Idea

[Bbenn30]

So I currently manage a hardware store, I have found there's a pretty regular problem that I think happens fairly often in retail settings. I have a pretty good idea on how to fix it. My question for the nice folks here is... how do I verify my idea? I would be willing to prototype my fix but is there a set of steps I can take to make sure this is a good idea? I am huge fan of data driven statistics. Thank you all

 

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[SEBASTlAN]

Ask the customer?

 

[Bbenn30]

Ask the customer?

I've talked to my customers. I think there's a need, I can think of some folks that would use my idea. I'm just curious if there's some steps to validating it.

 

[WJK]

I've talked to my customers. I think there's a need, I can think of some folks that would use my idea. I'm just curious if there's some steps to validating it.

I agree. Talk to your customers. Then talk to other people working in retail. Use your ears and mouth in the same ratio God gave them to you --ask LOTS of questions. Then listen with your whole heart. There are no guarantees in business. Can you test your idea on a small scale? Can you stick your toe in the water without jumping in? Make a plan, Stan.

 

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[Speed112]

I've talked to my customers. I think there's a need, I can think of some folks that would use my idea. I'm just curious if there's some steps to validating it.

Talk with your potential customers, get a feel for the depth of the pain. Ask them specifically how much money that pain is costing them on a daily, monthly, yearly basis. Try to quantify it. Ask them if they would be willing to pay some amount to solve that problem.

You think you know a great way of solving it? Great. Make a quick mockup. You can literally draw that stuff on a napkin in front of the prospect if they're excited about finally getting rid of the bs that's been plaguing them for years...

But a slide deck with a visual presentation of your idea and how it would work to solve their problem works great. It's cheap to create too.

Go back to the prospects with the mockup and show it to them. Are their eyes lighting up? Is this the thing they've been waiting for to stop wasting 20 stupid obnoxious hours every month dealing with that awful crap they hate?

"If you could use this to solve your problem right now, how much would you pay for it?"

If they aren't willing to pay for it, the need to solve the problem isn't strong enough.

If it is strong enough...

Ask them to pay for it in advance. "I know how to make this a reality, but I need you and people like you to do it. Think we can help each other out and solve this problem for you, together?"

Get them to fund the manufacturing process and find you your first clients if the problem is such a pain for them.

It's their pain, not yours. You're just trying to help.

If you can get 5-10 people to fund your project, consider it validated. You can then invest your time and effort to make it a reality and you've got a HUGE head start compared to most people.

There are other ways to validate as well, like creating a fictional version of the product and some copy selling its benefits and then placing ads, seeing if there's interest in it, getting people on an email list or preordering. That costs money and requires expertise, though. What I've outlined above only takes your genuine interest to help.

I remember @Black_Dragon43 talked about validating ideas a couple of weeks ago on the weekly FB Q&A he's been doing. Probably worth checking it out. Info in this thread MARKETPLACE - Let's Grow Your Sales, Get You Unstuck, or Get You Started on the Fastlane (100% FREE!)

Feel free to ask more specific questions if something is unclear.

 

[Edgar King]

Talk with your potential customers, get a feel for the depth of the pain. Ask them specifically how much money that pain is costing them on a daily, monthly, yearly basis. Try to quantify it. Ask them if they would be willing to pay some amount to solve that problem.

You think you know a great way of solving it? Great. Make a quick mockup. You can literally draw that stuff on a napkin in front of the prospect if they're excited about finally getting rid of the bs that's been plaguing them for years...

But a slide deck with a visual presentation of your idea and how it would work to solve their problem works great. It's cheap to create too.

Go back to the prospects with the mockup and show it to them. Are their eyes lighting up? Is this the thing they've been waiting for to stop wasting 20 stupid obnoxious hours every month dealing with that awful crap they hate?

"If you could use this to solve your problem right now, how much would you pay for it?"

If they aren't willing to pay for it, the need to solve the problem isn't strong enough.

If it is strong enough...

Ask them to pay for it in advance. "I know how to make this a reality, but I need you and people like you to do it. Think we can help each other out and solve this problem for you, together?"

Get them to fund the manufacturing process and find you your first clients if the problem is such a pain for them.

It's their pain, not yours. You're just trying to help.

If you can get 5-10 people to fund your project, consider it validated. You can then invest your time and effort to make it a reality and you've got a HUGE head start compared to most people.

