Morgan Debon (0:00)

Have you ever had an idea and it's just eating you alive and you really want to get it out in the world, but you're not quite sure if you should take that leap, if you should make that time investment, if you should spend that money to get it out into the world? This is the episode for you. Hey, everyone. I'm Morgan Debon, a passionate entrepreneur and life advisor. With the Journey podcast, you'll discover that success isn't about the destination, it's about the journey. I'm sharing stories of amazing people who've taken control of their lives. Join me on my own journey to discover the secret sauce behind reaching success. With permission from no one else, welcome back to the Journey podcast. I'm your host, Morgan Debon. Today we are talking about how to get your idea from idea to launch and how to actually evaluate if you should follow through with this idea that you have in your head. First things first. You guys know me. You know, I do all the things. I've got a million businesses, I have a bajillion ideas. One of the questions that I get asked a lot is, how do I decide what to do and what not to do? How do I decide to launch a matcha business? How do I decide to acquire a company? How do I decide to start a podcast? There is actually a logic to my rationale for how I actually get this stuff done and I want to share with you my secrets as to how you too can make a decision making framework on if you should move forward with that idea that you have in your head and actually jump out into the world and put it into the world. So I want to introduce you to a method that I use that's really effective and adaptive to helping make really good decisions for yourself and for the people around you. It's called the Drip method. Drip stand for define, review, imagine, and ultimately pick make a decision. As you're listening to this episode or watching this episode, I want you to think about that idea that you have in your head and I want you to actually follow along with me using this Drip method. Okay? One is to define the decision. So what is the decision you actually have to make? Oftentimes when we have ideas to launch something new, we have a really grandiose perspective on what we want to make. So let me take my Matcha business, for example. When I first started deciding, do I actually want to build a product business? The first question was, do I want to start a new thing in my life? Right? And I needed to decide, do I have space in My life for another thing, once I made that decision, then it was like, okay, I know that I am committed to creating more space in my life for this product business. Then it was, how big do I want to make this product business? Is this something that I'm trying to get distributed in Target and Walmart, different types of retailers? Or is this something that I'm doing because it brings me joy? It's intellectually stimulating, actually. Defining the scope. Scope really early on was helpful in me having clarity on if I was going to move forward or not move forward. So once I define my scope, which for me for the Matcha business was, I love Matcha. I wanted to explore a new type of business. I've done a product business before, but I don't feel like I did it the right way because I had way too many skus. So I wanted a simple business model and I was absolutely okay with growing it slow. I was okay with it being a business that only sells $1,000 a month in product or $2,000 a month in product. It wasn't something that I was going to go raise venture funding for. And I really got specific about my criteria for even engaging in this process. And if I was going to launch something new or not, then the next thing is review the data, right? So review the data, do the research. So then I said, okay, matches what I want to do. Let me go and make sure that Matcha is a trend that is growing, that is a business that is going to grow in the United States and that I'm going to have a market for it. How big is the market for it? How much does Matcha cost? Where is Matcha grown? How long will it take to go from a purchase order to actually in my hands, what are we going to do for the warehouse? So I actually started to build out the business model and do research to make sure that there weren't any surprises. There's always surprises in business. But I tried my hardest to make sure that I had a full perspective on the Matcha universe. Right. Once you do you review the data, I like to do it in two ways. What I just shared with you was the tops down approach. Where I look at the market overall, I look at, at a macro level, what's happening and then you do a bottoms up approach, which is, is this something that my friends drink, that I drink, that I see in the store? Is this something that I'm going to want to talk about every day? So something that I'm going to want to show people that I'm drinking this in the morning, right? And that was a bottoms up analysis for your idea or your business. A bottoms up analysis might be doing customer research. It might be posting Instagram ads and seeing if people click and get on a wait list. You know, you're doing some bottoms up data review and that will help you. Then take the information from the high level at the macro, then you add your