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March 20, 2025 13 mins

Are you keeping your business idea under wraps, afraid someone will steal it? Think again! In this short episode, we break down why secrecy could be sabotaging your success—and what to do instead. Learn how to properly vet your product or service, test your messaging, and refine your pricing before launching, so you don’t waste time on an idea that won’t fly.

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Carly Ries (00:00):
Are you holding back on sharing your business idea

(00:02):
because you're afraid someonemight steal it? In this episode,
we break down why keeping youridea under wraps might be
holding you back and how bettingyour product or service before
launching can save you time,money, and frustration. We'll
dive into smart ways to testyour business, refine your
messaging, and ensure you'resolving real problems for your
audience. Plus, we'll share whythe fear of idea theft is often

(00:24):
misplaced. So tune in and learnhow to validate your solopreneur
venture the right way.
You're listening to the AspiringSolopreneur, the podcast for
those just taking the bold stepor even just thinking about
taking that step into the worldof solo entrepreneurship. My
name is Carly Reese, and mycohost, Joe Rando, and I are
your guides to navigating thiscrazy but awesome journey as a

(00:47):
company of one. We take pride inbeing part of Lifestar, a
digital hub dedicated to allaspects of solopreneurship that
has empowered and educatedcountless solopreneurs looking
to build a business thatresonates with their life's
ambitions. We help people workto live, not live to work. And
if you're looking for a get richquick scheme, this is not the
show for you.

(01:08):
So if you're eager to gainvaluable insights from industry
experts on running a businessthe right way the first time
around or want to learn from themissteps of solopreneurs who've
paved the way before you, thenstick around. We've got your
back because flying solo inbusiness doesn't mean you're
alone. So, Joe, we have spokenwith thousands of solopreneurs.

(01:29):
And one of the things thatalways just grinds my gears is
when people say, I don't wannalet people know what I'm doing
or put my product out therebecause I don't I don't want
them to steal my idea. Or I wantit to be a big surprise and a
big reveal.
And I just I feel like we shouldhave this episode today because
I think that's a bad idea. Ithink you agree with me.

Joe Rando (01:52):
I think with very, very, very rare circumstances,
nobody's gonna steal your idea.Ideas are easy, and execution of
ideas is really hard. So most ofthe time, people might, you
know, hear your idea and likeyour idea, but they're not gonna
run off and steal it. So I Ithink it's a pretty safe bet.

Carly Ries (02:12):
Yeah. It takes a lot of effort. But the thing is if
you don't vet your productservice before you fully launch
it, you won't know if it'ssuccessful, and you could put in
a lot of work for something thatnever takes off.

Joe Rando (02:24):
Yep. That people don't want. Yep.

Carly Ries (02:26):
Right. So, Joe, what are some of your ideas that you
have for people to vet theirbusiness or tips that that they
should keep in mind?

Joe Rando (02:34):
Well, I think for starters, you you need to first
identify who you want to sellyour offering to. So if you
don't know who the the targetaudience is, it's really hard to
talk to them. So start bydefining the kinds of people
that you think should want tobuy what you're planning to
offer, and then go to try try tofind those people to talk to

(02:56):
them, just to ask them what theythink of the idea. And I've said
this a lot in other podcasts,but if you have trouble finding
them to talk to them, gonna havetrouble finding them to sell to
them. So that's a good littletest in and of itself.
And then once you get peoplelistening to your idea and and
kind of vetting it for you, youknow, don't be discouraged if,

(03:16):
you know, you talk to 10 peopleand three of them love it and
seven people go, nah. That'sactually pretty good. You know?
You don't take an idea likethat. If you get three people
that love it out of 10 peopleyou were able to find, that's
probably a pretty good marketoverall.
Right? So so don't let the thenaysayers make you feel like
this isn't a good idea even ifit's more than half the people
you talk to. As long as a smallnumber of people love it, you're

(03:38):
probably on the right track.

Carly Ries (03:40):
Yeah. And I think it's one thing to test your
business idea, but the otherthing that is that you need to
test is how you're talking aboutyour business idea and how your
messaging is coming across. Imean, the elevator pitch is the
oldest phrase in the book.Right? Like, have that elevator
pitch.
But, honestly, if you can'texplain what you do in one or
two sentences, you're gonna losepeople. And it's hard to get to

(04:04):
that sentence.

