Black Entrepreneur Blueprint 512 - Jay Jones - Test Into Success

[00:00:00] Attention. If you are about to go out of business, if your business is struggling or you are having a hard time scaling your business, this message is for you.

[00:00:10] The lifeblood of any business is sales. But in order to get sales you need qualified leads. No leads equal no sales, equal no business.

[00:00:20] Join me on my latest workshop at www.ineedmoreleads.pro.

[00:00:32] This workshop will teach you how to build a simple lead generation system without clunky funnel software that will give you a predictable flow of qualified leads every single day, which in turn will increase your sales and help you grow and scale your business.

[00:00:48] Enrolling in this program is a no brainer. The investment is a one time investment of only $29 for the program, which is less than you spend at Starbucks each month.

[00:00:59] If you are ready to save your business or transform your business, go to www.ineedmoreleads.pro.

[00:01:07] That's INEED MORE LEADS LEADS.PRO. While the program is available.

[00:01:18] Welcome to Black Entrepreneur Blueprint, the number one podcast and resource for black entrepreneurs. I'm your host Jay Jones and Black Entrepreneur Blueprint was created specifically to educate and inspire black entrepreneurs to launch, build and grow successful, sustainable businesses.

[00:01:47] Join us as we help building economic power base in the worldwide black community by building and supporting black owned businesses.

[00:01:56] If you're currently an entrepreneur or want to be an entrepreneur, you're invited to join us each and every week here at Black Entrepreneur Blueprint.

[00:02:05] Welcome to the BEB family and get ready to elevate your entrepreneur IQ.

[00:02:14] Welcome to the Black Entrepreneur Blueprint episode number 512. I'm your host Jay Jones and today we have another outstanding and informative show in store for you.

[00:02:27] Today's show topic is titled Test into Success. Test into success.

[00:02:34] Now when it comes to starting a new business or rolling out a new product, many entrepreneurs waste too much time and too many resources only to find out that their idea or business is not viable.

[00:02:47] So on today's show I'm going to show you guys three or four different ways to test a product or a new business without going broke.

[00:02:57] But before we get to today's content, let me just share a few things with the Black Entrepreneur Blueprint family.

[00:03:04] First and foremost I want to welcome all first-time listeners to Black Entrepreneur Blueprint.

[00:03:09] Welcome to the BEB family. Please stick around until the end of today's broadcast and I'm going to share all my social media contact information and resource links such as the link to my latest workshop.

[00:03:22] I need more leads dot pro dot pr o that's I need more leads leads dot pro that's P R O.

[00:03:32] So if your business is about to go out of business, if you're struggling to make ends meet or make the money that you need in your business,

[00:03:40] or if you're at a ceiling and you can't scale your business, make sure you go to the workshop. I need more leads dot pro.

[00:03:49] The investment is less than you spend in Starbucks for the month for a cup of coffee. It's a one-time investment of only $29.

[00:03:57] It's almost a no brainer guys. So everybody should be looking at this workshop because everybody needs more leads and more sales to make more money.

[00:04:08] Now let's get ready for today's show content. Test into success.

[00:04:13] As I mentioned guys, many of us have these brilliant ideas. If you're like me, I've got entrepreneur ADD right?

[00:04:20] I've got a focus and stay focused so I don't go off on a tangent.

[00:04:26] How many of you have been researching something looking at a new business idea or a new product or service?

[00:04:33] And by the time you finish researching, you're on something that you didn't even think about looking up before.

[00:04:40] And I call that entrepreneur ADD and a lot of us have it because we look for opportunities.

[00:04:46] So one of the things that I tell my coaching students is that you always need to test.

[00:04:51] There's nothing wrong with testing, but you want to test in a way where you're not going to expend all of your resources or your time for something that's not going to work.

[00:05:02] So I want you to look at this or come into today's episode and think that you're like a mad scientist because literally that's what you have to be.

[00:05:11] You're a scientist. You're trying things, you're testing things, you're seeing what works, what doesn't work.

[00:05:18] The problem with many entrepreneurs is they don't test enough.

[00:05:22] Now you want to test fast so you can get proof of failure or proof of success.

[00:05:28] But either one you want to know before you move on.

[00:05:31] So you have to have that mindset of a mad scientist and really guys entrepreneurship is a science.

[00:05:38] There's a science to it. It's a science to building a business.

[00:05:41] It's a science to growing and scaling a business.

[00:05:44] I just mentioned I need more leads dot pro.