bottoms up information and then you have a really good picture. A holistic point of view on, okay, am I informed enough to take this action and do I still want to do it? And that's one thing that's important about the drip method. At each step, you can decide, I don't want to do it. Like, now I have enough information that I'm out right at this point. I said, okay, match is trending in the United States. It's really good for you. It's got great antioxidants. It's good for your skin, it's better for your body type. Caffeine, and I drink it every day. It's something I stand behind and it's something that I think that my friends will also drink the next thing. And this is where it's really fun. I want you to imagine the outcome. This is where the eye comes in. I want you to imagine the possibilities. And you start from imagining at the center of imagine if this went as amazing and was as successful as it possibly could be if in the world. And that like, everybody's drinking my Matcha. Starbucks switches to my Matcha. You know, I'm on Good Morning America talking about Matcha. Is that a reality that I want to live in? Okay, Is that something that I'm comfortable with? That scenario planning really helps me ground myself in. If this goes well, am I in a place to be able to receive those opportunities as well? And I'm. Is it something that I actually want or I'm open to even continuing to be publicly committed to or privately committed to? So now that you've imagined the best possible scenario, you already know it's coming. Now I want you to imagine the worst possible scenario. You go through this process and nobody buys it. It doesn't work. Literally. It just flops. Okay? It's public flop. Everybody knows you did a thing and it didn't work. How do you feel? And for me, when I was evaluating that for the Matcha, my perspective was okay. Now I just have a lifestyle amount of Matcha in a warehouse somewhere. Not so bad. Not the worst possible outcome. Thinking through your worst case possible outcome, including losing the Money that you invested in that business is something that can also help you get rid of some of the anxiety, the jitters or some of the blockers that as a high achieving person you might have knowing that you could potentially fail. And a lot of times when we are as ambitious people thinking about doing something new, the fear of failure oftentimes stops us from doing it in the first place. So just going ahead and letting your brain go there for a second and really asking yourself and rationalizing like, is this the worst thing that could happen really allows you to move past it and oftentimes launch. So that's one part of the Imagine exercise. The next part of the Imagine exercise that's equally as important is the opportunity cost. I want you to evaluate and let your brain play with how much time is this going to take me? Let's say it's going to take me an extra five hours a week. Is there something else I'd rather be doing with those five hours? Is there some other business that I could be doing with those five hours? Is there something I want to do with my health or my wellness for those five hours? Is there something I want to do for my hobbies? Learn a new skill, learn a new language, paint, go for walks, whatever for those five hours a week. And make sure that you're okay with the trade off that you're making in terms of time and energy and really push your brain to imagine what that alternative could look like if you chose not to go down this route. And then decide, decide if these trade offs are worth it for you. Decide if the best case scenario and the worst case scenario is worth it for you. And assuming that it is, you move forward to the next step. So the last part of this method, of the drip method is P for pick. Pick means pick which pathway based off of all this information that you've gotten that you want to go down. So I started off my Matcha journey saying, I don't want to do retail. I don't want it to be super big and I want it to be one sku by the end of the decision making framework. When I was going through it for the Matcha brand, I said, you know what? I wouldn't be opposed to going into retail if it meant that I had an automated distribution system to get the Matcha out at scale. I wouldn't be opposed to us selling on Amazon. If I could use Amazon's fulfillment center and not have to think too much about, I'm actually distributing it myself and packing orders and things like that. I created multiple pathways in which I would be happy and content with this product launch. And that also helped me really make a decision to ultimately do this business, because there was different ways in which it could have gone, and I would have been equally as happy and content. And I think that's really important when you're launching a business, is to create different pathways for yourself, for happiness and contentment. And it doesn't always have to look like what you thought it was going to look like once it's out in the world. Because too often I see entrepreneurs that just get so attached to the outcome. They get so attached, attached to, we've got to get in Target, or I've got to get booked by, you know, these five brands, or I've got to make this amount of money. Then when it doesn't