Hey Friend!

Today we are going to validate your business idea. Have you been wondering if your niche is LEGIT? This is a simple 5 Step Niche Test that you can apply to any idea. It will give you proof of concept along with clarity on moving forward. I recommend everyone do this – no matter where you are in your business.

Clarity is a constant evolution.

I also talk about the importance of going from macro to micro in your niche and why that is going to directly impact your success.  Grab a notebook and pen, let’s get our learn on!

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION:

(00:00):
What’s up, girl? Today, we are going to be doing a niche test. This is five ways to validate your business idea. It’s going to be so good, this is going to help you know for sure that your niche is legit. Let’s go, girl!

(01:16):
Let’s have some real talk for a hot minute. Here you are hanging out with me and you’re like, Stefanie Gass keeps telling me that I have a calling. She keeps telling me that I can work from home, that I can use my gifts to bring glory to God, to help expand the kingdom, but yet to also make money. And also maybe work from home. Like this is amazing, but is my business legit?

(01:39):
So what I’ve come up with today is a five-step niche test to help you validate your business idea. And I don’t care if you’re like, I already have a business idea, Stef. I’ve already run with it. I still want you to put it through the niche test because this is really going to help you either clean it up and dig in even more to be sure that your thing is viable, or it’s gonna maybe even steer you in a different direction.

(02:04):
I’ve had so many people in my community who have gone out and they’ve started the thing and they’ve had the call to make a small pivot or even make a big pivot. And I think that is okay too. We have to start with where we’re at. We have to gain the clarity that we can, and then we have to trust God in this process. And sometimes that means, you know, taking a U-turn. So let’s do this.

(02:26):
Number one, what I want you to do on a blank sheet of paper is I want you to write out what your business idea is. This could be, I want to create customized scripture, printables that people can print and frame in their home. This could be like, I want to be a life coach. This could be, I feel called to start a soap business. This could be, I feel like I want to be an online fitness and nutrition guru for working moms. Like this could be anything that you have on your heart. Write it down.

(03:03):
Now, if you already have a business idea, that’s okay. Write that down. For example, I’m in direct marketing and I sell anti-aging products. That’s great. So what we’re going to do the very first thing, we’re going to go through five things to complete our niche test.

(03:21):
So number one, write this down on your sheet of paper. Number one is you’re going to poll. So what I want you to do is I want you to head into Facebook groups. I want you to go into other people’s groups and I want you to post market research. All you’re going to do is hashtag market research.

(03:39):
This helps you to get through the admins that are in there going like do not self promote while we are truly not self promoting. We are in here to ask some really specific questions. And what I want you to do is I want you to ask triggering and specific questions about your business idea.

(03:54):
So let me think of a business idea that I want to use as an example. I’m going to say that you want to create a dietician work from home, nutritional based business for kids. So you’re going to do it for kids, but you’re going to get there through the moms. So this is your idea.

(04:19):
So what you’re going to do is you’re going to head into mom Facebook groups, and you’re going to post hashtag market research and you’re gonna ask questions. For example, when it comes to nutrition, where are you struggling as a mom, with little kids. Be specific.

(04:34):
Another one hashtag market research. Do you wish there was a resource where you could go and download macro and nutritional plans for healthy kiddos? Do you wish you had a food swap list that would help you swap out what your kids want to eat? Like fruit roll-ups and potato chips and ice cream for healthy alternatives that they don’t even know are healthy.

(04:59):
Or stuff like, Hey mom, if you had a podcast or a free resource to go find out nutritional hacks for your littles, what would you want to learn inside of that? So you’re going to poll as much as you can. I would do no less than 10 different polls over the course of like a week or two to really gather this information. So that’s step one.

(05:25):
Step two is I want you to collect all of the answers. So number two, you’re going to collect all of the answers. You’re going to collect every single thing that these people write down underneath your posts. And you’re going to create an Excel file for this. You can also create a MindMeister map. It’s totally free guys. I love it. Use it all the time.

(05:49):
Or you can just do this in Excel, which is also my favorite. And you’re going to post every single question, right? Or every single answer, because those answers are going to validate, or they’re going to challenge your business idea. They’re also going to give you so much clarity on what your person actually needs, what they’re saying to you versus what you think that they need.