[00:05:47] That's a lead generation system.

[00:05:50] It's a science behind it.

[00:05:52] So we need to understand that we have to have that type of mindset to be a successful entrepreneur.

[00:05:59] So when you do have this entrepreneur, a D.D.

[00:06:02] Try to test your new product or service or your business idea, but don't expend a whole lot of money time and resources.

[00:06:11] And that's what we're going to break into right now.

[00:06:13] So the first way you can test a product or service or a new business that you're starting is to pre sell.

[00:06:21] You want to test to see if a product or service sells by making pre sales.

[00:06:26] Now, if the product or service or business, whatever it is you're selling, if it makes pre sales, then you go ahead and fulfill it.

[00:06:35] Okay, you haven't lost anything.

[00:06:37] Now let me give you an idea of some of the easiest things that you can pre sell for business.

[00:06:43] So most of the things are usually digital type products.

[00:06:48] So for example, you can pre sell a workshop.

[00:06:52] So if you're a business coach, you can create a workshop.

[00:06:55] You can pre sell that workshop.

[00:06:57] There's not really much you have to do upfront except to prepare for the workshop or if you know if you're a business coach or a consultant.

[00:07:07] Another thing that you can do guys is you can create a beta group.

[00:07:12] Right.

[00:07:13] And these are people that want to join a group for some specific purpose.

[00:07:17] You don't have to really do the work until the actual group starts a consultation.

[00:07:24] That's another pre sell.

[00:07:26] You can pre sell a one on one consultation or coaching.

[00:07:30] You don't necessarily have to really spend a lot of time and resources preparing that product or service or whatever it is, because you're only going to administer or fulfill that product or service.

[00:07:43] If enough people raise their hand and pay their money to get into the program.

[00:07:49] So this alleviates a lot of doing a lot of work.

[00:07:52] So there are many people out here that do online courses like crazy.

[00:07:56] They think that they're going to sell this great online course.

[00:07:59] They spend days, weeks, hours putting together this online course.

[00:08:04] Then when they try to market it, nobody enrolls in the program been there done that.

[00:08:10] Okay.

[00:08:11] And it still happens sometime today.

[00:08:13] So what I do is I'll create a framework of an online course.

[00:08:18] Right now that framework is in order.

[00:08:21] I'll put some notes to it, then I'll offer it and if enough people raise their hand, I'll go and complete the program.

[00:08:29] Now if the response is bad, then I'll just cancel the program and refund the money.

[00:08:34] And that's a simple way guys to pre sell.

[00:08:37] You see a lot of authors pre sell a book.

[00:08:40] You do see course creators pre selling their online courses.

[00:08:45] And this gives them the ability to find out if it's even worth their time and resources to actually come through and create the product or service.

[00:08:53] So you want to pre sell.

[00:08:55] Let me give you another example of pre selling with the physical product.

[00:08:59] And I've said this on several episodes, but for those of you who haven't listened to it, this is good information.

[00:09:06] And for those of you that have heard this story, it's still a good story.

[00:09:10] Okay.

[00:09:11] So years ago I used to sell this supplement.

[00:09:14] It was a new traffic that helps people stay sharp and be focused when they're doing their work.

[00:09:21] So what I did was I found the manufacturer and I got about five or six sample bottles.

[00:09:27] Now I took the new traffic for a while and I had other people take it to see how it worked.

[00:09:33] And if they thought it worked because you always want to make sure the products or services that you're selling are quality.

[00:09:39] And so I said, okay, this is works pretty good.

[00:09:42] The prices of the price per bottle, I think was like $5 or $6 a bottle.

[00:09:48] I'll just say $5 a bottle and I was going to sell it for 29 95 a month on a subscription.

[00:09:55] Now what I did was I had contracted out with the manufacturer to have my labels pre done.

[00:10:02] So I went and I had a graphic designer go and do my labels with my product name on it and everything that's, you know, associated with the new traffic supplement.

[00:10:12] And the labels were ready to go.

[00:10:14] So I sent that to the product manufacturer and I didn't place a full order yet because I didn't know if this was going to sell.

[00:10:22] So the whole concept was this.

[00:10:24] I started running traffic to a landing page with the actual supplement on there.

[00:10:29] The call to action was to pay shipping and handling a 695 and get your first month free.

[00:10:36] But every month after that, if you don't cancel, you'll get a $30 bottle of the supplement.

[00:10:42] Right?