happen, you're disappointed, you know, and you feel frustrated and you feel disengaged, and you start questioning your abilities and you start questioning the world, and it just goes on and on and on. But if you had, in the beginning, had really low expectations and created three to five scenarios in which you were happy or at least content, then you probably wouldn't have that level of disappointment. So I've learned in entrepreneurship to keep my expectations very flat and to try to detach myself from a specific outcome. That has given me more freedom to let myself experiment, let myself fail, and let myself actually create and put things into the world. Now you've decided that you're going to do a business and you're ready to go. Who. So what do you do next? The next thing that I recommend is typically to make a budget. How much are you willing to invest in this business? And I want you to consider how much money you're willing to lose, how much you're willing to invest, and assume that you're never going to make any of it back. Okay? And the reason for that is that will help you make decisions that are frugal and absolutely necessary. A lot of times when I talk to people and they're launching a business, they send me this pitch deck, and it's beautiful. You, you got logos, you got branding, you got all this stuff. And I'm like, okay, but where's the product? Like, oh, I haven't made the product. I'm sorry, What? You spent $10,000 on a website on logos on branding, and you didn't spend any money on, like, your tester products? It doesn't even exist yet. I see that a lot because sometimes people want to be an entrepreneur more than they want to actually build something real. They want to call themselves and identify as an entrepreneur or talk about the side hustle that they have, or talk about this thing that they're doing. But when you really peel it back, they haven't actually built something of value. They haven't made the thing yet that is going to go out into the world. They haven't executed that service that is going to go out to the world. And I would highly recommend that you limit your budget and get really strict with your budget when you're launching and you assume you're going to lose it all because that can help you then prioritize the thing that's actually going to move the needle. It's kind of like what is your rate limiting step for actually putting the product out into the world. So for me, for the Matcha brand, I actually did have to do the branding because we had to do packaging and we had to get the purchase order out. But I didn't have to think about the influencers we were going to hire and the launch party that we were going to do and what my Instagram posts were going to look like. I mean, that was just too far down the line. It was really, what is the product? What's the quality of the product? Started to test and find manufacturers for the product and then once we found that it was also okay. What is the packaging physically going to look like and what's the experience that the customer is going to have from idea to purchase to, you know, actual consumption once it lands in their house? Make it a bare bones budget and think about what is the step that actually matters that I need to get to in order to start making money and build this business. So once you have your budget and you've decided you're going to build this thing, then you really need to get into your customer mindset. What I mean by this is there's oftentimes a disconnect between who you think is going to buy this product and who actually buys the product or service. Okay. And you want to get yourself closer to who's actually going to buy it. And the way that I do that oftentimes is I build a customer avatar. I build a set of avatars and I really try to make these as rich as possible. I try to think about who is that person. So for Matcha, it was like a black girl who likes to go to Starbucks, who's on the go, who's a high achiever, who probably works out occasionally, but also drinks and kicks it. So she's not like that OCD about her health. She wants a delicious drink and she wants the caffeine, but she's also generally trying to be healthier. So she's trying not to drink like a Celsius or trying to have two espresso shots. And so she picks Matcha. She's also prioritizing her personal finance to some extent. Means the girl, she likes to spend money. You know what I'm saying? She likes to. She likes to spend money, but she doesn't want to go to Starbucks every single day. And so having a delicious matcha at home that she can make, that gives her a caffeine burn, but also it tastes really good, is something that this girl will want. And so she buys more Matcha, right? So you want to really, like, get into it with your avatar, and then you start to build for that person, and you make your content for that person. You make your vocabulary, your language, your copy for that person. You follow the Instagram accounts that that person follows, and you get really, really specific. When I was building Blavity, in the early, early beginning of Blavity, we had an avatar called the Blipster, which was black hipster. So it was a black person who was like, I don't fit in with everybody else. And I probably live in Brooklyn or