Ditch Your 9-5 Before the End of 2025 - Step 2: Validate Your Business Idea

Copy of Ditch Your 9-5 Before the End of 2025 - Step 2: Validate Your Business Idea
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[00:00:00] Welcome back to the MaYapinion Podcast. I'm your host, Maya Roffler, and I share weekly episodes where I give my opinion on entrepreneurship and leadership right here on the MaYapinion Podcast. So let's dive into the episode today. Today I am gonna be continuing our series.

Ditch Your Nine to Five before the end of 25. And yes, if you're listening to this at any other time, of course you can still use all these steps to leave your corporate job behind. Leave your nine to five behind whatever you're wanting to do, however you're wanting to transition in your life, whether that's jumping back in a career, leaving your career to start something of your own.

These are great steps for you. So last week we talked about step one, which is auditing and aligning. So really look at auditing everything that you have going on at your corporate job, your nine to five, seeing you know what your game plan is, how you can leave, and then aligning those values as well.

It's a great episode. If you wanna go back and listen to that first, I'd highly recommend that, [00:01:00] because today we're getting into step two, and step two is validating your business. So you may have just a business idea. So that's what we're gonna jump off of today too. You're validating your business idea.

You might already have a side hustle or a business started and you're wanting to validate it further. So step two will work for both of these scenarios. If you don't have anything in mind and you wanna start getting this in mind, this is a great episode for you. Or if you have something that you're already doing, but you're not quite sure, you've really narrowed it down and you've got a solid.

Going, you can use all of the things that we're gonna talk about in today's episode. So let's dive into validating your business idea or perhaps your existing business. The first thing I really like to talk about here is the, the way to a successful business is you have to be solving something. So what are you solving?

What problem are you solving for people? For example, let's say you are. [00:02:00] A health person, you are really into health and fitness and so you wanna help people get in shape. That's awesome. There's, that's a problem. People don't always know how to get in shape or where to start, but that's a really broad problem and that's a really wide open problem.

There's millions of people out there solving this problem already, but that's okay. I don't want that to ever to be intimidating to people because just because someone else is solving the problem doesn't mean that you don't have a secret sauce and something to it that can really. Help you stand apart from everybody else out there or you know, maybe you've got a unique solution.

But we have to be very strategic about how we say that and how we say, I solve this problem and this is who I help. So we know we wanna help women and we know we want to be in the health and fitness. Arena, and we wanna help them lose weight, but that's not gonna be enough for us to find our people. We need to really be specific.

So let's say you wanna help women over [00:03:00] 35 that have just had a baby because that's you. Maybe. Maybe you had a baby at 35, 36, whatever it is, and you want to help them lose weight. Awesome. Now we're getting more specific. We're getting more specific about who we're helping and maybe how we're helping them because.

We all know things change when we're over 35 or 45. You know, there's, you know, things happen. So we're now adjusting to that. But also maybe we're, we're going to be even more niche. We're gonna say, um, I wanna help PE women over 35 who are new moms, another little niche, John, for us. Lose weight or get in shape, or be healthy again.

And maybe you're vegan. Maybe you're vegan moms. So you're gonna do it through, this is a very specific audience and you're gonna do this through a a 30 day, 90 day plan where you help them detox, get back in shape, whatever. Okay. But we're making a very strategic [00:04:00] statement, and the statement is, I help this person.

So in this case it'd be women who have had a baby after 35, whatever that is. That's who you're helping. What do you help them do? Lose weight and get in shape through my 90 day vegan cleanse program. Boom. That's who you help. That's what you're trying to help them achieve. That's what you do, and that's gonna be the result.

So that's how you're going to give them a result. So we have to know. Who you're helping, what you're helping them with, and then how you're gonna do it. So how you're gonna do it is your vegan 90 day cleanse and getting them on a different diet. So take some time. I also have the worksheet sheet linked in my bio here as well.

There's a worksheet that helps you walk through that and, and write the steps down if you wanna write them down with me. Now think about it. Now go back. I created a work worksheet for you guys to do this. So that's half the battle right there, [00:05:00] is figuring out what problem you're gonna solve. Who you're helping and and identify who those people are.

So through that we then need to test it in the market. We need to make sure that this is a great idea in theory, but are there a lot of women out there that are over 35 that just had a baby that would be open to trying a 90 day program where they go vegan and they can feel the best that they've ever felt?

I'm gonna tell you, I think, yes, absolutely. I think there's absolutely a market out here for this, but. You don't know until you try it. So once you come up with your offer, so we have our, our problem and solution statement. That's what we just created. Then I want you to create an offer. It can be, you know, a, a test booklet for them, just kind of an overview and, and push it out.