[00:10:43] So I'm losing a little bit of money up front because remember, I have to drive traffic to the landing page.

[00:10:50] The bottles cost me $5.

[00:10:52] I'm only making $6 and 95 cents.

[00:10:55] So the margins are very small, but I know come month number two when they make that first payment.

[00:11:01] I've already got the customer.

[00:11:03] I have monthly recurring revenue and my cost is $5 a bottle and they're paying $30.

[00:11:09] So what I did was I said to myself if I sell 25 of these bottles, then what I'll do is I'll actually call the manufacturer and say, Hey, yeah, ship me 100 bottles.

[00:11:21] He slapped my label on you already have it.

[00:11:23] Then I'll do the fulfillment and they told me that they could have that done.

[00:11:27] And once I placed the order, they could have my product to me in about three or four days.

[00:11:32] So I let the customers know who bought the product that it would be about seven days before they got the initial bottle.

[00:11:40] They only paid 695 shipping and handling anyway.

[00:11:43] So I had to set that fulfillment expectation up front.

[00:11:46] So they knew it was going to be about seven days before they got the product and they also knew 30 days from that date, they would be shipped another bottle and be billed $29 or 2995.

[00:11:58] So what happened was after about three or four days, I sold over like 40 bottles.

[00:12:03] So I said, Oh man, this is working.

[00:12:05] So let me go and call the manufacturer and make my first order for 100 bottles.

[00:12:10] And so literally what I did was on that landing page, I had a mock up.

[00:12:16] It was an actual drawing.

[00:12:18] It wasn't even a physical picture of the bottle with my label.

[00:12:21] It was a drawing very good drawing by graphic artist did and it had all the sales.

[00:12:27] It was a video sales letter.

[00:12:29] And so that's a way to also pre sell without going in the whole order and 500 bottles of this supplement and nobody wants it.

[00:12:38] So that's a little different from the digital example I gave you or somebody creating a beta group or a coaching call or an online course or something of that nature.

[00:12:50] So making the pre-sale, that's one way to test into success.

[00:12:55] And remember the whole key for testing is you want to either fail fast or succeed fast.

[00:13:01] That's where your resources come into play.

[00:13:04] Now you want to play around and act as a mad scientist and you want to tweak a couple of things, but you don't want to invest a lot of money and resources and time into something that may not work.

[00:13:15] OK, so those are examples of pre selling and the greatest test anybody can give guys is when somebody goes in the hip pocket national and pays for your product or service.

[00:13:28] You can have focused groups with family members, friends and all of that and people going to tell you, oh, I would buy the product.

[00:13:36] But then when you put it out, nobody else buys it.

[00:13:39] So the biggest test is if somebody goes into their pocket spends their hard earned money for your product or service.

[00:13:46] So that's why pre selling is a great way to give you an honest answer or honest feedback on if you have a possible product or service.

[00:13:56] Another example I did guys and this is from from a different angle.

[00:14:01] I had a magazine years ago, it was a home improvement magazine.

[00:14:06] And what I did was I knew that I couldn't sell all these home improvement companies.

[00:14:11] So I said, let me get some sales reps.

[00:14:14] Now I had got a mock up done of the magazine.

[00:14:17] It was probably like a 12 page mock up so the sales reps could see it and they could actually show that to their potential advertisers.

[00:14:26] And so I got that done.

[00:14:28] I spent a couple hundred dollars on that.

[00:14:30] I had some dummy ads in there from some real companies.

[00:14:33] And what I did was I put an ad out for a commission sales reps advertising sales reps that want to work on commission for this product.

[00:14:42] And the dummy ad I wasn't even sure if I was going to do the magazine, but I wanted to see if I could get people that would actually sell the advertising.

[00:14:51] So I went through the interviews and all the way to the end and then I didn't hire them.

[00:14:57] I just said, hey, you know, somebody else is more in tune with this with this position.

[00:15:04] Thank you very much for their time.

[00:15:06] But they were actually people ready to sell.

[00:15:09] Now what happened was I came back and revamped the magazine a little bit because I had some some some of the advertisers were asking me about some of the stuff.

[00:15:18] So I revamped it.

[00:15:19] I did the whole process again, and I actually did hire about seven account executives to go sell advertising.

[00:15:27] But I wanted to know if I was able to have people that could actually go out and sell the product.

[00:15:34] So I had to create a mock up magazine.

[00:15:37] I had to do a dummy run or a test run for employees.

