How to Test Your Business Ideas

Rob talks about how he went about testing his business idea with his network and even his future competitors.

Are you an entrepreneur, start-up, or business owner with a great founders story? Follow this link to get featured.

10 Ways to Test Your Business Idea as an Entrepreneur

1. Conduct customer interviews and surveys.
2. Test the market with focus groups.
3. Talk to industry veterans.
4. Analyze competitors.
5. Test product prototypes.
6. Launch a pilot project.
7. Run a crowdfunding campaign.
8. Collect feedback from a soft launch.
9. Launch a minimum viable product.
10. Get in front of target customers and measure response.

FULL AUDIO TRANSCRIPT

0:00

talk to me about that process of just

0:02

meeting with everyone and getting that

0:04

feedback were these people in your

0:06

network were these like events that you

0:08

went to

0:09

uh

0:10

how did you

0:11

kind of get your first uh

0:14

testing group so to say yeah there were

0:17

all people on my network um probably a

0:19

couple people that threw people on my

0:21

network too

0:23

um but they uh yeah they're all people

0:25

on my network i mean i um i'm fortunate

0:27

that i i started a network of my own

0:30

called the chicago tech leaders so we're

0:32

about 100 people in chicago we all have

0:35

founded small tech startups or run

0:38

you know larger tech startups in the

0:40

chicago area so i started this company

0:42

about eight years ago in that company

0:44

organization

0:46

and so i really you know had a lot of

0:48

people to talk to to start it out with

0:50

no that's awesome actually in that group

0:52

a lot of i actually met with a lot of my

0:53

competitors

0:55

and you know in the digital agency you

0:57

know worlds we um or someone said it

1:00

that like we're like pizza shops right

1:02

you know

1:03

you can have 100 pizza places they're

1:05

kind of in competition but not really

1:06

because everything everyone does it a

1:08

little bit differently

1:09

and really there's just enough demand to

1:12

go around

1:13

right so they're actually really

1:14

supportive

1:15

that's awesome that's that's awesome

1:17

because i think

1:19

as an early entrepreneur

1:21

in talking to folks i think that

1:24

you know when you have this great idea

1:26

and you hear someone else is doing it or

1:28

you see someone else succeeding at what

1:30

you want to do

1:31

that can be intimidating right so

1:34

um yeah

1:36

yeah like how how how did you deal with

1:40

you know

1:41

knowing that your competition is going

1:43

to be out there they probably have a

1:45

couple couple laps ahead of you

1:48

um but still staying confident and true

1:51

you know sticking to the course

1:55

yeah so that that's a great point

1:57

because um

1:58

you know a lot a lot of

2:00

a lot of new entrepreneurs might you're

2:02

gonna have an idea and you're gonna

2:03

think it's the greatest idea in the

2:05

world and then you know you realize that

2:07

someone else is doing something eerily

2:09

similar and that might get you

2:10

disheartened

2:12

um but in reality

2:14

you know it's very it's very rare to

2:16

have a truly unique idea there's

2:18

probably someone else doing what you're

2:20

doing

2:20

and i take the sense that that's more

2:23

validation that you're on the right

2:25

track

2:26

if you have an idea that's truly unique

2:29

maybe you're not solving a problem worth

2:31

solving

2:32

you know like google was not the first

2:34

search engine right amazon was not the

2:36

first ecommerce store shopify was not

2:38

the first platform for e-commerce stores

2:41

right they all they all copied other

2:43

companies and just did it with their own

2:45

unique spin

2:47

i had the luxury of being really late in

2:49

the game as far as like building mobile

2:52

apps so i started the company in 2018 so

2:54

i was copying you know other others out

2:56

there you know

2:58

i'm not claiming to do

3:00

the high level what we do

3:02

you know and any completely uniquely we

3:04

do it in a unique way

3:06

yeah but i didn't come up with the idea

3:07

to build software for clients

3:10

so really i was just you know i was just

3:12

learning i'm trying to learn from

3:13

mistakes how others did it and um i took

3:16

everything that i knew about it builds

3:19

software

3:20

and um and applied it you know to to how

3:22

we do things it's uh called the foxbox

3:24

way it kind of packages

3:26

every process that we have

3:28

to to build software in a modern way

3:31

[Music]

Full audio interview: https://tinyurl.com/4mrvmvwj

Full video interview: https://youtu.be/GNGWHN0gKh8

Connect with Rob: https://www.foxbox.com/

More helpful content: https://www.behelpfulpodcast.com

Start Your Side Hustle: https://www.yencil.com