There are other ways to validate as well, like creating a fictional version of the product and some copy selling its benefits and then placing ads, seeing if there's interest in it, getting people on an email list or preordering. That costs money and requires expertise, though. What I've outlined above only takes your genuine interest to help.

I remember @Black_Dragon43 talked about validating ideas a couple of weeks ago on the weekly FB Q&A he's been doing. Probably worth checking it out. Info in this thread MARKETPLACE - Let's Grow Your Sales, Get You Unstuck, or Get You Started on the Fastlane (100% FREE!)

Feel free to ask more specific questions if something is unclear.

Yup! Let the money do the talking! Yoinked!

I think there was a similar idea to validate a problem in this thread as well...

MINDSET - Solve Real Problems

I haven't solved any real problems myself, yet, but Jeff Hoffman has and has done quite well. He gives sound advice on how you should approach the world as a problem solver. Jeff has also been on my journey to breaking down old beliefs. I am posting this here because people in this forum might...

www.thefastlaneforum.com

The general idea from Jeff is...

Complaint > Research (Who’s upset about x? [E.G. on a forum or real life] Confirm others have this pain. Are there a lot of people in the world that are dying to pay me for this thing?) > Value Equation (How many of you would give me $X (E.G. $5) if I can give you a solution? How much will you pay for the solution? Profitable? Great.) > Solution (Is there a better way to do this that hasn’t been done yet? Yes?) > Lock (Proceed to spend weeks/months/years fixing it)

 

[Johnny boy]

The only thing that can count as being real is when someone pulls out their wallet and proves it. People say things are terrible ideas then spend tons of money on it, and people say things are great ideas and then won't spend a dime on it. Money talks.

In the world of selling stuff online, you can have sales pages, pretend to sell something, and then just have an error page after they press "submit order". A customer is slightly annoyed but you get your proof of a sale without a product or service to actually give them. You can't really do that in person so much. BUT, you can take some shortcuts and give people a stripped down, lower quality, DIY version of what you would eventually offer and get some feedback and some sales just to show proof of concept.

Worrying too much about just asking peoples' opinion is lazy at best and downright deceptive (to yourself) at worst, because it will give you false positives and false negatives, both are very bad. Would you walk up to a girl and say "hypothetically, would you sleep with me tonight?" The answer doesn't matter, the proof is in the action. You can't learn anything from those responses, and it's the same with selling stuff. All that really matters is the action, the proof, the sale.

Situations like these is why logical, numbers-focused men think business is so risky and unpredictable, they want to run a survey and see the same numbers mirrored in real world sales, it doesn't work like that because answering a survey and actually buying a product go through two entirely different decision-making processes in the brain and have entirely different motivations.

You'll have to just get some sales, if you want, give us a better idea of what problem you're trying to fix and your solution and we can better advise on the best way to get it to market.

 

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[Bbenn30]

The only thing that can count as being real is when someone pulls out their wallet and proves it. People say things are terrible ideas then spend tons of money on it, and people say things are great ideas and then won't spend a dime on it. Money talks.

In the world of selling stuff online, you can have sales pages, pretend to sell something, and then just have an error page after they press "submit order". A customer is slightly annoyed but you get your proof of a sale without a product or service to actually give them. You can't really do that in person so much. BUT, you can take some shortcuts and give people a stripped down, lower quality, DIY version of what you would eventually offer and get some feedback and some sales just to show proof of concept.

Worrying too much about just asking peoples' opinion is lazy at best and downright deceptive (to yourself) at worst, because it will give you false positives and false negatives, both are very bad. Would you walk up to a girl and say "hypothetically, would you sleep with me tonight?" The answer doesn't matter, the proof is in the action. You can't learn anything from those responses, and it's the same with selling stuff. All that really matters is the action, the proof, the sale.

Situations like these is why logical, numbers-focused men think business is so risky and unpredictable, they want to run a survey and see the same numbers mirrored in real world sales, it doesn't work like that because answering a survey and actually buying a product go through two entirely different decision-making processes in the brain and have entirely different motivations.

You'll have to just get some sales, if you want, give us a better idea of what problem you're trying to fix and your solution and we can better advise on the best way to get it to market.

So we run into issues with people wanting us to run their cards without the cardholder being present. Specifically someone who lives out of town purchasing something for someone who is either living in their home or has someone doing work for them. My idea was a way to share a card between people where the cardholder controls access to their card but digitally shares it with another person. Similar to venmo or apps like that but the difference is the person who is purchasing the goods doesn't have to be present. The app will be used with the checkout terminal similar to apple pay or samsung pay. Where you just tap your phone to pay. My idea is the cardholder can control where their card gets used, how many times it can be used and for a maximum amount.