I live in Oakland or I live in, you know, Houston, and I am culture. I read a lot. I subscribe to random newsletters, or I like, like indie music and, like, finding new things. I'm a bit of a creative, but I do have a 9 to 5, reluctantly at times. And I probably either went to Howard or Harvard. Could have gone either, right? And that was the Blipster avatar. And we expanded from there. But by super serving that avatar first, it gave us our core demographic, and then, you know, you can keep growing from that core demo. So the next thing that you think of when you're about to do your launch is typically some sort of, like, legal and like, operational things that you need to do. You need to buy your. Your URL, you need to look at your handles, get your handles. You need to consider doing a trademark search, which you can do online on your own. You don't need to hire someone to just search to see if there's a trademark available for the phrase that you want. You can go to the United States Patent and Trademark Office website to actually do a search on your own for free to see if anyone has a trademark for your word and your category that you're looking into. So I try to do some fundamentals before I launch. And then usually I'll hire a lawyer to do the basic terms and services, you know, agreements and things like that, just to make sure that we have a baseline of coverage. If you don't have a business set up already, you might need to incorporate a business and then also setting up a bank account. This is really critical. Do not commingle your funds. Do not commingle your funds. Okay? The reason for this is because if and when your business does well, you want to make sure that there is clarity on your books and what's your personal money and your business money. And that might mean that you need to write yourself your own loan, where you're saying, I am loaning myself $10,000 to invest in this business, and at the appropriate time, I will pay myself back with 2% interest, you know, just so that you have all of your documents really clear, so that as that business scales, there's no confusion if you ever get audited for this business, everything is really, really clean. It doesn't cost that much to create a separate business bank account. It doesn't even have to be a business bank account. It could just be a separate account generally. But having a separate account will help you have clarity on how the business is doing. You guys know I say this often, but, like, just don't commingle your funds, please. Thank you. But, yeah, just taking care of some of the nitty gritty stuff before you launch can be helpful, but don't overdo it. You know, you don't need like a million legal agreements. Like, just get the basics just so you protect yourself in the event that something happens and then the next thing is launch. Okay? Once you launch, you want to tell everyone, don't be shy. Don't do a baby launch, okay? Don't be a quiet launcher. Don't just be like, oh, I did one post and nobody clicked. Girl, I'm going to need you to be loud. Be loud. Be proud. Put it on your LinkedIn, put it on your Instagram, put it on your Facebook. Send out an email to your friends. Send out a text message to your friends. You want to be aggressive and hit people hard and, like, basically blitz everyone. That's kind of what I what I call it. You want to blitz people. You want it to be like a moment in time in which everyone's like, oh, yeah, I think Morgan just did a thing. If you follow me on Instagram, you've probably seen me blitz before. I blitz with CEO Spring Break, my annual retreat that's coming up in May. Make sure you get your application applications in if you haven't applied yet, okay? But I blitz when it's time. I post everywhere and I make sure that it's top of mind. So do a blitz. And don't be shy, be loud, be proud, be shameless about what you're launching. And when you're launching, ask for a conversion. Don't just launch them. Just be like, hey, I'm launching a brand. It's like, no, no, no, no. Hi, I've launched a brand. Please buy today. Please support me. Please try this, right? Actually add a call to action at the end of your copy or before at the top of your copy. I cannot tell you how many times it drives me nuts, you guys. How many times I see entrepreneurs that I work with post and they don't have a call to action. And then they ask me why their Instagrams or their socials don't convert. And I'm like, well, you didn't ask anybody to give you money. That's my rule. Are you making it easy for me to give you money? How easy is it for me to give you money? How many clicks does it take for me to give you money? How many questions or fields do I have to go through to give you money? I want you to make it as easy as possible for me to give you money. That's just a core work smart principle. I talk about it all the time in the advising program. I talk about it when I do my Instagram audits with people. How easy is it for me to give you money? Okay, once you've launched, you've got people buying your product. The last step, and this is actually probably the most critical once you've launched, is asking for testimonials and reviews. Social proof is one of the key ways to increase your conversions on whatever you're doing, whether