Idea Generation To Execution: Fastlane Millionaire's Step By Step Guide

[NeoDialectic]

After posting my general advice post here , I realized that one of the most burning questions that people struggle with is "how do I come up with an idea that isn't already done?" and "how do I test whether I can successfully sell this product without a huge investment?".

This is the first time I am writing down this process on paper, but this process in general is one of the ways my business partner and I have successfully launched multiple big products that have been in the hands of hundreds of thousands of happy customers.

Hopefully this thread will show you how to do that with a real step by step example of how to do this. I will also try to include my reasoning for decisions along the way. So this will be a long thread with multiple parts. Even though I have already went through the example all the way through posting; Writing detailed accounts take a long time. So today I am tackling the idea generation part. Depending on the response over the next week or so, I will add a post detailing how to bootstrap your way through successfully testing the product. I can also add a post detailing a few unsuccessful iterations, to showcase what failed attempts look like.

Disclaimers:

• This is FAR from the only way to do this. By providing the following steps, I am not saying that this is the best way to start a business. But these are difficult questions to answer in an actionable and generalizable fashion, so I have chosen a niche and path that I could do just that. I believe others methods have been posted before on these forums. For example like searching for everyday items on Amazon and seeing what all the 1 star reviews have in common and solve that issue.
• The best way to think of an idea is to be familiar with a product or field and try to solve an issue that you or someone you know runs into. In this exercise I am attempting to answer not just how to test a product, but also how to come up with an idea when your mind is running completely blank. The point is to show that the only thing holding you back is your willingness to put in work/time and not your experience/age/finances/etc. If you have an advantage in either of those (know a problem to solve or you have sufficient finances to fund faster experimentation) then I would recommend using that.
• You are taking a peek at my exact process that I would take to think of and test a product under these circumstances. That means I have not actually made and tested this product but I actually do believe this would be a good product to test. My bar here would be to test X amount of products and only 1 has to catch on to be a success.
• My example will be testing on Amazon as it is the most lucrative marketplace and simultaneously probably the hardest to do so as your are playing by their stringent rules. However you can apply the same methods for any other marketplace and/or search engine and you would just be dealing with less traffic but likely have more control.
• If you want to copy any part of this, you can. But please know that I only went surface level for the purpose of this exercise. I don't endorse any of the companies mentioned (I haven't necessarily worked with them) and I haven't done all the legal research and due diligence.

Prelude:

What do I need?

• An Amazon seller account
• Willingness to spend $50-$200 on product and another couple hundred on advertising. There may be cheaper ways to do this with close to zero investment and I will annotate those options, but they all come with drawbacks

The Idea Framework:

When starting to brainstorm ideas from scratch, I am thinking about the question "what scenario or group of people can I provide value to in a specific way that others haven't?" Thinking about the question this way helps me find a niche. Here is an outline of the steps that you can follow.

1. Think of attributes that separate people into groups with possible unique needs or requirements. Example: Height, age, sex,race,hair color, eye color, skin color, disability or special needs, left/right handedness, location, etc...
2. Think of questions that could expose unique needs that these people would have just as a byproduct of being in this group. You are proding for problems to solve. If you had personal experience and unsolved problems, you wouldn't need to do this step. But you have none, so here we are. Examples:
   • What ingredients are X sensitive to?
   • What ingredients should X avoid?
   • What do people with X have to be careful of?
3. Literally google the questions and read a good amount of results. Each problem that you encounter, add it to a Problems List and then see if there is a solution that is specifically marketed for this problem on Amazon. If the group itself is super niche, this may actually be enough! However this is usually not enough as most issues in the big groups have been addressed in the marketplace. You can also type that same question with the word "forum" afterward to see what people on forums have been complaining about as well. This can sometimes be gold for finding budding problems that the market hasn't caught up with yet. These base problems could also be harder to test sometimes because you may need to come up with a completely new invention or product versus repurposing other products that provide a solution.
4. If you have found that all the very general problems have been taken care of, you should move onto the next step of the niche discovery process. Put yourself in the shoes of this group and think of ways your Problems List can be affected by everyday tasks or common products. Lets call this the Interaction List. This list obviously has unlimited iterations. Just make sure it is something that would have a large enough audience.
5. Use google to see if the things on your Interaction list are actually issues or not. Example language: Does (some product or action) cause (some issue) for (group of people) . This is a good time to also see recommended solutions to these interactions. This will help you gauge whether this is something you can solve without reinventing the wheel.
6. Search Amazon to see if there is a solution for this specifically.
7. Go through steps 1-6 over and over again until you find a problem that has not been solved and that follow a majority of MJ's CENTS model. Ideally it would be something that you can creatively test without too big of investment. This isn't a requirement, but with unlimited problems to solve, why not make it easy on yourself?

OK. So those are the basic steps I recommend you follow for this method. If you are confused about any of the steps see the next part.

The Idea Example:

Here is the process I went through for this thread. I went through many FAILED iterations before coming up with this final product. However for brevity's sake, I will post a few examples in a follow-up post and not here. The steps line up to the previous chapters steps.

