EP329: Testing Your Offer Before You Build Anything - a 30 Day Plan
Transcript
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Hey everybody, this is Dr. Mike Wuing. Welcome to another edition of Bootstrap MD, the podcast for physician and healthc care entrepreneurs. Today's topic is something that I see again and again, especially where people are new to entrepreneurship.
And sometimes I see them making the same mistakes again and again, and I don't want that to happen to you. And the mistake that I see them making again and again is they have an idea. They want to start a side business. Maybe it's a coaching program, a course, a consulting service, and the first move is to build infrastructure.
They think they need a website, a podcast, a newsletter, a social media presence. And maybe they even have the whole content calendar mapped out for the next 4 to 6 months. And they spend all this time building out this infrastructure before they've made a single dollar or validated that anyone actually wants what they're selling. And then one of two things happens.
They either launch and they get crickets because they built the wrong thing or they're so burnt out from all of the setup work that they never actually launch anything at all. So, what I want to do today is to show you a completely different approach. So, instead of just building infrastructure first, I want you to test your offer first. Meaning, you're going to get your first paid customers, real people who hand you money before you commit to any long-term content strategy, before you build a podcast, before you build a course platform, before any of that.
I want to focus on speed, and I want to focus on validation. Maybe you can get five people to pay you for this thing, whatever you're building in the next 30 days. If so, then I think you've got something worth building around. If not, you can pivot fast without wasting months or even years of your life.
So, let's break down exactly how to do this on today's episode. And before we begin, I want to let you know it's coming quickly. If you're in the area or you're going to Florida or you're at the podcast expo, you need to sign up for the doctor podcastfest that we're having. The first podcast devoted for physician podcasters.
And you don't even have to be a podcaster. Maybe you're interested in starting a podcast. It's coming up January 15th. It's the first day and if you do it, you also get a ticket for the giant podcast expo which is the first podcast conference in existence.
It was one of the first ones. I believe there's going to be over four to 5,000 people there. It's going to be amazing. Great for networking, great for building your business.
Go to drpodfest.com to sign up. So, let's talk about why physicians tend to over complicate things or complicate launches. They fall into this trap of overbuilding before testing because and it's nothing wrong. It's in our DNA.
We're trained to have all the answers before we act. In medicine, we're not experimenting on patients or hopefully you're not. You don't say, "Hey, let me try this treatment and see if it works." No. You make a diagnosis.
You develop a treatment plan based on the evidence that you know, and then you execute. It's great for medicine, but it's horrible for entrepreneurship. In business, especially when you're starting, you don't know what's going to work. Maybe you have an idea, maybe you have hypothesis, but you don't have certainties.
And the fastest way to test these hypothesis is to put an offer in front of people and see if they'll pay for it. But physicians, they often think they need to look at credibility first. And I get it. They think they need the polished website, the professional branding, the content library that proves they're an expert.
They're worried if they show up with all of that infrastructure. People aren't going to take them seriously. And here's the truth. You have an advantage.
Your MD already gives you credibility. You don't need a six-month content backlog to prove to know that's what you're talking about. What you need is a clear offer that solves a specific problem for specific people and the willingness to put that offer in front of them before it's perfect. Now, the goal isn't to build a business in 30 days.
The goal is validation. Validate that a business is worth building. That's a big difference. And I want to talk about one barrier that I often see again again with physicians is that credentiing mindset.
So, think about your medical career. You can't practice without completing residency for the most part. You can't prescribe controlled substances without a DA number. You can't see patients at a hospital without hospital privileges.
You can't bill insurance without being credentialed with payers. Every single step of your medical career require credentials, approval, and formal authorization before you complete anything. But that's not how business works. And but physicians apply that same credentiing mindset to entrepreneurship.
You think you need an LLC before you can test an offer. You don't. You think you need an EIN and business bank account before you can accept a payment. You don't.
You think you need a professional website and business cards before you can tell people what you do. You don't. Here's what you actually need to test an offer. A clear promise, a way to deliver value, and the ability to accept payment.
