Ep 3 - Strategies to Validate Your Digital Creation

 Welcome to the digitally done podcast. Episode three, and my name is Nikki Kelly and I am driving, but yet I have navigators with me joining me, Lizzie McCauley and Sam Witch. And today we're going to be diving into validating your idea. Last week, we had a chat about, What is your thing? What is the thing? What is the digital thing that you are going to put out there? We have an idea. We want to go nuts with it, but we've got to validate it now. So there's a number of levels of validation. So let's just dive straight into this and ask Sam, first off, what's your idea on validating your idea? So it's funny, I come from like a government accredited world, so validation is quite a formalized structure, but it doesn't have to be. I know it's a thing that scares a lot of people. I think really, and for when we were talking about this, validating is just about making sure someone wants it. Like cool, I've got this idea to like, it's got any legs. Is this even a thing or is this just a random idea I've had? And so validating looks different in lots of cases, but it's really the question of, does anyone want this? And that's sometimes a hard question to face, face on. It brings up a lot of fears. And I know Lizzie was talking before about like some of the conversations she has with people where she's like, you've got to go talk to people about this, but that's, I think that's really what I think validation is. Oh, yeah, there can be lots of hesitation about, but nobody wants to fill in my form. Nobody wants to come and give me feedback. Nobody was like, well, You're making decisions for people before they've had the opportunity to make decisions for themselves. So how about we make it irresistible to them to give you that feedback so that you have the data you need to know whether you will need to go further. We need to refine your ideas, go back to the drawing board. Like what are you supposed to do aside from get information about where to go next? Otherwise you'd be in kind of a holding pattern for forever, right? That's not good. It's part of a self fulfilling prophecy, right? If you don't put out the form, no one answers it. Like no one will ever answer my form. Well, if you don't put it out there, then they won't. The old in it to win it thing, right? You can't win a lottery if you don't buy a ticket. That's right. Exactly. You know, there's that momentum too, that you, I think a lot of people, they go through that, you know, we're all excited about our idea and everything like that. And that's, it's almost some, I think overcoming that fear of validation is a stopping point. Cause it's not. All it's doing is actually giving you that extra momentum further on from there and actually filtering your idea. So, you know, I think putting those questions out there and I'd love to ask you ladies, what are your ideas on how to get validation from. The audience and also where can you get validation from Lizzie? Can you answer that question for us? Well, why it's also, before we go there, I think Sam has some amazing ideas on this. I think it's also important to understand why, like what validation are you getting? Like we're right at the starting point. If you've had this vague idea, I want to build a course. I want to, you know, whatever, make a membership. But you don't necessarily, it's a chicken and egg thing is what we were talking about before we started recording about. Okay. Well, I, I have an idea for a course and it may have these 10 components, but then you need to take it out to people to see if those are the 10 components that they're actually having trouble with needing support with, I suppose, to, in order to tailor and shape. The thing you actually spend all of this energy and all of this time pulling together on something that is going to be received immediately. And the fastest way to do that, I suppose, is to is to get that information right away. Well, Lizzie, with your audience that sometimes the thing that you know, they need and the thing they think they want a different, I think it's like my kids and vegetables, right? They don't want broccoli in their dinner, but I know they need broccoli in their dinner. So I'm trying to find what they think they want, but inside of that, I've got to hide the bits. I also know they need. Oh my goodness. I mean, that, that is the 101 of, of messaging in my space at the very least is, is sell them what they want, give them what they need. I know that's kind of a, an old trope, but it's still as relevant today as whenever it first was released into the wild. Because, especially I work with a lot of people in kind of the coaching and wellness and, and I suppose kind of this, Softer skills quite often, and it's very difficult for a lot of them to sell their stuff when compared to, let's say a business coach, where it's like, well, I'm going to make you 10, 000 this week. Cause that's ...