First off, a big welcome to all my subscribers - we are a small but mighty group. I do really appreciate you being here at the beginning as I continue to find and develop my best format. I think I’m a little closer this week - taking more of a “lab report” type feel for the projects section.
Validation is the number one way to test our ideas - we all know that, nothing new in that statement.
But making sure that the audience matches up with the tool or product is second most important. The wrong audience can give the wrong results. If I give a hammer to a gardener, I’ll get lukewarm feedback at best. But a new planting tool that will revolutionize their workflow would be a different outcome altogether.
My plan, outlined below for my latest marketplace idea, is to drive traffic to a landing page.
If you would like some extra info on validation, I highly recommend this article from Jelmer at Venturism.io for Setting up No-Code MVP Experiments for Startup Validation (#TT05).
Project Updates This Week
Before I started this section this week - I browsed around for some good templates I could model for Lab reports. Click here to look at 40 examples. I think choosing one of these will help me document and learn more from my project launches.
Title: Is Foodie Call going to be a good marketplace to continue to explore?
Purpose/Problem: I think that this is a good idea, and I took inspiration from some other marketplaces that I have seen. I put my twist on, and now it’s time to “test the waters”.
Goal: My 1st goal is to get 100 sign-ups who are interested in the idea, and willing to give up their email address to be on the list for when I actually launch. I’ll address the next goal of validation if the 1st goal is met.
Resources: Facebook Ads targeted to my 1st launch city. The city I’ve chosen has a population of about 270,000, has (had before Covid) a vibrant restaurant scene, and an active community with University and Tech Schools, that includes a strong Commercial Cooking program that trains chefs. I will invest $100 and see what happens.
Procedure: I’ll put together an ad set that has 4 ads. One each for males, and females, mobile and desktop. The ads will drive traffic to this landing page, and then to a specific page for chefs and one for foodies. The only goal is to have them sign up for my list.
Observations and Data: Coming next week (or the week after depending on how long it takes to get the ads set up and run).
Conclusion/Summary: Stay tuned - I will run the ads for a short quick burst and see what the results are.
Tim Time
[Little Secret - I was terrible at science and worse at English in high school]
In my career (I’m a teacher) I’m surrounded by people who loved school and were great students. I feel like the odd man out many times, or at least I did when I first started.
The thing about me is that I was “meh” about school, and I never really figured how to be a good student until I was in University. It all came together when I realized that I wanted to teach others and that I could be pretty good at it.
I gave a lecture to a group of college students who were learning about how to set up food services facilities in recreational centers (this was my first career), and I got the bug. (timing is everything - a happenstance run-in at a hockey game led to a chain of events that resulted in my 30-year career in education.
I’m curious to see how the timing for this week's validation experiment affects the results. Stay tuned!!
Till next week, stay awesome my friends.
Tim
Online Skills Lab
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