That's it. Cuz you can run a test webinar using a personal Zoom account or Google Meet and collect payment through Venmo or PayPal. You can teach a framework you already know without forming a legal entity. You can work with your first five clients under your own name before you even register a business.
Now, I'm not saying you never need these things. Once you validate an offer and you're generating consistent revenue, absolutely set up your LLC, get your business bank account, build your systems properly, but you don't need any of these things to test whether people will pay you for something. The credentiing mindset makes physicians think they need permission to start. You're waiting for some external authority to tell you're ready.
But there's no medical board for entrepreneurship. There's no residency program you have to complete. There's no credentiing committee that approves your business. You're giving yourself permission.
and you decide you're ready and then you test. Now, I'm not an attorney and what I'm giving you is not legal advice, but I see so many physicians spend months sending up the right quote right business structure, researching the right accounting software, designing the right website, all before they've had a single customer conversation. And that's that credentiing mindset in action. You trying to get fully credentialed before you lie to practice.
But in business, you can practice first, you can test first, you can pay for some ads and see what happens. You can learn more works by doing it, not by preparing to do it. And then once you know what you're building, you build the infrastructure around it. So if you're sitting there thinking, I can't test my offer because I don't have X.
Ask yourself, is that actually true or is that credentiing mindset telling you need permission that you don't actually need? So I want to talk about MVP. I'm sure we've talked about this before. It's a minimum viable proposal or offer product.
Minimum viable test. That's what I want to focus on. What's the minimum you actually need to test offer? You need three things.
You need a clear target audience, a specific transformation you're promising, and a way to get the promise in front of people. So, let's start with your target audience. And I mean being specific, not physicians who want to start side business, it's too broad these days. Try employed hospitalists who want to launch a tele medicine practice in the next 90 days or medicine physicians considering direct primary care.
The more specific you can get, the easier everything else becomes. Your message is going to get clearer. Your marketing gets more targeted. And more importantly, the people who are the right fit recognizes them immediately when they hear you describe what you do.
Secondly, there's transformation. This is the before and the after state. Before, I'm an employed hospitalist with no clarity on how to start a tele medicine practice. After, I've chosen my niche.
I set up my tele medicine platform and I've seen my first five patients. Notice what I'm giving you is concrete and measurable. It's not learn about tele medicine that's information. It's launch your tele medicine practice.
What that is transformation. People pay for transformation. They don't pay for information. And finally, you need a way to get this promise in front of people.
Now, the fastest low commitment way that I've seen this is a test webinar or workshop. Not a course, not a membership, not a coaching program you're locked into running for 6 months. a single live webinar or workshop where you're teaching something of value and make an offer at the end. And the thing is, we've all done this.
We've all had to prepare for some type of presentation most of our adult lives. And here's why this works. You can promote a webinar with a simple landing page. You can run it on Zoom.
You only need to prepare maybe 30 to 45 minutes of content. And if five people show up and nobody buys, you lost maybe 5 to 10 hours of work instead of six months of trying to build that infrastructure. But if you do get people to buy, now you know if you got something worth building around. All right, let's talk about designing your test webinar.
I want you to walk through how to design it a webinar that validates your offer. And again, it's three things. You need three parts. You need the hook, the framework, and the offer.
So, what's the hook? The hook is how you can get people to register. This needs to be specific and promise a clear outcome. Not join me to learn about starting a side business.
That's vague. Instead, join me for a 60-minute workshop where I show the exact 30-day work road map to launch your first tele medicine service line. See the difference? The second version tells people exactly what they're getting and exactly how long it'll take them.
That specificity makes people register. The framework is the content you teach during the webinar. This is 30 to 40 minutes where you're delivering real value. You're teaching them strategy, not tactics.
You're giving them a road map, not walking them through every single step. For example, if you're teaching physicians how to launch a tele medicine practice, your framework might look like this. Step one, choose your clinical focus based on what you're already good at and what patients will pay for you out of pocket. Step two, get set up legally and with the right technology platform.
Step three, handle licensing and compliance for the states you want to serve. Step four, get your first five patients without spending money on ads. You're teaching the what and the why. Now, you're not teaching the exact questions to ask yourself when choosing a clinical focus or the specific platforms to compare or the exact patient acquisition channels to use.
