A lot of people pretend to play business.

If your “business” doesn’t have a clear, validated path to generating revenue, it’s not a business. It’s a Personal Development Project.

Too many people are out there buying business cards, filing LLCs, and designing t shirts before they’ve confirmed that people will pay for what they’re offering.

If you want to avoid failure, start with the sale.

This is the process we use to validate every single one of our products and services:

1. Create a doc outline of the entire product – talk about the problem is addresses, share details about what’s inside, answer common questions, and include pricing and — most importantly — a link to preorder.

2. Create a survey that asks questions like:

• What was your favorite part about the product?
• What is missing from the product / what could we add to make it more valuable?
• What questions do you have after reading about the product?
• Do you want to preorder the product for $X (a Y% discount from the launch price of $Z)?

3. Compile and audience and send them an email mentioning that you’re creating something big around [Insert Product Topic] and you want their input, they can reply if they’re interested.

4. For everyone that replies, send them the doc and the survey. Pay attention to the feedback and make a note of the people who said they would preorder. Follow up with those people and track your sales.

5. If you can get a 10% sell through rate on preorders (# orders / # of people emailed should = 10%), you’re in good shape.

Start building out the rest of your new business.