Why you shouldn't do market research

Dear friend,

people think that to build a business they need groundbreaking ideas.

But this is only true if you're trying to create the next Open AI.

Today I will tell you how to generate different and unique business ideas for your part-time business without having to go through painful and time-consuming market analysis.

Ready?

GO!

Why differentiation doesn’t work for lifestyle businesses

In cases such as Open AI, Amazon or any other tech giant we're talking about millions you're accountable for.

You can't just make an educated guess and hope it works. You need to know precisely how you stand against competitors.

In that context being truly different is vital. But it requires quite a lot of work in terms of market research.

Differentiation can be extremely complex to handle.

it works by including as much information as possible. Thus a lot of variables come into play:

• Different in what way?

• Different how?

• Different compared to whom?

• Different compared to what?

For most folks with a 9-5 job who want to start a part-time side hustle differentiation is only a distraction.

For those folks setting up a business is a matter of practicality.

Choose specificity over differentiation

How to test different ideas as quickly as possible spending as little as possible?

The way you do that is by replacing differentiation with specificity.

Specificity is much more efficient than differentiation while achieving the same result.

It works by excluding as much information as possible. Thus there's only one variable to think about:

• How do I make it narrower?

If you're not familiar with specificity per se, I recommend reading my latest issue where I provide a practical example.

The WWW concept

If you are a 9-5er who wants to start a part-time side hustle, the only thing you need to be specific about is your WWW.

• What

• Who

• Where

What: The ONE service or product you can offer.

Who: The ONE ideal customer. What he or she looks like and what interests he or she has.

Where: The ONE place your ideal customer likes to hang out mostly.

Alex Hormozi refers to this as:

• 1 product

• 1 avatar

• 1 channel

That’s it.

That’s the only thing you should care about when figuring out your business idea.

Don’t over-complicate it with cumbersome market research or business analysis.

Pick your one product, pick your one avatar and pick your one channel.

Sound interesting?

Perfect.

Here’s a practical example of how the WWW concept can be implemented to generate a different and unique business idea from scratch by someone without specific knowledge or business skills.

Let's imagine this "someone" we're talking about is Megan.

Megan went living abroad in a completely different country with a completely different culture.

She mastered the local language and slowly earned a good position at an important international IT company there.

What could Megan's WWW look like?

WHAT

There must be people out there who would like to move abroad, get an exciting job and meet new people exactly like Megan did.

For now it's only an assumption but it's good enough to start.

Megan could package her knowledge and experience from living and working abroad into a 1on1 coaching service.

For the sake of the argument let's also imagine Megan has a passion for yoga and would prefer to teach yoga instead.

Passions are not the best to start with. Trust me.

It's always wise to find a compromise between what you're passionate about and what you're most skilled with.

So at this stage, I would pick something that is near Megan's professional area of expertise.

This way she'd look more credible and have a better chance to attract customers.

To recap, some ideas for a product for Megan could be:

• 1on1 Online international career coaching on Zoom.

• Live group course to be delivered on Zoom on specific days.

• Offline course built using Coursera or Skillshare.

Keep in mind that it's unlikely that your first-ever product will be an overnight success. This only happens in fairy tales.

In real life, you must test things over and over again before discovering what truly works.

Now that we've talked about the first W (the what) we need to talk about W (the who).

I've prepared an incredibly detailed template for a killer customer profile with prompts you can use for your own business ideas.

I've used that profile with Megan's example to showcase how to generate the best possible profile in minutes.

I will give you that very same template and talk in detail about the final W (where) Megan should look for her ideal customer outlining the pros and cons of each platform and common mistakes newbies make.

Next week.

Sorry to disappoint you but this way you have a good excuse to keep an eye on your inbox next Saturday.

In the meantime, forget about differentiating and start thinking about your What.

Until next week, take care.

Yours truly,

N.

Sent while building the next Open AI