And you start asking people. This is half the battle. Sometimes though, sometimes people, again, I'm not a gatekeeper, so I'm always gonna tell you [00:06:00] what I found and what I found. For me, sometimes it can be a real hangup to create this like freebie or to start to create your program. You can kind of get.

Brain fog. With this, you can go onto wonderful sites like Fiverr or Upwork or places like that where there are folks that can create this for you as long as you outline your program. They can create. If you're not a Canva person, if you're not a PDF person, if you're not a visual person, I'll be honest with you, I'm not.

I'm not. Can I do it if I really want to? Sure. Do I have the time? No. These are the the places and times in your business where you need to preserve your time. So while you're validating your business idea, I'm much more interested in hearing about your business plan and how you're doing that. Have someone else that is gonna do a wonderful job and at a wonderful rate where they can create a nice little booklet for you.

And you can put this online. I'm more interested in you spending your time. Remember preserving your time and making the most of your time is much more important. I'm more interested in you validating [00:07:00] your business plan, getting that laid out. Who are you helping? What are you solving and how are you gonna do it?

Very important than you creating a pretty Canva booklet that nobody ever sees. Big difference. Big difference there. So once you create this booklet and a way to tell people about this, start testing your market. And this can be, you know, friends and family are great. Everybody always says, oh, you know, but I'm gonna be honest with you.

Your friends and your family are likely not your clients. It shocks people when they start building a business. All my friends that are in business, all the people that have worked with me, they're always shocked. They're like, oh my gosh, like my friends and my family don't buy from me. Don't expect them to.

Don't expect them to. They're probably not your clients. A client will become a friend faster than a friend will become a client. It's a harsh reality. It sucks. To realize it in the beginning, but if you accept that now early in your journey, it will save you a lot [00:08:00] of the kind of sensitive moments when you're like, why is my sister not buying my program?

Why is my sister-in-law or my cousin, or just trust me on this. A client will become a friend faster than your friend will become, or family will become a client. It's very, very true. I'm sure you've heard it before and you're like, no way my family will buy for me. Maybe unlikely. Harsh reality, but the sooner you accept it, the better.

So start getting into Facebook groups or start getting in. You know, maybe you ask some of your friends at the gym and say, Hey, when you were early in your journey, your health journey for this particular example, right? Get into groups where people love free stuff. 'cause everybody loves free stuff and start asking questions.

You're testing the market at this point, and so you're gonna validate this. So this part is called real feedback, so real validating, real feedback. And you might not wanna go to your friends and family in addition to that because they might not tell you that a hundred percent truth about this.[00:09:00] 

They're not gonna buy the product anyway. You wanna get real feedback from people that would actually buy this product or service from you. So ask, go into the groups. Go into vegan groups, right? I want you to go into public forums, places where you can connect with people that would potentially use your product or service.

For this example we've been talking about on this episode, think about where you can find moms. Moms are your target audience. Moms over 35 moms that are potentially struggling with losing weight and they don't have time for themselves, right? And you can offer them this 90 day vegan cleanse. Ask them.

Would you do this if I know I could help you achieve X amount of pounds, or you can feel your healthiest in 90 days, whatever your offer's going to be. We're just using this vegan mom example. Ask them, because they're going to give you feedback much faster and honest. Honestly, it's gonna be better feedback because your friends and family, sometimes they will give you honest feedback.

[00:10:00] Sure. But they're not gonna be your. Clients, they're not gonna buy from you. So do you really wanna know what they think? I don't, and that's a harsh reality. I know it is. But just remember, a client will become a friend faster than a friend will become a client. Right. It's just how it is. It's a tough one.

But it, so then once you do that, run a run a beta offer. What that means is maybe you're gonna run the program for free, for like maybe. A couple people. Don't go overkill on this. You don't wanna burn yourself out. I'm not a big fan of free, I'm a bigger fan of like, let's give it to you at a big discount so I can see how it goes.

But I'm okay with one or two for free if you wanna do that as well. So the other thing that you wanna do from that experience is a lot of people will do testimonials to get testimonials from these folks so that you know that it works. And it [00:11:00] creates credibility in the market. I'm okay with you doing some free for that, but don't do too much free.

I'm not a big free person because people don't take it too seriously. Discounted. Sure, testimonial. Sure. But not, not too much free. 'cause people, you know, again, think about it. We take it seriously because we pay for it. Even if it's a nominal fee compared to what you would normally pay for something. Not a big fan of free.

I'm a big fan of. Have people pay, even if it's a lot less, but at least they're invested and then you can show them the value. Things don't seem very valuable when they're free. It's just the reality of business. I've learned it the hard way, and I'm sure many of you listening have learned it the hard way too.

