A story: we aren’t close, but I like her (if that makes sense).

Do you know someone and you think it’s INSANE that new clients aren’t rushing to buy from them?

That’s Amy.

Amy and I aren’t close. But I like her.

She’s on her own as a solopreneur. She wants to help companies develop a go-to-market strategy.

No one is hiring her.

She’s posting on LinkedIn like mad. She’s blogging. She’s trying to get on podcasts. She’s in 4 networking groups.

The needle is not moving.

Amy keeps coming up with services she wants to sell. This is why I like here. She’s always got a new idea that sounds fun – if only people would buy from her.

I gave her the 3 questions I ask about business customers for my ideas.

Bluntly, it’s a filter. It kills ideas that wouldn’t live without life support.

1. Can I find customers with a LinkedIn search?
2. If I find them, can I reach them cost-effectively?
3. Do they pay people like me for stuff like this?
   

Your ideas has to get a ‘Yes’ to every question.

If your target client is “frustrated with their current agency…” stop right there. LinkedIn doesn’t search by mood. You need to know if someone is a likely customer based on their title or location, or seniority, years in the job, or something else LinkedIn lets you search for. If you can’t do this kind of search, kill your idea, or reset.

If it’d take a lot of money or time to reach enough of them as leads, so the tiny portion who become clients this quarter is worth the effort, kill the idea. You don’t have enough runway.

And if you’re trying to convince people to buy a solution to a problem they don’t know they have, kill the idea. You’re too small to “educate a market into existence”. Stop that.

Like all of us, Amy can generate more ideas. What she can’t do right now is generate cash. Step 1 is to stop wasting it. That’s what the filter is for.

I’m SURE she’ll come up with something easy to sell, eventually.

I’m putting an idea through this filter right now — top-of-funnel copywriting as a subscription for agencies and CMOs. I don’t know if it’ll fly, but the filter will at least tell me if it’s doomed to crash and burn.