How to get feedback from industry experts

How to get feedback from industry experts

Lesson Details:
February 14, 2020

Video Transcription: So you've got a business niche or your business idea how do you know if it's good you've gotta get think that you absolutely must you can't get around that talking from experience I know that it's actually not easy to get the feedback and it's sometimes there's an impulse to skip it entirely because often you don't want to hear bad feedback and really it's not that easy at times to get valuable feedback and it's just an annoying process that you you just don't know did I get enough feedback is it right who knows right so when I was doing it for my ideas I was consistently making the mistake of not getting enough feedback getting into businesses without enough support or advice so I have made plenty of mistakes here before so let's talk about how you should go about looking for feedback from whom you should get it and after that I'll show you some techniques so first of all the easiest option you have is access to your friends and family they'll always talk to you hopefully right and the problem is that they have less objectivity they are afraid for you to get hurt that they might be afraid for you to get into business they might be afraid for you to get they take on risk or lose money but also another problem is that they like true deep industry expertise almost all the time they might be good in business but maybe not the one that you're starting and certainly they're good in business are they really a deep level expert like the kind you need right so there it is good to get feedback because often you will get an honest perspective but it's not a complete story right. So then you have your business peers that's the next level of feedback you get essentially this year these are your friends you can go to networking events wherever you live if you don't know what the networking events where you live are just basically type like into Google networking business networking events in wherever city you live or if you have a specific industry let's say you're getting into mobile apps then you just type mobile app events mobile app business networking in the city where you live and you'll find plenty of options were for workshops events around that industry so you can go and network and just talk to people when you find peers there they generally are accessible the problem is they also lack deep inside so you have to go further where do you get deep inside Wow nobody knows better than your customers they know what they like what doesn't work for them what works for them so you have to identify who your customers might be and of course you might say well everybody can be my customer yes but who is the ideal person you're thinking of when you're creating your business or service talk to those people seek them out it's not easy but this is the theory of customer development methodology by Steve Blank who is an extremely respected business person in a Stanford Business School professor the idea behind this is essentially get out of your comfort zone go talk to potential customers who you think are your customers most of them are not going to want to talk to you so you're gonna have some rejection but some of them will talk to you and they will give you insight so this is a must and you can structure that conversation of course listen more than talk tell them the idea but listen to their feedback and really take it in and think about it you don't have to follow their feedback and take the advice but certainly think about it. A lot if they give you positive feedback we'll ask them would you buy this and sort of see where that conversation goes there if they say if they say yeah well then you're like then you have your first customer signed up almost before your business even launched because you can then come back to them so that's potential customers is frustrating but get out of your comfort zone find potential customers ask hard questions it's usually more enlightening than people think it will be and some people skip this process and then it comes back to bite them so do not skip this process and then of course there's industry experts people who are the most knowledgeable in that specific industry who are not potential clients how do you find them traditionally it's been really hard to find them because they're obviously extremely busy and obviously a lot of people want their time and wanna get their advice so how do you actually get their advice well in almost any industry what I do is I go to Facebook groups and LinkedIn groups there are professional groups and I find potential groups where people are networking let me show you just how simple that would be let's say you have an idea for a podcast and you want to get feedback on it it can be anything it can be a new widget anything but let's say that podcasting is your thing all you do you find something like search podcasting group on Facebook you can do the same thing on LinkedIn and look how many groups there are that you can join and look how many people there are 16,000 people for almost 5,000 people some of these there's good discussions in some not so you have to try all of them and then you post your questions there and see who helps you and you start engaging there just don't post like super beginner questions and don't post promotional questions of anything you're promoting really try to ask interesting questions and see who helps you and see whose answers are the most helpful. Then you can sort of start privately chatting with them possibly chat more get more help and then what might happen as a secondary benefit when you start forming some basic relationships with the people in these forums one thing to ask and this is like a pro move one thing to ask is are you aware of any like masterminds or private groups for discussing podcasts because a lot of the things that are discussed in groups like this yes it's true that experts answer there but there's a lot of beginners but the problem is people cannot say a lot of things publicly there's just some things you have to you have to be professional about or some things are in in every industry there are some unspoken things those things are usually spoken about in those private groups so whoever so with whoever you form relationships with you ask them hey are you part of any many masterminds or private groups about podcasting and most of the time they'll say no but in case somebody ever says yes it will be 10 levels more eye-opening than just being in a group like this and I know that from experience because those groups are typically invite-only and they have more earnest honest discussions but even if you don't join those some people who might reply to you in the basic groups like group like this they might be extremely successful and feedback from them if you wanted private feedback from them you might have to pay a lot of for their coaching or if they even offer that but on a group like this they might just be open to helping you out a little bit with a little bit advice just because that's what the theme of the group is so that everybody helps each other so this is how you find people all kinds of different people to give you feedback on your ideas.

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