Joe Rando (04:05):
It's a lot of work, and it's and the hardest thing I
think for people, and I knowit's been for me over the years,
is stepping back from what I'mdoing, right, which is where we
wanna go with our idea. We getthis idea to help people with
whatever. Well, I'm gonna dothis, and I do this, and I do
that to what they're going toget. Right? I have the the Post

(04:27):
it note, right, on my desk herethat's tucked to my monitor that
says, what's in it for them?
And it's like you want to alwayskeep that in mind. It's it's
talk to it from theirperspective, talk about their
pain points, talk about whatwill be it will be like when
they don't have those painpoints anymore, and then you'll

(04:47):
get attention. Then people willwanna hear what you have to say,
and they'll understand youridea. Because if I sit there and
I say, well, I've got a a, youknow, a a multi matrix approach
to to developing and outsourcingjobs for small businesses. They
go, what the heck are youtalking about?

(05:08):
And if I say, you know, I'mgonna help you figure out the
best people to outsource tasksthat you're currently doing that
will save you money and make youmore efficient and productive
and profitable. People are, oh,okay. You know? So it's it's
that kind of thing of keepingkeeping that perspective of what
are they gonna get? What's whatare they gonna see that's
different?
What pain are they no longergonna feel?

Carly Ries (05:30):
But you're not gonna understand that unless you talk
to these people.

Joe Rando (05:33):
Well, I mean, I hope you have an idea of what kind of
pain you're gonna solve. Right?You probably have some
experience in life. I mean, someof the best ideas are the people
that go, gee, I wanted to buythis thing, and all the things
that were available didn't theythey all stunk, so I made one
that worked for me. And guesswhat?
The lot of the world liked ittoo. So, I mean, I think, you
you know, rarely do you startoff and go, you know, I have no

(05:54):
idea what what pain points I'mgonna solve. I I I that's that
would be surprising to me. Butyou you might not be thinking
about it in those terms. Right?
You might not be thinking aboutit in terms of pain points as
much as some offering, some andand we also wanna go first to
the aspiration. Oh, your life'sgonna be so much better. You
You're gonna be more profitable.But you always that old saying

(06:17):
that we said a lot on the show,it's easier to sell painkillers
than vitamins. Right?
People vitamins are, you know,are they aspirational? I'm gonna
be healthier, but that takestime. Painkillers are like, I
have a headache, and I want itgone in the next twenty minutes.
So it's always good to focusthere.

Carly Ries (06:38):
Yes. Absolutely. Well, yeah. And I mean, just
circling back to the the mainpoint of this conversation, the
the vetting of your product orservice. We we've been talking
about messaging, the ideaitself, but this is also a way
to understand your pricingstructure and what resonates.
I mean, Joe, we had a call thismorning because we had an idea
of how we're about to pricesomething, and we ran it by our

(06:58):
audience. Mhmm. Yep. We're like,is this going to work? And a lot
of people don't think that way.

Joe Rando (07:04):
Well, the cool thing about that conversation, if you
recall, was that our originalidea, they they liked and we
kept it as is, but we changedsomething else about our
offering. We we changedsomething that we didn't even
think about changing until oneof them said something that went
ping. And so this idea oftalking to people can really
help you develop, make youroffering better, more resonant

(07:28):
with the people that you wannatarget.

Carly Ries (07:30):
Yeah. Absolutely. But the other thing I wanna
circle back to is you weresaying if you have a hard time
targeting or finding the peoplefor these kinds of
conversations, you're gonna havea hard time selling to them. And
I think it's always a good ideato meet some people face to
face, even if that's overFaceTime or something. Just
actually and I also I mean,inexpensive paid ads is another

(07:55):
way to test messaging, test youroffers, not with the intent to
sell, but the intent to gatherinformation and to learn what
you're doing right, learn whatyou're doing wrong, look where
your mistakes are and the gaps.
And it doesn't have to beexpensive to gain a lot of
knowledge. And so that's anotherway that I really recommend

(08:16):
testing your partner serversbecause that's also to people
you don't know. Whereas theyrevert to people you know from a
conversation standpoint.

Joe Rando (08:25):
No. I mean, I've heard about a guy that basically
had an idea for a product, andhe advertised it. And I mean,
this is a little a little iffyethically, but he advertised it
for sale. He got a bunch ofsales, so we knew it was a good
idea, but he didn't actuallyhave the product. So then he
said basically, you know, sorry.
I'm I'm sold out or somethingand refunded all their money.

