Will It Fly?

Will It Fly? Plot Summary

Introduction

In our dreams of entrepreneurship, we often romanticize the moment of launch—the exhilarating feeling when our idea finally takes flight. Yet many brilliant concepts crash before ever reaching cruising altitude. Why? Because creating a successful business isn't just about having a great idea; it's about having the right idea that aligns with both market needs and your personal strengths. The entrepreneurial journey is full of uncertainty, but that doesn't mean you must navigate it blindly. Through properly testing your concept before investing significant time and resources, you dramatically increase your chances of success. This process isn't merely about protecting yourself from failure—it's about building confidence, clarity, and a roadmap to turn your vision into reality. The following chapters will guide you through a proven framework to evaluate your ideas and ensure they have the best chance of soaring, not merely surviving.

Chapter 1: Design Your Mission: Align Your Business with Your Life Goals

The entrepreneurial world often focuses intensely on business success while overlooking a crucial element: personal fulfillment. What good is creating a profitable company if it makes you miserable? This first step asks you to examine how your business idea aligns with your broader life vision. Consider James, a successful entrepreneur who reached out after building a business generating over $20,000 monthly in recurring revenue. Despite achieving what many would consider the entrepreneurial dream, he felt deeply unfulfilled. "Now that my 'dream' has come true," he wrote, "I realize that I didn't give my dream much thought at all and there's much more to life than just making money." James had built a profitable business but neglected to ensure it aligned with his personal values and goals. This disconnect happens surprisingly often. Entrepreneurs become so focused on market opportunities that they forget to ask whether the business serves their desired lifestyle. The result? Successful businesses run by unhappy founders. To avoid this fate, you need to define what truly matters to you across all life dimensions. Through the Airport Test, you'll project yourself five years into the future, imagining you've achieved your definition of success. By examining what that future looks like across categories like family, professional life, finances, and health, you create a comprehensive map of your ideal life. This exercise reveals whether your business idea supports or conflicts with your personal vision. Another powerful assessment, the History Test, helps you analyze past experiences to uncover patterns in what motivates you and which environments allow you to thrive. By examining previous jobs, volunteer roles, and projects, you identify the elements that consistently energize you versus those that drain you. These insights reveal whether your business idea leverages your natural strengths and preferences. The ultimate question isn't whether your idea could succeed in the market—it's whether it would succeed for you. A business that conflicts with your values or requires skills you dislike using will eventually become a burden, regardless of its profitability. When properly aligned, your business becomes a vehicle that carries you toward your broader life goals, not an obstacle standing in their way.

Chapter 2: Map Your Market: Understand Your Audience's Ecosystem

Before investing your resources into a business idea, you need a comprehensive understanding of the landscape you're entering. Market mapping provides a bird's-eye view of your target market's ecosystem, revealing where potential customers congregate, who influences them, and what solutions they currently use. Pat Flynn shares how he discovered this principle after being laid off from his architecture firm in 2008. While creating study materials for the LEED exam (an architecture industry certification), he was shocked when the United States Green Building Council—the organization that created the exam—released their own official study guide. Pat feared his small independent guide would become obsolete. Instead, his sales increased. Puzzled, he surveyed his customers to understand why. One customer explained: "I was going to get the USGBC guide but it was a bit pricey, so I searched for other options and found yours. I liked what I saw and the price was right, but more than that I just liked the fact that you're real. You're just a guy who took the exam who was where I'm at right now not too long ago." This revelation showed Pat that knowing his market's dynamics helped him position his offering more effectively. Creating your market map involves researching three key elements: Places, People, and Products. Places are the online locations where your audience gathers—blogs, forums, social media groups, and communities. People includes the influencers, authorities, and voices your audience trusts. Products encompasses what your target customers currently purchase to solve their problems. This research isn't merely academic—it reveals crucial patterns and opportunities. You'll discover unmet needs, language patterns your audience uses, and how they make purchasing decisions. Most importantly, you'll learn what truly matters to them, beyond surface-level assumptions. One common fear during this phase is discovering competitors already offering similar solutions. Rather than being discouraged, recognize this validates market demand. The goal isn't to create something entirely new but something different that solves problems in a unique way. As author Sally Hogshead says, "Different is better than better." Your market map becomes an invaluable navigation tool, helping you position your offering in a crowded landscape. It guides your communication, product development, and marketing strategy based on real insights rather than guesswork. With this map in hand, you'll enter your market with confidence rather than blind optimism.

