flynn – A Summary

Pat Flynn is a well-known and respected 32-year old guy from Southern California who makes a living on the internet. His latest book, Will it Fly? shows us how to test our next business idea so we don’t waste our time and money. The process is divided into 5 steps.

Step 1: Mission Design

Allign Your Idea With Your Goals.

James sent an email to Pat, he said, “Hey Pat, I currently generate over $20,000 per month in recurring revenue, but here’s the thing… I’m not happy.”

This is why mission design is so important. Why put everything you’ve got into a business idea, only to be unfulfilled?

Many entrepreneurs strive for freedom and the ability to live life on their own terms, but many forget to align their business ventures with their goals and values.

How do you know if your business idea will truly fulfill you?

Meet The Airport Test.

Pretend you’ve climbed into a time machine and gone 5 years into the future. You catch up with a friend for a cup of coffee before your next flight, and your friend asks you, “How’s life treating you these days?” You respond with, “AMAZING! Life couldn’t get any better!” And you really mean it.

The key question to ask yourself is, What’s happening in your life 5 years from now that makes you respond like this? Write your answer down and see what would truly fulfill you at that point during your life.

If you’re still stuck, then meet The History Test.

Write down 3 experiences you’ve had such as previous jobs, roles you’ve had, or sports you’ve participated in. What are 3 things you enjoyed about it, and 3 things you didn’t? Can you see any patterns emerging? This will help give you some direction as to what will fulfill you.

The final exercise is The Shark Bait Test.

Imagine yourself walking up to Kevin O’Leary, a multi-millionaire and investor from The Shark Tank. You want him to invest in your business idea. He looks you directly in the eyes, and says, “Why should I be interested in working with you and not someone else? What makes you so special?” What he’s asking is, “What can you bring to the table that no one else can?”, “What is your unfair advantage?”

For example, imagine two different people selling the same idea: a brand new flavour of wine: Chocolate.

Ruby has been working for a wine company for 9 years and loves chocolate.

Dany has also been working with wine for 9 years and loves chocolate. Additionally, Dany has grown up working in his family-owned wine business, and his brother Willy happens to own a chocolate factory and has many valuable connections within the chocolate industry.

If you were Kevin O’Leary – who would you hire? Dany is the clear winner because he has something that the competition doesn’t.

If you’re struggling to work out what your unfair advantage is, send a message to 10 friends or colleagues and ask them what unique trait or skill they think you have.

These tests will help to clarify your business idea so that it aligns with your goals and values.

Step 2: Development Lab

Define Your Idea.

Don’t waste time creating a logo or choosing a business name until you fully understand what your idea does, who it is for, and how it’s different to others. Focus on how and why your idea will help others.

To better understand your idea, Pat suggests brainstorming using a mind-map. You’ve probably done some of these before. Get a piece of paper out and some colourful pens and pencils. Set a time limit of 15 minutes and just go nuts take note of anything related to your idea. At the end, begin eliminating anything that doesn’t fit well with your idea.

The next step is to come up with just one sentence that describes your idea. To begin with you can write one page. Reduce it to one paragraph by cutting out the unimportant bits, and then finally reduce it to one sentence of the stuff that matters. Here’s an example from the book, “FoodTruckr is an online resource that provides quality content, a connected community, and support for everyone interested in starting and running a successful food truck business.”

Lastly, it’s important to get feedback on your idea. Ask 10 people what they think of your idea. Be open to what they have to say, listen, and only take their feedback if they show you respect. Go back to your mind-map and add anything that you might have missed, based on the feedback you got.

You should now have much better understanding of your idea.

Step 3: Flight Planning

Assess The Market Conditions.

Success doesn’t require you to be the next Mark Zuckerberg. 1,000 True Fans is all you need to run a very successful business. A true fan is someone who will purchase anything and everything you produce. If you had 1,000 true fans who each paid you $100 a year, you would be making $100,000 per year.

A market map will help you define the places, people, and products that already serve your target audience. You’ll get an idea of the environment you’re about to enter which will help you launch, grow, and monetize your business. Let’s break it down.

Places.