[00:15:41] And that's the way I tested that concept.

[00:15:44] I knew I knew advertisers would advertise in the publication if the pricing was right because I'd already been in that space.

[00:15:52] So I wasn't worried about them.

[00:15:54] What I was worried about is can I get people out here to sell the product for me?

[00:15:59] And that was the biggest test I had.

[00:16:02] So that was is another way guys of testing before you actually spend a whole lot of money.

[00:16:09] The next way to test the product or service guys is to create a beta group.

[00:16:13] So you want to get a group of people to test your product or service at a discount or free so you can get the feedback.

[00:16:21] You can also charge people to be in your beta group and make money while while learning what people actually want.

[00:16:28] So you can place an ad on social media saying something like hey join this beta group and you want to lay out the condition and all the rules.

[00:16:36] And for Brand Builder Academy Elite that was a program that I rolled out probably five or six years ago.

[00:16:43] I ran a beta group for Brand Builder Academy Elite for people who wanted to build an online business.

[00:16:50] They wanted to do e-commerce.

[00:16:52] And what I did was I offered a lower or discounted amount to I think we had 12 people in that group.

[00:17:00] So this way I could understand what they wanted out of the program versus what I was giving them.

[00:17:07] They gave me great feedback and the next iteration of the program was a lot better.

[00:17:13] But in order to get that initial feedback I created that beta group.

[00:17:18] And I was testing they actually paid to be in the beta group.

[00:17:21] Excuse me not as much as the normal person would pay but I needed something from them.

[00:17:28] I needed their feedback and their response.

[00:17:30] So that's another way to test now if nobody signed up for the beta group guess what I learned.

[00:17:36] I would learn quickly that it's not a viable option or maybe I'm not presenting it correctly.

[00:17:43] So another way guys is a beta group.

[00:17:46] Now something that's also similar to a beta group which is another thing is called quizzing your audience.

[00:17:52] So you want to identify your target audience and have them take a short quiz and ask them what they want or need from a product or service that you are offering or can offer.

[00:18:04] Okay so you want to use like quiz software.

[00:18:07] So there's a quiz software like try interact.com is a great quiz software and it has conditional logic.

[00:18:16] Meaning if they say yes to this then you'll get a certain group of next questions if they say no to that question they'll get a different segment of questions.

[00:18:26] So it's called conditional logic.

[00:18:28] So if you ever want to do a quiz software make sure that it has conditional logic where you can walk people through certain paces.

[00:18:38] So that way that customer journey is specific to their answers.

[00:18:43] You don't want to just ask you know question after question there's some there's some software out there that's really not conditional in terms of the logic and that's really not going to work.

[00:18:53] You want to take people on their specific path what are they interested in.

[00:18:58] So you'll see it on sites such as lendingtree.com right.

[00:19:02] If you're looking for a new mortgage what state are you in what's your name email address what state what's the size of property are you looking for a single family multifamily condo you know ba ba ba ba ba ba and it takes people through a set of questions based on the previous question.

[00:19:20] So it's called conditional logic.

[00:19:22] So don't sleep on quizzing your audience and I'm going to tell you guys in order to lead generation quizzes are great way to generate leads for your database.

[00:19:33] So just like I used lendingtree as an example.

[00:19:36] I was looking for my wife and I actually were looking for senior living for my in laws they were just checking it out they're still healthy and living on their own.

[00:19:48] But we were looking for senior living for them and we found a couple of sites and once again it was conditional logic how old are they how much money do they have.

[00:19:58] When are they looking to move into you know this assisted living so it's funny because I went and I played around with it.

[00:20:06] And so I went back in and I changed some of the numbers so they were asking how much money per month could they afford and I put it down to just something silly like $100.

[00:20:17] And it didn't take me through the rest of the questions.

[00:20:20] It actually said to me will send you out some information they were qualifying me through that that that quiz so they were like hey this guy only has $100 for assisted living.

[00:20:32] We don't have anybody that's going to help him.

[00:20:34] So let's give him some some information so he can mull over that and try to figure out what the hell he was going to do.

[00:20:42] But that is conditional logic and that's quizzing.

[00:20:45] So that's a very great way guys to actually test the product or service or to build a database using quizzing.

[00:20:54] Before we get to the last segment let me just share my contact information and my resource link so I mentioned at the top of the show guys if your business is about to go out of business.

[00:21:05] If you're struggling right now you have a business and you're not making enough money where it's viable.