That's what they get when they pay you. Now, the offer comes in the final 10 to 15 minutes. This is where you make it clear what the next step is if they want your help implementing the framework you just taught. Your offer could be a live cohort where you're building a small group through implementing the road map over the next 30 to 60 days.
It could be one-on-one coaching where you work with them individually directly. It could just be a course with live Q&A calls for support. The key is you're positioning it as implementation support. You just gave them the road map for free and you're offering to help them actually execute it with accountability and guidance and troubleshooting when they get stuck.
And here's what makes this a test. You're not building the course first. You're not recording hours and hours of content for modules. You're not creating workbooks.
You sell it and then you deliver it live. you figure out what people actually need as you're working with them, not before. Okay, so I'm sure you're asking, "How am I going to get people on my webinar? How do I get people to show up if I don't have an audience?" You're going to leverage the network you already have.
You don't need thousands and thousands of followers. You need 20 to 50 people who might be interested to register and five to 10 of those people to actually show up. Doesn't that sound a lot easier? Here is your outreach strategy.
First identify 50 people in your network who fit your target audience. If you're helping physicians launch tele medicine practices, that's 50 physicians you know from residency from conferences from LinkedIn from anywhere. Second, reach out personally, not a mass email, individual messages. Hey John, I'm putting together a free workshop launching a tele medicine practice.
I know you mentioned wanting to do something outside of your W2 job. I thought this might be relevant. Would you be interested? You're not selling them anything yet.
You're inviting them to a free workshop that might be useful. Low pressure, high value. Third, you post about it on LinkedIn. One post explaining what their workship is, who is it for, and how to register.
You tag a few people who you think might be interested. Ask them to share if you know anybody who can benefit. That's it. You don't need a content calendar.
You don't need to build an audience over months. You're using the network you already have to fill a single workshop. And if you can't get 20 people to register for a free workshop, that's valuable information, too. It means either your target audience isn't motivated to solve the problem or your positioning isn't clear enough or you don't have access enough of the right people.
You learn that in a week, not after building a course for 6 months. All right, so let's talk about what happens when you actually run your test webinar. You show up, you teach your framework, you answer questions, and then you make your offer. So here's what you're testing for.
Do people want to help implementing this? Are they willing to pay you to guide you through this? If five people out of 20 say yes, you validate your offer. That's a 25% conversion rate.
That's solid. Now, you know you've got something worth building around. If nobody says yes, guess what? You learn something valuable.
Maybe the problem isn't painful enough. Maybe your solution isn't clear enough. Maybe your price is wrong. Maybe you're targeting the wrong people.
You don't know exactly what's wrong yet. Something needs to change. And this is where the power of testing comes in. You can run another test in two weeks with a different angle.
Maybe you change your target audience. Maybe you adjust your promise. Maybe you lower your price. You iterate fast because you haven't committed to building anything permanent yet.
Let me give you an example. When I first tested what eventually became Bootstrap MD, I didn't have a name. I didn't have a website. I didn't have a course build.
But I ran a workshop for physicians I knew. I taught them a framework for starting a site union business. And at the end, I offered to work with them to help them actually implement this. I had eight people say yes, and they paid me $4,000 each.
That's $32,000 in revenue for testing an offer before I built anything permanent. They told me the content had legs. So, I ran the program, learned what people actually needed versus what they thought they needed, and use that to build what eventually became my consulting business book, Strap MD. If nobody had said yes, I would have tried a different angle, maybe focused on a different audience, maybe changed the promise.
But I've learned that in two weeks, not 6 months. All right. So, what to do after you've done your test webinar? So, let's talk about what to do next based on the results.
The great thing is it's up to you. If people bought, delivered what you promises, run the cohort, do the coaching, whatever you sold them. Pay close attention to what they struggle with, what questions they ask, what breakthroughs they have. This becomes a curriculum for your next iteration.
After you deliver it, ask yourself, do I want to do this again? Do I enjoy working with these people? Was a transformation I promised actually achievable? If you say yes, run it again and again.