Again, just my opinion on free, but get those testimonials. Get credibility from moms out there. This mom example, throughout this episode, I also want you to validate the market. What that means is I want you to look at your competitors, and I don't want you to do it till this part, till the end because I want you to get testimonials and [00:12:00] things like that, but I will, I want you to validate the market.

You can research a little bit throughout, but you're not really gonna be too concerned about pricing until you get to this point. Once you get those testimonials, once you've had people do it, you probably know your pricing at this point because you've. Either giving it for free, but this is where you're gonna validate your pricing and validate the market essentially.

So look at your competitors. I don't want you to spend too much time because that can really mess with your mindset and be like, oh my God, this girl has a million followers. She's making so much more money than me. She's charging this. No, you're simply looking. You can't compare your step one or step two like we're on today to somebody's step 150.

You cannot do that, but you have to know where the market is and you are newer coming into the market, so you know, price accordingly. But I also don't want you to undercut yourself because you see someone with a million followers or you see someone who's been doing it for 10 years, like you are still incredibly valuable as well.

So [00:13:00] you have to price accordingly, but competitively as well. So you wanna be mindful of that. I'm okay with you charging less than the beginning while you're building your brand, and you're building credibility. But I'm not okay with you charging pennies. I'm not because you have to pay your bills and you have the value and the knowledge, and you're putting everything into this.

So spend a little bit of time there, but don't let your mindset get, don't let it run away with you. Okay? So from there. You're going to build the offer because now you've got some testimonials. You've tested it on your audience, you've done your market research, you've validated it in the market, so now you're gonna create your final offer, whatever that is, right?

If you're doing services, great. If you're doing products, you're gonna test those products. This is applicable to anything in business by testing this. You're gonna give a few products away for free. I'm okay with that. I'm okay. Not, we're not going crazy, but I'm okay with that. And then you're gonna gather those [00:14:00] testimonials and you're gonna put those testimonials into your program that you've created.

If we're still talking about our vegan mom here, or if you have products, you're gonna put those testimonials on your website. It's credible. People that have given you testimonials, whatever you're doing, you're implementing those testimonials into all of this now, and then you're gonna have your final.

Your final offer, your final website, your final flow, these are the things that you're gonna do. I am super, super big on, as you guys know, not gatekeeping. So I want to be sure you understand, like I talked about earlier in this episode, free yourself as you're validating your business plan, business idea, all of this, your business in general, free yourself of those.

Menial tasks like creating a free offer on Canva, or, you know, sending out some of your, your samples, things like that. As much as you can outsource early on at a very low price, [00:15:00] please do that for yourself. People wonder all the time, they're like, how do people create these beautiful websites? Or how do they create these beautiful, you know, PDFs that they give away?

They hire people. I wish someone had told me that they hire people at an incredible rate to do that work for them so they can be, they can spend their time in the trenches actually going out and doing these steps, right? Validating their business idea, validating their business offering. Who do we help?

How do we help them, and what is the outcome? What is the problem we're solving? They're validating that they're speaking to an audience, making sure that this is an audience that would actually buy from them. If the audience is telling them they wouldn't buy this, what would they buy? Asking those fact finding questions.

Testing the offers, testing the products out in the market, taking the feedback very seriously, getting those testimonials, putting them on their website, putting it on their social media, putting it on their products, putting it on their services, and then wrapping this all up in a bow and then.[00:16:00] 

Launching, which we'll talk about as we move through the steps, but that's where I want you focused. That's a huge thing that I think people, gatekeepers, they think all these people are creating their websites or their flows, or they're actually making the products in their house. Guess what? If you have a physical product.

You are not building all these products in your house, you're never gonna be able to scale that. You may have invented the first version of that product, but you're not gonna be able to scale if you're the one creating every single necklace or every single lip gloss. Like no, you'll have to outsource that eventually, and we'll continue to talk about those things as the episodes go on.

But again, I'm big on not gatekeeping, and I want you guys to have the information. I wish people would've told me that before. Outsource the medial tasks when you can and when you have the budget to do it, because it's gonna help you go even faster. Especially in this step in step two where you validate your business.

All right, so we'll be back next week with step three, and in the meantime you can click in the show notes or visit MaYapinion.com to download our six step worksheet that goes over these [00:17:00] steps because again, I think they're really important, in my opinion, in how to leave your nine to five and. Create that business.

And today we talked about validating that business. Don't forget to follow us at MaYapinion Podcast and at Maya Roffler on all major social media platforms, and we'll see you back here on MaYapinion next week.