[00:21:12] You're working your butt off but you're not bringing in the income or you're at a plateau and you can't break through and scale.

[00:21:20] Go check out my new workshop I need more leads dot pro I need more leads leads dot pro dot p r o it's a video on there you can learn about the program.

[00:21:35] The investment is a no brainer it is $29 one time investment.

[00:21:41] I'm telling you right now this could be a life changing program for your business and for you because without leads there's no sales.

[00:21:49] There's no money and guess what you're going out of business bottom line simple as that and in order to scale you need leverage and a lead generation system gives you leverage to help you grow and scale your business.

[00:22:05] Go to I need more leads dot pro now if you want to contact me anything long family hit me on my email address j jones at black entrepreneur blueprint dot com also Facebook black entrepreneur blueprint Twitter j jones 001 Instagram I have two IG accounts.

[00:22:25] The first one is j jones for real J a Y J O N E S the number four are E a L second one is black entrepreneur blueprint connect with me on LinkedIn go to LinkedIn type in J jones black entrepreneur blueprint and don't forget to connect with me on YouTube.

[00:22:43] We have additional content on YouTube that is not on the podcast so go to YouTube type in black entrepreneur blueprint and hit that subscribe button.

[00:22:53] Also for any first time listeners, we drop a new episode every Monday morning 5am Eastern Standard Time on all your major podcast platforms and YouTube.

[00:23:04] So wherever you're listening to this episode or watching it, make sure you hit that subscribe button so you'll get alerted when new episodes come out.

[00:23:13] Now let me just do this recap on today's episode.

[00:23:16] We're talking about test into success.

[00:23:19] Guys, this is one of the biggest reasons businesses fail.

[00:23:23] People go balls to the wall and don't have proof of concept.

[00:23:28] You either want to have one or two things happen you get proof of concept or proof of failure proof.

[00:23:34] This isn't going to work in the faster you get to one of those two conclusions the better.

[00:23:39] You don't want to waste a lot of time money or resources and something that's not going to work.

[00:23:45] So being able to test something with minimal resources spent is amazing.

[00:23:50] You have to understand how that changes the scope of your business.

[00:23:55] If you know how to test new products or new services or test new business ideas and it doesn't cost you a lot of money.

[00:24:03] That just opens up a plethora of opportunities for you.

[00:24:07] Many times we go too far in and spend time and resources before we know what's going to happen.

[00:24:15] Some of the ways you can do this is doing pre-sells a lot of authors do it they pre-sell their book.

[00:24:21] You can also make sales that is the preeminent way to test if a product or services out there.

[00:24:27] So anytime somebody goes in their pocket be it a pre-sell or whatever that is a perfect indicator of how successful that business

[00:24:36] is going to be or that product or service is going to be.

[00:24:39] Also you want to create a beta group that's another option so people can give you feedback and this can help you tweak

[00:24:46] and make your product or service better and also you can quiz your audience.

[00:24:51] Now in terms of quizzing a lot of times when you do that when people don't have to come out of pocket

[00:24:57] a lot of times that data is not as hard or not as on point as data from people that are actually spending money

[00:25:05] out of hip pocket national but test and to success guys.

[00:25:10] I'm telling you once you learn this skill it's going to open up a plethora of opportunities for you

[00:25:16] in all types of different avenues in terms of entrepreneurship.

[00:25:21] If you get this system or this science down and remember you have to work as a mad scientist.

[00:25:27] You got to look at different things you got to tweak things but it's all a science.

[00:25:32] So if you see an opportunity instead of spending all your money and resources you can test and see

[00:25:38] if this is something that you want to get into without blowing all your money, your time and your resources.

[00:25:45] So test and to success.

[00:25:47] Now I say this each and every week because it's true we get more and more downloads because of you the BEB family

[00:25:54] and I appreciate it so much guys.

[00:25:56] Please continue to spread the word about the podcast, the website, new revised revamp blackentrepreneurblueprint.com

[00:26:04] We have so much content on here for free go to the website hit the learn tab and on the learn tab

[00:26:10] we have resources for marketing e-commerce, sales, mindset, scaling your business.

[00:26:17] Everything there to help you elevate your entrepreneur IQ.

[00:26:22] Remember it's not about me it's not about you it's about us.

[00:26:25] It's about building an economic power base in the worldwide black community

[00:26:29] by building and supporting black owned businesses.

[00:26:32] Love you guys see you same time next week. Peace.