Chapter 3: Craft Your Customer P.L.A.N.: Problems, Language, Anecdotes, Needs

Understanding your customers at a profound level transforms your business from a generic offering into a solution that feels custom-made for their specific situation. The Customer P.L.A.N. framework helps you systematically gather and organize insights about your target audience in four crucial areas: Problems, Language, Anecdotes, and Needs. When Pat Flynn was researching the food truck industry for a new business, he faced a significant challenge—he had no personal experience running a food truck. During conversations with potential customers, his credibility instantly evaporated when they discovered this fact. "What's stopping someone with experience inside this industry from doing exactly what you're planning to do?" one food truck owner pointedly asked. Initially deflated, Pat reframed the question: "What's something I can add that even someone with experience inside this industry couldn't do?" This led to his breakthrough. While lacking operational experience, Pat possessed extensive knowledge of online marketing and social media—skills most food truck owners lacked. By identifying this gap and aligning it with his strengths, he created a resource that food truck owners genuinely valued, despite his outsider status. The P.L.A.N. process begins with understanding customer Problems through direct conversations, surveys, and forum research. To extract meaningful insights, ask questions like "What's something about [topic] that frustrates you?" or "If you had a magic wand and could change anything related to [topic], what would it be?" When Pat surveyed food truck owners with the question "What's the ONE thing you wish you'd known before you started your food truck?", their responses revealed specific pain points around permitting processes and business planning that became the foundation for his product. Next, study the Language your customers use when describing their challenges. This includes questions they ask, complaints they voice, and keywords they search. By incorporating their exact phrasing in your marketing, you create an immediate connection that signals you truly understand their situation. Collecting Anecdotes—real stories from your target audience—adds emotional depth to your understanding. These narratives help you empathize with their journey and identify critical moments where your solution could make a difference. Finally, analyzing these insights reveals the underlying Needs your customers have—the actual requirements for solving their problems, rather than what they think they want. These needs become the blueprint for your solution. By systematically working through the P.L.A.N. framework, you develop an intuitive understanding of your customers that guides everything from product development to marketing. When you can articulate someone's challenges better than they can themselves, they naturally assume you have the solution.

Chapter 4: Build Without Building: Prototype and Test First

The traditional approach to launching a business typically involves developing a product first, then hoping customers will buy it. This method is not only expensive but also extremely risky. Building without building flips this model by validating demand before investing significant resources in development. Joey Korenman, founder of School of Motion, demonstrates how this approach works in practice. After posting tutorial videos about motion graphics on YouTube, Joey built a small but engaged following. Rather than immediately creating a comprehensive course—which would take months of full-time work—he decided to test if people would actually pay for it first. Joey sent an email to his list describing his own journey learning animation: "I used to suck at animation. Like, really suck at it... Learning how to animate properly was the key to my success. I'm building a training program to help Motion Graphics artists master Animation." He invited interested subscribers to a webinar where he would share details about his proposed six-week Animation Bootcamp course. During the webinar, Joey first provided 30 minutes of valuable free training to demonstrate his teaching style. Then he outlined his course concept, being completely transparent that it wasn't built yet: "This class is HARD. It's the P90X of Animation Training. You'll need 8-10 hours a week to fully immerse in the course." He offered 20 early-adopter spots at $250 each. The result? All 20 spots sold out in 10 minutes, generating $5,000 in pre-sales. When he opened another 20 spots days later, they sold out in less than a minute. This validation gave Joey both the confidence and capital to build the course, knowing real customers were eagerly waiting. For his second launch, he sold 75 spots at $600 per student. This approach works across industries. Jennifer Barcelos validated her idea for Namastream—a platform enabling yoga teachers to offer classes online—by having detailed conversations with studio owners. After identifying their common pain points, she shared a simple wireframe showing her solution. One studio owner immediately sent her $1,200 via PayPal without seeing a finished product, confirming genuine demand. The key principles of this approach include: 1) Get in front of your target audience, 2) Identify those specifically interested in your solution, 3) Share your concept transparently, and 4) Ask for a financial commitment. The transaction is what truly validates interest—words of encouragement aren't enough. When implementing this strategy, maintain honest communication with early customers. Explain that their purchase helps determine if you'll move forward with the project, and offer appropriate incentives for their early support. This approach not only validates your idea but creates invested early adopters who will provide valuable feedback as you build. Remember, as Tim Ferriss notes, "To get an accurate indicator of commercial viability, don't ask people if they would buy—ask them to buy. The response to the second is the only one that matters."

Chapter 5: Get Real Validation: Move from Words to Transactions

Words of enthusiasm can be deceiving when validating a business idea. People often express interest in concepts they'll never actually purchase. True validation requires moving beyond verbal support to actual transactions—customers voting with their wallets. Noah Kagan, founder of SumoJerky, demonstrated the power of transaction-based validation when he challenged himself to create a $1,000-profit business in just 24 hours. After selecting a beef jerky subscription service concept, he immediately began reaching out to potential customers rather than building infrastructure or designing branding. His approach was refreshingly direct. He emailed friends and contacts with a simple pitch: "Monthly jerky service. $40/month is enough for healthy jerky every single day. About $1.42/day for delicious snackage. Trying to sell blocks of 3 ($120) or 6 ($240) months. You in?" He also asked for referrals to offices that purchased snacks. Instead of spending time perfecting his offering, Noah focused on getting financial commitments. After calculating his costs and margins, he determined exactly how many subscriptions he needed to sell. Through persistent outreach via phone calls, texts, and emails, he generated $3,030 in revenue with $1,135 profit within his 24-hour deadline. This intense experiment yielded valuable insights about real-world validation: "Real-time communication (Skype, Gtalk, texting, phone-calls) wins," Noah noted. "This was the most effective way in selling vs. more passive forms (emails, Facebook/Twitter posts)." He also discovered the power of referrals, downselling reluctant prospects, and focusing exclusively on qualified leads. The validation method consists of four critical steps. First, get in front of an audience, whether through existing platforms, guest content, forums, or direct outreach. Second, identify specifically interested prospects through targeted questions that prompt them to "raise their hand." Third, share your solution transparently, explaining what you're creating and why you're uniquely qualified to deliver it. Finally, ask for the transaction—a pre-order, deposit, or full payment. Tools like Gumroad or Celery make collecting pre-orders simple. The goal is to have approximately 10% of your prospects convert to paying customers—a threshold that indicates genuine market interest. Even if someone declines to purchase, their feedback is invaluable. Ask why they chose not to buy to uncover potential improvements. Bryan Harris followed this approach when validating his first product, "The Bootstrapper's Guide to Explainer Videos." After providing value in a Facebook group and sharing a sample video, he collected email addresses from interested members. He then sent a straightforward message explaining his course concept and offering a pre-order discount. Of 25 prospects, 19 purchased within 48 hours—a 76% conversion rate that far exceeded the 10% minimum threshold. This transaction-based validation removes the guesswork from entrepreneurship. By collecting real payments before building, you gain the confidence, motivation, and often the capital needed to create something customers genuinely want.

