Recently finish “Will It Fly?: How to Test Your Next Business Idea So You Don’t Waste Your Time and Money” (中文版: 這個點子有搞頭嗎？網路創業大師讓你的點子變現金) byPat Flynn. It’s a very good read, especially on practical method in communicating with the market and fine-tuning products! Hahaha, look at how many bookmarks I made on this Will It Fly (中文版: 這個點子有搞頭嗎？)book below. I highly recommend this to anyone who’s starting a business.
The first part is Life Coaching exercises. This part makes Will it fly different from other online business books. Others would dive into business steps/details directly, but in the end, business needs to reflect your own life goals to make you feel fulfilled. (If you are familiar with life coaching/goal setting, just skip this part; still, I recommend to review it again, and doing those in different times always get new perspective.) I especially impressed with “The History Test” (see Pat’s link). I had never done it before, and after this exercise, I can see clearly my career preference elements.
The biggest take away of the following main business detail parts is: do market research before starting and don’t get caught up in my entrepreneurial enthusiasm; Pat’s market research method is simple and intuitive, and I can know the project within 1-2 weeks and make a real informed decision to either move forward or scrap it. No need to spend so much time and energy exploring the unknown. If I read the book 5 years earlier, I could have saved several years time wasted.
My method of finding market demand before was relatively straightforward: what I need isn’t available or the current solution provided is not optimal, these give me gap to try the business opportunity. The “market research” I did before was just talking to several possible target customers, most of them are in my circles (not broad enough) thus the market research result is often distorted. This book shows in details how to dig deep into the real market demand and how to tweak the idea to better meet the need.
I apply process in this book to one of my project idea:
Combining my successful platform experience of NT150.com, I wanted to build a kids playdate platform to solve the time-consuming process of arranging weekend English outdoorsy activities for our 3 yr old; the platform is almost ready, and as always, I didn’t research the market first. 🤣 This time, I followed Pat’s step to do a thorough market survey and the result turned the whole project around: the needs of parents are different from what I and my friends in my circle think.
Those parents in my circles all think the kid’s playdate platform idea is very good. They are with more open personality, willing to communicate, and already spending much time arranging weekend family/kid trips.
After doing the market research, (I typed the keywords such as “parenting”, “playdate” and “kids center” on FB, and whoever share a relevant post in the search results, I sent a private quiz message to them. There are step-by-step detailed process in the book, no worry), I find:
- Most parents want to relax, prefer to send the kids to studying center/or any a 1–2-hour talent development activity so they can be free from kid for a lil bit. They don’t want to participate/hold a playdate, nor take their children to far away outdoorsy adventures (they’d feel tired)
- Some are relatively conservative, worried about disagreement with other parents, children might have quarrels, even perhaps scammers host, etc.
The result is surprising to me. It turns out that what everyone else thinks are so different from what I expected. And I did find the key point: Parent wants RELAX, and my product would tweak to this direction. After this experience, I will conduct market research first for each future projects to save me countless time and cost!
Pat is already a super successful leader, earns US$170,000 a month, (2022 report) his main site SmartPassiveIncome.com has 390K followers, and his books are best sellers on Amazon, all his books come with companion course (extended teaching video, not only for free, the content is worth watching, many resources are included) I suggest that anyone who reads this Will It Fly (中文版: 這個點子有搞頭嗎？) book join the companion course too. Pat absorbs the methods from successful people, then practice them thoroughly. In addition to applying these learned methods, Pat also organizes, simplify, and export them into products such as books/courses.
*Pat’s “Superfan” (中文版: 超級粉絲) book is also great, and “Superfan” companion course is awesome, it is Pat’s later production, with more resources.
Will It Fly (中文版: 這個點子有搞頭嗎？) book is a great startup book that saves you so much time when starting a business, the steps are crystal clear, definitely beneficial to keep a copy at hand and checkup all your ideas!