(06:15):
When I started out in online business coaching, I started with how to grow your Instagram. I can’t believe that just came out of my mouth. Y’all it’s the truth. Like, I totally thought that that’s what I should do because I had grown an Instagram account. No, absolutely not. As you guys know, I’m super vocal about not using Instagram to grow a business now. So I think that it’s super hilarious that God had me walk that out.

(06:47):
But what I would have learned if I would have done this exercise is that no one would have said, Hey Stef, my number one goal is to grow an Instagram account, that’s what I want. What they would have said to me and you guys tell me if this is true or not, because you were my Lola. They would have said, Stef, I want to find a way to use my gifts and create a profitable business so I can work from home. That is what they would have said.

(07:09):
They would not have cared how. They don’t care if it’s Instagram, they don’t care if it’s podcasting, they just want to create this profitable online business and work from home hashtag PJ’s all day, right? That is what they truly wanted. Well, I would have saved myself a year, probably two years of creating the wrong products. If I would’ve just done the niche test, I mean, come on, come on with it. This is so worth it.

(07:35):
So once you have that huge messaging answer collection database, you’re going to comb through it and you’re going to compare it to your idea. So we’re really looking for clues in there of is my idea of what I want to create whether it’s a brand or a course or a program, is it aligning with what they actually need?

(07:58):
And you’re going to have to comb through that. You’re going to have to do some comparison of those answers with your idea. Now, what you’re probably going to do is tweak your idea a little bit, to be sure that it’s lining up. So let’s say when we go back to our example, we didn’t find that they cared about macro plans for their kids. We didn’t find that they wanted like meal planning or anything of that nature.

(08:21):
What we found is that they just wanted to have healthy kids. They’re like, I just want to be able to feed my kiddos in a way so that they’ll be the healthiest that they possibly can be. So maybe we would modify our business idea a bit from like dietetics for kids to like how to foster healthy kids through nutrition. So we might change up our concept.

(08:45):
Number three is you’re going to test slash beta. So here for this one. So number three, you’re actually going to work with people. Oh my goodness, imagine that! You’re actually going to get on the phone with people. You are going to offer people solutions and see how it goes. Why are we doing this?

(09:09):
We’re going to do this one because it’s going to show you when you get one-on-one with someone, are you able to speak to them about that need and that desire and what comes out of your mouth? Because whatever it is that you talk to with someone to give them like 15 minutes of free coaching or 15 minutes of just Q&A with them about their answer, it’s really going to help you come up with the frameworks that you want to put into your podcast.

(09:34):
Maybe your pillars, maybe the different steps inside of your future course or your future coaching program. So I want you to give away some stuff for free. That’s number three is like, Hey, can I get on the phone with five of you and just like give you 15 minutes of free Q&A or free coaching. That’s going to help you really validate what they say to you and what your answers are. And it’s going to allow you to make connections so that you can create the perfect pillars for your future business.

(10:03):
Number four, what you’re going to do is you’re going to do a mind dump. You’re going to do a brain dump of every single thing, every content idea, every pain point that you can possibly come up with that has to do with your business idea.

(10:21):
So let me give you an example. We are thinking about creating fostering, healthy kids through nutrition. Or, encouraging healthy kids through food. This is good. Encouraging healthy kids through fun nutrition. Oh my goodness. Somebody please take that brand. I am so excited about that one. So I’m super excited about that. Making nutrition fun.

(10:48):
So then you have all these people who have commented on your market research and you say, Hey, Mary, I’m giving away a 15 minute free Q&A so that I can really learn how to support moms in my future business. Can we hop on the phone? Like, do you have 15 minutes? It’s free. Completely free, 15 minute power coaching.

(11:04):
Well, yeah. Duh. So Mary gets on the phone with you or even an Instagram DM. And she starts asking you these questions like, oh my goodness, my kids are super struggling with eating vegetables. Like I cannot get them to eat vegetables. And you’re like, oh man, like what if you tried going over to sprouts and they have the dry dehydrated carrot sticks that tastes like French fries and they even have funny shapes.

(11:30):
Or instead of French fries, why don’t you try in the freezer aisle you can find organic zucchini fries and they can dip it in like organic sugar-free ketchup or something. And she’s like, oh, I’ve never tried that, that’s super fun. Or you’re like, whoa, what if you made a game out of the healthy foods? Like for example, when you eat a carrot, you eat around the carrot until you get the core. Whoever, the first person that get the core is wins.