1. People with blonde hair.
2. Here are the two questions that made sense within the context of the group
   • "What do people with blonde hair have to be careful of?"
   • "What ingredients should blondes avoid?"
3. Here is a short list of things that made my sample Problems List. If you google my questions from #2, you will see that this list is easily made just from the first page of results.
   • Hydration
   • Heat
   • Sun
   • Fading
   • Staining
   • Using things with dye's
   • Chlorine
   • Harsh Chemicals
   • Using color-safe hair care products
4. All these issues are either things that the people in the group can just avoid, or there are solutions to the problem. So now I need to make an Interactions List. A good way to whittle down the list from unlimited is by excluding things that are directly related or unique to the specific problem. For example, it should be obvious that products designed specifically for blonde or colored hair are already solving the issue. There is no need in wasting time to see if you can make a shampoo that avoids those things (unless you have reason to believe otherwise). So I will think of things that may touch or expose blonde peoples hair to things on the Problems Listas a byproduct of normal daily activity and not specific to blonde people activity. A small list of immediate thoughts:
   • Hats
   • Scrunchies
   • Sunscreen
   • Lotions
   • Shower water
   • Going swimming
5. I start googling and cross referencing with Amazon. With many of these it becomes immediately apparent that these issues have been solved (and I would have known that if I had colored hair). However I land on jackpot with "Does sunscreen discolor blonde hair". The answer is YES. Normal sunscreen discolors colored hair. Yes there are ways to continue to use sunscreen without discoloring hair. For example, further google searches shows that common ingredients like Avebenzone and Octocrylene are what cause the discoloration and mineral sunscreens do not.
6. I search Amazon for "sunscreen for people with blonde hair", "sunscreen for people with colored hair", "sunscreen for blonde hair", and many other iterations. What I find is that there are sunscreen that you can specifically apply to colored hair to protect it, but there is no SKIN sunscreen that is advertised as being color safe. So when someone applies their generic face sunscreen, it can fade their bangs, eyebrows, mustache, etc...
7. Bingo. This is an issue that affects a large group of people, so its scaling potential is huge. Even better, it has no direct competitors. This may seem like a home run, but I wouldn't get ahead of myself. Just because this is a common and unique problem that can be solved, doesn't mean people will actually search for or care for you to solve it.

That's it folks. Thats the idea part of the process. Next is the testing phase. Research Phase and then finally comes the Testing Phase.

Follow up posts to this series:
---- The Preliminary Testing Phase
---- The Testing Phase

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Two Dog]

After posting my general advice post here , I realized that one of the most burning questions that people struggle with is "how do I come up with an idea that isn't already done?" and "how do I test whether I can successfully sell this product without a huge investment?".

This is the first time I am writing down this process on paper, but this process in general is one of the ways my business partner and I have successfully launched multiple big products that have been in the hands of hundreds of thousands of happy customers.

Hopefully this thread will show you how to do that with a real step by step example of how to do this. I will also try to include my reasoning for decisions along the way. So this will be a long thread with multiple parts. Even though I have already went through the example all the way through posting; Writing detailed accounts take a long time. So today I am tackling the idea generation part. Depending on the response over the next week or so, I will add a post detailing how to bootstrap your way through successfully testing the product. I can also add a post detailing a few unsuccessful iterations, to showcase what failed attempts look like.

Disclaimers:

• This is FAR from the only way to do this. By providing the following steps, I am not saying that this is the best way to start a business. But these are difficult questions to answer in an actionable and generalizable fashion, so I have chosen a niche and path that I could do just that. I believe others methods have been posted before on these forums. For example like searching for everyday items on Amazon and seeing what all the 1 star reviews have in common and solve that issue.
• The best way to think of an idea is to be familiar with a product or field and try to solve an issue that you or someone you know runs into. In this exercise I am attempting to answer not just how to test a product, but also how to come up with an idea when your mind is running completely blank. The point is to show that the only thing holding you back is your willingness to put in work/time and not your experience/age/finances/etc. If you have an advantage in either of those (know a problem to solve or you have sufficient finances to fund faster experimentation) then I would recommend using that.
• You are taking a peek at my exact process that I would take to think of and test a product under these circumstances. That means I have not actually made and tested this product but I actually do believe this would be a good product to test. My bar here would be to test X amount of products and only 1 has to catch on to be a success.
• My example will be testing on Amazon as it is the most lucrative marketplace and simultaneously probably the hardest to do so as your are playing by their stringent rules. However you can apply the same methods for any other marketplace and/or search engine and you would just be dealing with less traffic but likely have more control.
• If you want to copy any part of this, you can. But please know that I only went surface level for the purpose of this exercise. I don't endorse any of the companies mentioned (I haven't necessarily worked with them) and I haven't done all the legal research and due diligence.

Prelude:

What do I need?