 

[Johnny boy]

I used to have my employees use cards that are in my name with no issues.

They'd have my card, they'd know the pin and zip code, and I'd keep a couple hundred bucks on it, and they would buy gas and materials for the business as needed, and I'd see where they are buying stuff on bank statements.

Worked pretty well.

 

[Bbenn30]

I used to have my employees use cards that are in my name with no issues.

They'd have my card, they'd know the pin and zip code, and I'd keep a couple hundred bucks on it, and they would buy gas and materials for the business as needed, and I'd see where they are buying stuff on bank statements.

Worked pretty well.

Yeah my idea though would be to have the card more secure essentially you emulate your card on another phone but hold all the cards on your phone. So in real time you can see where it's trying to be used. The total amount and possibly even what its being used for. You could even set a pin number to it and decide if it only gets used once and then deleted from the person's phone or if it can be used and kept for a prolonged time

 

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[Johnny boy]

Yeah my idea though would be to have the card more secure essentially you emulate your card on another phone but hold all the cards on your phone. So in real time you can see where it's trying to be used. The total amount and possibly even what its being used for. You could even set a pin number to it and decide if it only gets used once and then deleted from the person's phone or if it can be used and kept for a prolonged time

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you can get a bento card and have it controlled and give access for other people to use a card. Then they could likely add it to their apple wallet.

For YOU to be the business offering this, you will need to have a shit ton of regulation hoops to jump through. Like an ungodly amount of startup costs.

 

[Rabby]

Yeah my idea though would be to have the card more secure essentially you emulate your card on another phone but hold all the cards on your phone. So in real time you can see where it's trying to be used. The total amount and possibly even what its being used for. You could even set a pin number to it and decide if it only gets used once and then deleted from the person's phone or if it can be used and kept for a prolonged time

It sounds like your customer could be the hardware store like Home Depot or Ace, where they have to call the client when a contractor/handyman is in the checkout lane. Or the contractor, so they can buy the supplies.

 

[Bbenn30]

For YOU to be the business offering this, you will need to have a shit ton of regulation hoops to jump through. Like an ungodly amount of startup costs.

That's totally fair. I wonder what it would take to get this going. I'll have to look into it.

It sounds like your customer could be the hardware store like Home Depot or Ace, where they have to call the client when a contractor/handyman is in the checkout lane. Or the contractor, so they can buy the supplies.

That's a good point this could be directed towards more of a retail setting. I hadn't considered that

 

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[Jacques141]

So I currently manage a hardware store, I have found there's a pretty regular problem that I think happens fairly often in retail settings. I have a pretty good idea on how to fix it. My question for the nice folks here is... how do I verify my idea? I would be willing to prototype my fix but is there a set of steps I can take to make sure this is a good idea? I am huge fan of data driven statistics. Thank you all

I hope this helps:

This video is probably the least you'd need to test the idea:

It's about how to test the idea, so that you'll know if it's a good one. This video was posted in another thread HERE.

I also like this video about solving the right problems on the market:

Just disregard the cringy guy at the beginning

You may also benefit from going through this thread: Solve Real Problems

Both videos have been extracted from the aforementioned two threads, and I really recommend going through with both threads and at least watching the whole first video to get the idea on how to do it.

And as a bonus video, I can forward you to this:

I hope you validate your idea in the quickest and cheapest way possible, while I also with you the best! Keep on keeping on!

 

[Bbenn30]

I hope this helps:

This video is probably the least you'd need to test the idea:

It's about how to test the idea, so that you'll know if it's a good one. This video was posted in another thread HERE.

I also like this video about solving the right problems on the market:

Just disregard the cringy guy at the beginning

You may also benefit from going through this thread: Solve Real Problems

Both videos have been extracted from the aforementioned two threads, and I really recommend going through with both threads and at least watching the whole first video to get the idea on how to do it.

And as a bonus video, I can forward you to this:

I hope you validate your idea in the quickest and cheapest way possible, while I also with you the best! Keep on keeping on!

Many thanks friend these helped!

All the input has been top notch. Frankly I think it's a good idea but I'm not certain my market is there. I'm going to back burner for now and focus on learning more about the market. I think there's some challenges I need to address before I can act on my idea.