(11:55):
Guys, this is stuff I literally do in my house. So then she’s over here, like that’s amazing. And you ask her to keep you updated on that progress. So what you’ve done is you’ve basically gotten on the phone or in the DMS with somebody and you’ve given them an actual solution. And what it did is it’s going to boost your confidence. It’s going to show you what possible solutions might be. It’s going to give you content ideas for your future podcast.

(12:21):
And you get now to test her success with this. So you can pop in her inbox one week later and be like, Mary, how did that go? Well, hot dang. If that one amazing you have something super good. You could have like five ways to make eating vegetables fun. That could be a podcast episode, right? That could be a freebie. So you’re going to learn about what your solutions are by actually talking to your ideal customer.

(12:49):
You are not going to get the right solutions, the right podcast episodes, and absolutely not the right courses if you are not talking to people because what you think they need, it’s often not what they need. It’s not what they think they need, and you’re going to fall flat. And I don’t want you to fall flat. I want you to have massive success because you were doing your homework before you launch.

(13:14):
Number four, you’re going to do this mind dump that I mentioned. Now, I mentioned a program earlier. I’ll mention it again. You can use MindMeister for this, it’s mindmeister.com. And what I want you to do is after you’ve worked with, let’s say five people that would be great. Five many phone calls or five Instagram DM conversations.

(13:40):
You put everything you’ve learned about this future business that you’re thinking of doing about the copy that they’ve given you through answers and through the conversations that you’ve had into this big, this brain dump, right? in the words of Chelsi Jo. And you put everything out there and then you’re going to categorize them into buckets. Yes, these buckets are what help fill your future podcast categories.

(14:08):
So for example, for our fostering healthy kids through making food fun brand, let’s say that I’m like, oh man, they want to make games out of eating vegetables. They need healthy food swaps that kids don’t know are healthy. They need some ideas for encouraging kids to try new things. They need some recipe ideas. They need some shopping lists.

(14:30):
They need making food fun, like jokes. Like they want all of this stuff about just making food super fun. They want how to create funny faces out of healthy foods, all of that stuff. So you put all of these things that these moms are saying to you and all of these ideas that you have into a MindMeister map. And then you move the bubbles around to form four different, three is my preference three or four different categories.

(14:59):
So let’s say for our example, we end up with the shopping, the grocery, the actual nutrition as one bucket slash pillar. In the middle, we have games and making food fun, that goes in the middle. And then on the right side, we come up with a pillar that’s like actual dietician educational information for the mom. What is healthy foods? What do I look for on an ingredient label?

(15:27):
So now you have these three pillars of your brand. Holy smokes. You are totally validating this idea. And we went from dietetics for kids, for moms of kids. Awkward. She doesn’t want that to simply by getting to know our person, by doing these steps really deep into making food fun so that her kids are healthier, such a different looking brand.

(15:55):
So that’s what you’re going to do now. And why I’m having you do that is because when you join, Clarify Your Calling, you’re already going to have a lot of the basis that you need to plug into the homework I’m going to give you inside of the Clarify Your Calling course. That course is going to help you actually create the brand. And now you validated your idea. You’re going to bring it into Clarify Your Calling. We’re going to map it out together. Title tagline, description, pillars, content.

(16:20):
And then from there, you’re going to move into Podcast Pro University. And you’re going to build out a scalable brand using podcasting. And then you’re going to make a bunch of money from it because it’s so awesome. And it’s so niche and you’re going to be solving her problems. And she’s going to be so here for that.

(16:36):
Last but not least last but not least number five is you’re going to get clarity on your person. So what I want you to do now that you’ve talked to your person, right? You’ve talked to some moms who want to have healthy kids. You’ve posted some research questions. I want you to write out a description of your perfect ideal client, who is she?

(17:02):
Which of those women that you talked to was the one you were like, oh, if I could just work with her, if she could just be my client, like she is so perfect for me. I want you to envision that person, right? Write out a description of the type of personality that they have, the age of their children, the dreams and wishes that this mom had for her child’s health, her pain points.