Where are your target audience hanging out? Do they hang out in forums? Are some forums more popular than others? Why? What blogs do your target audience interact with most? What keywords are they typing in on Google? What about on YouTube? Amazon? What social media platform do they prefer?

People.

Have a look at how other people are serving your target audience. Find out how your audience behaves, what they respond to, and what they ignore. Search for people and pages on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Periscope, Buzzsumo, and more…

Products.

What products are your target audience willing to pay for? This is an important question. Try heading to Amazon.com and typing in products related to your niche. For example, you could search for ‘fly fishing’ and see what products people are buying in this niche. This will give you an idea of what is selling so you could potentially make an even better product.

Now that the 3 P’s have given you a clearer understanding, you need to better understand individual customers. The way Pat suggests doing this is with a Customer P.L.A.N which is his version of defining a customer avatar. It’s an acronym for Problems, Language, Anecdotes, and Needs. Let’s break it down.

Problems.

A business is essentially selling a solution to a customer’s problem. You can find out your customer’s problems by asking them questions through surveys, 1-on-1 conversations, and paid advertising.

Language.

Understand the language that your target customer uses to communicate. How do they describe their goals? What esoteric words do they use to share their pains and struggles? Learn to talk like them so you can easily connect with them and build trust.

Anecdotes.

“We as humans are virtually programmed right from the start to tune in and listen to stories.” Find stories about your target customer. As you read more and more, you’ll be immersing yourself in what it feels like to be in your customer’s shoes.

Needs.

Based on your research, what do your customers need? A juggler might be having trouble juggling. He needs coaching. You could potentially provide coaching as a paid solution.

Now to complete your flight planning, choose just one solution to one problem. Sit on the idea for a day, create another mind-map, and one sentence that describes your idea.

Step 4: Flight Simulator

Validate and Test Your Idea.

Validation is crucial to help you understand if people will pay for your solutions before you spend your time and money creating them. Tim Feriss, author of The 4-Hour Work Week popularized a method of validation called ‘Testing the Muse’. He used Google AdWords to place an advertisement for a product, and tracked the clicks through to the sales page. But here’s the catch. When prospects clicked the ‘Buy Now’ button, they were prompted with an “out of stock message”, but every click was tracked to see if people actually wanted to buy these products.

Pat provides us with a basic formula for validation.

Step 1. Get in front of an audience.

It helps if you have your own following, but don’t worry if you don’t! You can get in front of an audience using targeted advertising, guest posting, forums, groups, crowdfunding, and more.

Step 2. Hyper-target.

Once you gain access to an audience, get people to self-identify as someone who wants or needs your particular solution. Don’t reveal your solution instantly. Instead ask them questions or propose a relevant scenario that elicits a ‘Yes’ response from them. Forms of hand-raises include clicking on links or a relevant advertisement, downloading something, or subscribing to an email list. Look what Tai Lopez does – when people sign up to his email list, they raise their hand for a particular problem they’re having, allowing Tai to eventually target them with a specific solution.

Step 3. Share your solution.

Before you do that, take a minute to learn about them first, then share a little about who you are. Be honest about what you’re up to. Let them know you’re in the process of validating your idea. They’ll trust you more if you’re honest up front. Once you’ve established some ground, pitch your solution. You’re not asking for payment yet, but you’re seeing how they respond.

Step 4. Ask for the transaction.

You may feel uncomfortable doing this, but if you’re honest with your prospect, there’s nothing to worry about. If you’re product isn’t ready, you may ask for pre-orders. You can use a solution like Gumroad.com to allow prospects to pre-order your digital products. If a prospect who previously expressed interest in your product didn’t make the transaction, follow them up with an email or phone call asking why. The feedback you receive will be invaluable.

Step 5: All Systems Go

Now What?

As you go about your business, don’t forget these 5 things.

1. Appreciate the small wins along the way

2. Get support by surrounding yourself with like-minded people

3. Treat your customers like gold

4. Remember why you’re doing what you’re doing

5. Enjoy the journey

That wraps it up for this video. Let me know what you thought of the video in the comments below. See you next time guys!

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