Chapter 6: Scale Strategically: Transform Validation into Full Launch

After successfully validating your idea, the transition to full-scale implementation requires strategic planning and methodical execution. The validation process has provided valuable data and initial customers—now it's time to leverage these assets for sustainable growth. Jarrod Robinson, known as "The PE Geek," illustrates how validation can evolve into a thriving business model. As a physical education teacher passionate about technology, Jarrod started by testing whether other PE teachers would pay for a one-day workshop on integrating technology into their classes. Rather than immediately planning a global tour, he focused on validating with local teachers in Melbourne, Australia. After personally connecting with PE teachers in his area and gauging interest, Jarrod created an event page with a specific date and location "to be announced." He priced tickets at $180 for a six-hour workshop, limiting attendance to 20 people. If no one purchased, he could simply cancel without investing in venue costs or extensive preparation. The workshop sold out completely. This validation gave Jarrod the confidence to expand methodically. He developed a scalable model where he could conduct workshops in school gyms (eliminating venue costs) while offering free attendance to teachers at the host school. He increased both his pricing to $300 per attendee and doubled the capacity, significantly improving his economics. To expand globally, Jarrod used Twitter to identify PE teachers in target cities with simple messages like: "Any PE teachers following from Seattle? I'm doing a workshop there in May." This allowed him to validate interest in each new location before committing to travel. For a single event in Vietnam, he generated nearly $8,000 in sales using this approach. The key principle here is incremental scaling—growing in measured steps rather than massive leaps. With each successful iteration, you gain more data, testimonials, and revenue to fuel the next phase of expansion. Your early adopters become invaluable assets as they provide feedback, testimonials, and referrals that make subsequent launches increasingly effective. When scaling your validated idea, focus on improving three key elements: your offering, your messaging, and your delivery system. Use feedback from early customers to refine your product or service. Strengthen your marketing with real customer stories and proven results. Streamline your operations to handle increased volume without sacrificing quality. Remember that scaling isn't just about getting bigger—it's about getting better. Each expansion should incorporate lessons from previous iterations. Maintain regular communication with your growing customer base to ensure you're evolving in alignment with their needs. By scaling strategically rather than impulsively, you transform your validated concept into a sustainable business that can thrive for years to come.

Summary

Throughout this exploration of idea validation, we've discovered that success doesn't come from blind execution but from thoughtful testing and alignment. The journey from concept to thriving business isn't about quick wins or overnight success—it's about building something meaningful that serves others while supporting your vision of an ideal life. As Pat Flynn reminds us, "Your earnings are a byproduct of how well you serve your audience," a principle that grounds all sustainable entrepreneurial ventures. The validation process isn't merely a defensive strategy to avoid failure—it's an offensive approach that builds confidence, clarity, and momentum. By breaking down your big vision into manageable steps, testing each component, and collecting real evidence of market demand, you create a foundation for success that far exceeds what blind optimism could deliver. Your next step is simple yet powerful: choose one idea that aligns with both your personal goals and market needs, then apply the validation framework to determine if it truly deserves your valuable time and resources. The answer awaits, and the process itself will make you a more capable entrepreneur regardless of the outcome.

About Author

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Pat Flynn

Pat Flynn is a father, husband, and lifelong learner from San Diego who has built a reputation as one of the most influential voices in digital entrepreneurship. Through his diverse portfolio of businesses, award-winning podcasts, newsletters, YouTube channels, and thriving online communities, Pat reaches and inspires millions of people each month.He is the founder of SPI, an online community for digital entrepreneurs, co-inventor of the SwitchPod, and host of the Deep Pocket Monster YouTube channel as well as founder of Card Party, a large-scale live event for the community of Pokémon collectors. Pat also serves as an advisor to dozens of companies and is a sought-after keynote speaker. In his free time, he enjoys fishing, collecting Pokémon cards, and rewatching the Back to the Future trilogy.

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