• An Amazon seller account
• Willingness to spend $50-$200 on product and another couple hundred on advertising. There may be cheaper ways to do this with close to zero investment and I will annotate those options, but they all come with drawbacks

The Idea Framework:

When starting to brainstorm ideas from scratch, I am thinking about the question "what scenario or group of people can I provide value to in a specific way that others haven't?" Thinking about the question this way helps me find a niche. Here is an outline of the steps that you can follow.

1. Think of attributes that separate people into groups with possible unique needs or requirements. Example: Height, age, sex,race,hair color, eye color, skin color, disability or special needs, left/right handedness, location, etc...
2. Think of questions that could expose unique needs that these people would have just as a byproduct of being in this group. You are proding for problems to solve. If you had personal experience and unsolved problems, you wouldn't need to do this step. But you have none, so here we are. Examples:
   • What ingredients are X sensitive to?
   • What ingredients should X avoid?
   • What do people with X have to be careful of?
3. Literally google the questions and read a good amount of results. Each problem that you encounter, add it to a Problems List and then see if there is a solution that is specifically marketed for this problem on Amazon. If the group itself is super niche, this may actually be enough! However this is usually not enough as most issues in the big groups have been addressed in the marketplace. You can also type that same question with the word "forum" afterward to see what people on forums have been complaining about as well. This can sometimes be gold for finding budding problems that the market hasn't caught up with yet. These base problems could also be harder to test sometimes because you may need to come up with a completely new invention or product versus repurposing other products that provide a solution.
4. If you have found that all the very general problems have been taken care of, you should move onto the next step of the niche discovery process. Put yourself in the shoes of this group and think of ways your Problems List can be affected by everyday tasks or common products. Lets call this the Interaction List. This list obviously has unlimited iterations. Just make sure it is something that would have a large enough audience.
5. Use google to see if the things on your Interaction list are actually issues or not. Example language: Does (some product or action) cause (some issue) for (group of people) . This is a good time to also see recommended solutions to these interactions. This will help you gauge whether this is something you can solve without reinventing the wheel.
6. Search Amazon to see if there is a solution for this specifically.
7. Go through steps 1-6 over and over again until you find a problem that has not been solved and that follow a majority of MJ's CENTS model. Ideally it would be something that you can creatively test without too big of investment. This isn't a requirement, but with unlimited problems to solve, why not make it easy on yourself?

OK. So those are the basic steps I recommend you follow for this method. If you are confused about any of the steps see the next part.

The Idea Example:

Here is the process I went through for this thread. I went through many FAILED iterations before coming up with this final product. However for brevity's sake, I will post a few examples in a follow-up post and not here. The steps line up to the previous chapters steps.

1. People with blonde hair.
2. Here are the two questions that made sense within the context of the group
   • "What do people with blonde hair have to be careful of?"
   • "What ingredients should blondes avoid?"
3. Here is a short list of things that made my sample Problems List. If you google my questions from #2, you will see that this list is easily made just from the first page of results.
   • Hydration
   • Heat
   • Sun
   • Fading
   • Staining
   • Using things with dye's
   • Chlorine
   • Harsh Chemicals
   • Using color-safe hair care products
4. All these issues are either things that the people in the group can just avoid, or there are solutions to the problem. So now I need to make an Interactions List. A good way to whittle down the list from unlimited is by excluding things that are directly related or unique to the specific problem. For example, it should be obvious that products designed specifically for blonde or colored hair are already solving the issue. There is no need in wasting time to see if you can make a shampoo that avoids those things (unless you have reason to believe otherwise). So I will think of things that may touch or expose blonde peoples hair to things on the Problems Listas a byproduct of normal daily activity and not specific to blonde people activity. A small list of immediate thoughts:
   • Hats
   • Scrunchies
   • Sunscreen
   • Lotions
   • Shower water
   • Going swimming
5. I start googling and cross referencing with Amazon. With many of these it becomes immediately apparent that these issues have been solved (and I would have known that if I had colored hair). However I land on jackpot with "Does sunscreen discolor blonde hair". The answer is YES. Normal sunscreen discolors colored hair. Yes there are ways to continue to use sunscreen without discoloring hair. For example, further google searches shows that common ingredients like Avebenzone and Octocrylene are what cause the discoloration and mineral sunscreens do not.
6. I search Amazon for "sunscreen for people with blonde hair", "sunscreen for people with colored hair", "sunscreen for blonde hair", and many other iterations. What I find is that there are sunscreen that you can specifically apply to colored hair to protect it, but there is no SKIN sunscreen that is advertised as being color safe. So when someone applies their generic face sunscreen, it can fade their bangs, eyebrows, mustache, etc...
7. Bingo. This is an issue that affects a large group of people, so its scaling potential is huge. Even better, it has no direct competitors. This may seem like a home run, but I wouldn't get ahead of myself. Just because this is a common and unique problem that can be solved, doesn't mean people will actually search for or care for you to solve it.

That's it folks. Thats the idea part of the process. Next is the testing phase.

This is really fascinating to me. It's like watching a movie play out. Great stuff and hugely educational.

It's a reliable product identification strategy without leaving your laptop. I wouldn't have thought that possible.

 

[Maggalon]

I`m delighted with your work, man. Looking forward for next parts.