If not, adjust it. Maybe the problem is your pricing. You're working too hard for too little money. I see this again and again.
Raise your price next time. Maybe the problem is your audience. You're attracting the wrong people. The the solution, narrow your targeting.
Maybe the problem is your promise. You're trying to deliver too much too fast. Simplify your offer. The point is you're iterating based on real feedback from real customers, not hypothetical planning.
Now, once you run your offer three times and you're consistently getting results, people are paying you. They're getting the transformation that you promise. You enjoy the work. Now you can think about infrastructure.
Now it makes sense to build a real website. Now it makes sense to start a podcast or newsletter to generate leads consistently. Now it makes sense to record a polished version of your course because you're now validating that people actually want this thing and you know exactly what they need. Now people didn't buy.
It's okay. Don't panic. You save yourself months of wasted effort. Now you get to figure out why.
Talk to the people who attended why they didn't buy. Ask them directly what would have made this a no-brainer for you. Was it the price, the timing, the specific outcome I was promising, or is it something else? You're doing customer research that most entrepreneurs skip and you're doing it before you built anything, which means you could pivot fast.
Maybe you realize your target audience was wrong. Maybe hospitalists didn't actually want to launch tele medicine practices, but maybe er doctors do. Run another test with a different audience. Maybe your transformation wasn't clear or compelling enough.
Maybe launch a tele medicine practice in 30 days sounds too fast and feels risky. Test validate your tele medicine business idea in 30 days instead. Maybe your price was too high for an unproven offer for someone they just met. Lower it.
Add more value. Extend the timeline. The key is you're testing variables one at a time until something converts. And because each test only takes you a week or two, you can run multiple tests in the time it would have taken you to build a full course and website.
All right. I'm going to give you a concrete 30-day plan for testing your offer. One through three. This is the time to test your target audience, your transformation, and your test offer.
Define it. Write down exactly who you're serving, what you're promising, and what you're going to charge. This could be a few hours of focus work, not days of overthinking. Days 4 through 7, create your test webinar online and your landing page.
The outline is just like a bulletoint framework of what you're going to teach. The landing page is just one page explaining what the workshop is or who is it for or how to register. Now you can build this on a simple platform like card c a r d zoom has their own templates that you can use or you can even just use a Google form. Now days 8 through 14 this is promotion time.
Promote your workshop. Reach out personally to 50 people in your network. Post about it on LinkedIn or Facebook. Ask a few friends to share it.
Your goal is 20 registrations minimum. Day 15 through 16. Prepare your webinar content. Build out your slides.
Rehearse your framework. Plan your offer. This shouldn't take more than three to five hours total. Run your webinar.
Show up. Teach. Make your offer. Track how many people attended.
How many people ask questions? How many people bought in days 22 through 30? Analyze your results. Decide next steps.
If people bought, deliver what you promise and plan your next cohort. If nobody bought, figure out why and plan your next test. And that's it. In 30 days, you've either validated an offer worth building around or you've learned what doesn't work and you've got to try something else.
Either way, you haven't wasted months or even years building infrastructure for an idea that really didn't have legs. All right, so here's the takeaway from all of this. I've said before, you don't need a newsletter. You don't necessarily need a podcast to start out.
You don't need a content strategy or social media calendar or polish website. Just not yet. What you need is a clear offer that solves a real problem for real people and the willingness to test that offer before you build anything else. So run a workshop, get some people to show up, make an offer, see if they buy.
If they do, you've got validation. Now you can think about building on infrastructure around that validated offer. If you don't, you've learned something in a couple weeks that would have taken you six months and you get to try again, but maybe from a different angle. And that's how you move fast, stay lean, and avoid the trap of spending months building something nobody wants.
I hope you enjoy this podcast episode. If you like what I talk about, please share this with your friends. I really appreciate it. We don't spend a lot of money on advertising on this.
It's simply the goodwill of people of saying, "Hey, Mike, help me out. Help me start a business or let me think about different things, expand my income." And that's what it's all about here at Bootstrap MD. Again, as an entrepreneur, you're going to have your ups and downs. Do something a little each day to get you closer to your goals and keep moving forward.