that's you have an agency, whether you launched a product, whether you're open to brick and mortar having some sort of social proof, Google reviews, Yelp reviews, photos of real customers on your Instagram, testimonials in your email newsletter asking for reviews, you should do it every single time somebody purchases. And you should do it in an automated fashion. So whether you have an email drip where after seven days, after someone purchases, they get asked for a review, that's what happens with more Matcha. Every time somebody buys more Matcha, they get an email after it's delivered, we give them recipes and then we ask them how's it going? And to tag us, tag us on social, and then we Re share their Instagram post, think about how you can create that cycle of organic marketing for yourself. And just know that social proof is one of the key drivers for conversions on the Internet. The last step for your launch process is to iterate and optimize. So now that you've launched, you're getting some feedback, you're getting customer reviews, you're going to start to get areas of improvement. So I'll give you an example. When I first launched the Matcha product, we had these little tubes that we would stick the glass Matchas in and we would ship the matchas. They were so cute, they had little smiley faces on it and they were perfectly sized to fit the Matcha in the tube. And they were, most importantly, recycled paper. And they were sustainable, which was one of our brand pillars and still is one of our brand pillars. So I was trying to reduce the packaging and not have like too many secondary packages that we were putting the Matcha into. Now we shipped out probably like 50 orders in that first two weeks. Like those were our early adopters. And we had done shipping tests before, but not, frankly not that intensive shipping test. And I think three out of the 50 matchas that were sent broke during transit. And so when that customer opened it, you know, Matcha's a powder. So when that customer opened it, it was everywhere. I mean, the pictures they sent me were so embarrassing. I was so embarrassed. And I was like, oh my God, I'm so sorry. And I immediately shipped them new product. But at that point I had to decide is every three out of fifty, that's six out of a hundred, that's 6%. Am I okay with 6% of our products breaking and 6% of our customers getting a bad experience? No. No, I'm not okay with that. Some people might say that's not that bad, but I'm actually not okay with that. So then I had to throw it out the tubes, buy new packaging and iterate on the packaging process. So then we went and did a whole nother set of experiments on what would make sense for shipping the product and still trying to be as sustainable as possible without having so much wrappers, you know, around the packaging. But it was one of those things that you just can't over plan for these things. I mean, I guess I could have, I could have spent three months shipping across the country and really practicing, but that just would have been a waste of time. It's better just to launch, get the information and then quickly iterate. So make sure you're open to the negative feedback as well and then you're making those adjustments. And one of my pieces of advice when you're launching new things is that's why you don't over buy in the beginning. So if you are doing a product business, you know, don't buy 10,000 quantities of whatever you're buying. Try to buy like 3000 or 4000 or 2000 because you might need to change things later on. You might find a typo, you might need to change the packaging. If you're doing a service business, you know, don't sign up 25 clients, do a test or set of clients, three, four clients. Run through the full process because you're going to inevitably find things that aren't working and you're going to be able to tweak it. But if you wait too long and you don't test and iterate, then it's just a harder fall when you do actually have to make a change. Learn from my mistakes, learn from your own mistakes and be open to change early in the launching process. That's it y'all. So that's how I would recommend launching a business and really first evaluating if you should start a new business or a new side hustle. I hope this episode was helpful for you. If you did find it helpful, please leave a review. I ask you all for this every single episode and I still really appreciate it. We have been ranking in the entrepreneurship category and I'm just so excited. I think we're in the top 20 for entrepreneurship and top 100 for business right now on Apple and it's just really exciting. I'm getting so many new listeners and I love meeting new people and hearing about all the incredible ways that you're using this information from the podcast. So to continue to share it with me, sign up for my newsletter on morgandevine.com my free newsletter where I send out more resources, freebies, downloads every single week and I look forward to seeing you at next episode of the Journey. Thanks for listening to the Journey podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure you leave a review and head to our Instagram and YouTube to leave a comment. I look forward to hearing how this podcast has made an impact on your own journey.