(17:24):
And then what I really want you to discover through this number five here is try to find her number one problem. I want you to try to find her number one problem, because when you guys finally get this, when you finally uncover your person’s number one problem, your entire business can explode because you finally know what you do, what you need to create to solve that number one problem, how to speak to that number one problem, the obstacles keeping her from solving that problem and everything in between.

(18:00):
Let’s recap. This is five steps of how to validate your business idea. This is the five-step niche test. Number one, you’re going to poll, hashtag market research in there. Number two, you’re going to collect the messaging and the comments below every single post. And you’re going to put that together into an Excel spreadsheet or a mind map so that you can dig into the messaging and compare your messaging to your brand idea, clean it up. So that it’s really what she wants, or he wants.

(18:35):
Number three, you’re going to test your concept. You’re going to test your coaching. You’re going to test the viability of your solutions by getting on the phone or into an Instagram DM with at least five people just offer power Q&A. And I want you to see what solutions come out of your mouth girl.

(18:55):
Number four, you’re going to do a brain dump of all the cool things you’ve learned into a mind map mindmeister.com or into an Excel, whatever you want to use, and really put those into three buckets. If you have weird stuff all over the place, like I also think I’ll talk about fitness for that mom. No, keep it niche, guys. Micro niche or no. Micro niche or bust honey, that’s it. We are micro niching in.

(19:27):
I’ve just decided like I don’t play anymore. We have got to have a micro niche. You can scale from there. You can scale from six figures. You can scale from half a million and go big niche. That’s fine with me. But to get you there, we have to know one problem. We solve one problem. How we solve that problem, how we show up for it, what our solutions are, et cetera.

(19:53):
Number five. So once you have your three pillars, which are going to come bring into Clarify Your Calling with me, that’s my course clarifyyourcallingcourse.com, we’re then going to do one more thing here, which is the niche. This is actually niching into your person, so niche into your avatar. You’re going to do an avatar description. Avatar just means your ideal client.

(20:16):
Who did you talk to on the phone? Who was your favorite one? Who did you talk to through Instagram DMs? Please voice don’t text people. And like really uncover who she is. Who’s the perfect person or he, that you want to serve. Which of those people are you called to help? And it’s okay to pick your favorite one. You get choose who your perfect avatar is. Isn’t that great news?

(20:38):
So I want you to write down a paragraph or two about who this person was. You know, how old were their children? Do they work? Do they not work? What did they need? What did they, what did they desire? What were the words about their dreams, about their problems, their pain points? Write all of that out now.

(20:55):
Final thing. What are you going to discover here? You’re going to discover number one, my business idea needs a whole lot of work, or I have not validated this idea whatsoever. Nobody wants it. That’s okay. Often you just need to tweak and tailor. You’re in the right direction, but you have not hit the nail on the head. If that’s you, I would love to do a coaching session with you and help you get there. That’s support@stefaniegass.com. We’ll send you the coaching menu.

(21:23):
Number two, you have validated your business idea. Congratulations! You were like, it is working. It is wanted. I have some clarity over the direction, but I really need to map out the business plan here. Like, what’s my title? What’s my tagline? What’s my description? What are my pillars? How do we communicate this? What are my content ideas going to be? How am I going to do this? And I’m going to scale this using podcasting? Like I need to have a scalable online business plan.

(21:51):
I want you to bring your findings and join me in Clarify Your Calling. That is my course that’s going to take you through four weeks of creating an absolute, scalable business plan brand out of your giftings, out of your business idea. You will walk away with title, tagline, description, content, over 30 content ideas. You will walk away with who you serve, how you serve them, what their pain points are.

(22:18):
And you will literally have your business plan in a box that you’re going to then plug into your future podcast. And your podcast is how we’re going to grow your audience. It’s how we’re going to get leads into your business. Then what we’re going to do, step three is create a course or coaching business around that so that you can begin to make money and monetize your show.

(22:39):
It is literally that easy. So 3, 2, 1 go. It is time for you to go validate your idea. Let us know your findings. I’m super excited. And of course, we invite you to come post your market research questions inside my Facebook community, which is the female Christian Entrepreneur Facebook group. You can just go to http://bit.ly/successsupportgroup, post your research questions in there. We would love to have you and I cannot wait to meet you inside. Clarifyyourcallingcourse.com. God bless you, friend. I’ll see you back real soon.