(08:46):
And then went and built theproduct and and sold it, but
it's you know, I I that one's,you know, ethically I mean,
certainly not evil, but unkind.It does it did it yeah. It did
it did, vet the product veryeffectively. So there is, you
know, just ways of gettingpeople engaged.
I mean, you know, the thing thatwe did I did a few years ago was

(09:07):
to find out what kinds of thingssolopreneurs needed and whether
they all needed similar thingsand ran I ran a survey, a paid
survey through SurveyMonkey andhad 337 solopreneurs or one
person businesses answer thesurvey and found out that guess
what? The same problems forevery solopreneur, not everyone,
but, you know, overall on theaverage. You know, over 40%

(09:31):
struggled with lead generation.37 struggled with sales, and I
think 35% struggled with timemanagement and efficiency. So
there was a lot of commonproblems regardless of whether
they were a coach, a contractor,a consultant, anything else.
So so that's what told me, hey,this can work.

Carly Ries (09:50):
Yeah. Absolutely. Well, Joe, before we wrap this
up, do you have any other tipsfor solopreneurs in terms of
vetting their product orservice?

Joe Rando (09:59):
I think I think I kinda gave gave the the the
major parts away is you know,the main thing is is when you're
starting this process, makesure, you know, it's something
that you're good at. Right?Because you can I could sell all
kinds of things, but, you know,if I start the business and I'm
really not, you know, a masterof what I'm doing, I'm really

(10:20):
good at what I'm doing that Ican truly help people, then, you
know, that that test that testrun of sales is not gonna tell
you much about whether you'regonna have a successful
business? So, I mean, it's alittle little off the topic,
but, you know, we, you know, wealways talk about selling
without sleeves, and this ideaof being truly able to help
people with whatever it you'redoing is one of the key
components to keeping, you know,selling a completely honorable

(10:44):
process.

Carly Ries (10:45):
Well and I'm gonna I'm gonna piggyback off of that,
but also make sure it'ssomething that you like. As you
are vetting this product andhunting people down and refining
your messaging and and refiningthe product or service itself,
if you find it to be a drag andyou're waking up like, ugh, I
have to call another person.Ugh, I have to change this
thing. Maybe this isn't theright business for you to start

(11:09):
because if you don't like itbefore you start it, you're not
gonna like it when you run it.

Joe Rando (11:13):
Okay. I'm piggybacking off of that then.
So Piggybacking back. Is animportant one because this whole
ikigai concept, which was likean you know, is not an ancient
Chinese I mean, ancient Japanesething. The word is, but the Venn
diagram the Japanese were notthat into Venn diagrams, at
least back in the, you know,olden days.
And the the fact is it wasinvented, like, 2015. And this

(11:36):
idea of having to be passionateabout, you know, what you're
doing and, you know, somethingyou you you can do when you're
passionate is is great, but it'sit's not necessarily what every
solopreneur does. Because somepeople just say, look. I don't I
I like it. I'm okay with it, andit gives me the freedom I want
to live my life the way I want,and I don't have to be this

(11:57):
doesn't have to be my life'spassion.
You know? So I think thatsometimes people go, oh, I gotta
find this thing, theintersection of, you know, what
I love and what I'm good at,what the world needs, what the
world pay for. It's like, yeah,you can probably get away with
three of those, at least certaincombinations of three. So I just
wanna put that out there thatthat, you know, it's not
necessarily that you have to hitthe quadfecta on icky guy in

(12:18):
order to have that business thatyou're talking about.

Carly Ries (12:20):
Exactly. Well, Joe, I think that's all we have for
our listeners today. Andlisteners, thank you so much for
tuning in. Please share thiswith a friend. Leave that five
star review.
Subscribe on your favoritepodcast platform, and we will
see you next time on theaspiring solopreneur. You may be
going solo in business, but thatdoesn't mean you're alone. In

(12:41):
fact, millions of people are inyour shoes, running a one person
business and figuring it out asthey go. So why not connect with
them and learn from each other'ssuccesses and failures? At
LifeStar, we're creating a oneperson business community where
you can go to meet and getadvice from other solopreneurs.
Be sure to join in on theconversations at
community.lifestar.com. That'scommunity.lifestarwith2r's.com.
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