Make a decision to do this! You already found Hustle Ignite, and that means you are ready to make this a reality!

Now it’s time to be action-oriented! Take the momentum that helped you find this website, hold on tight, and never let it go.

I want 100% success rates for people that use this process. That means I need the commitment, the resolve, and the passion from YOU!

Now that you’ve made a decision, it’s time to cut out the one thing that is going to push you down throughout this process: Excuses.

In my experience, this is the #1 reason why most people fail to go from idea to income.

I get it… Life is complicated and there is a lot going on. But excuses are a dime a dozen and they are keeping you from achieving your goals.

If you find yourself saying…

… As soon as I…

… Once I’m done with…

… I’ll get started when…

… Netflix now has…

JUST STOP IT! No more putting it off. No more waiting for that perfect thing, or the perfect time, or the perfect scenario. It will NEVER be perfect.

So stop making excuses! Getting from idea to income takes action. It takes determination.

Success requires that you do the hard stuff. Excuses are the easy stuff.

Never let go of the mindset that you are going to stop making excuses. 

This should be an easy step for most people, because you probably wouldn’t be here unless you already had an idea about what you want to do for an online business and/or presence.

That said, if you don’t have an idea, ask yourself the following:

• What do I have a passion for?
• What sets my soul on fire?
• What is my core competency?
• What is my unfair advantage?

Your answer to one or all of those questions should help you get started on the path to an idea.

If I told you that I had a great idea for the next best Twizzler-based mayonnaise, would you be interested? Probably not. The point? Just because you have an idea, doesn’t mean it’s a good one. Before you potentially waste a ton of time and resources on something that nobody wants, it’s imperative that you take time to validate your idea.

How do you validate an idea?

To start…

• Talk to people about your idea.
• Engage with people on applicable forums.
• Join and collaborate on Facebook groups.
• Do an online poll.

In other words, collect feedback from any source available to you and see if people think your idea has potential.

Unfortunately, people can sometimes give false praise to an idea just because they don’t want to hurt your feelings, so factor that in. And if you really want to validate the feedback you receive, especially if it’s overwhelmingly positive, see if you can get people to prepay for whatever product or service you’ll be selling. If they really believe in it, they’ll open their wallets.

To validate your idea further, considering picking up the book “Will It Fly?” by Pat Flynn. 

And if you’re worried that someone will steal your idea because you’re talking to everyone about it, don’t be. Your competitors have no shortage of ideas. They have a shortage of people to execute on those ideas.

If your idea validates, move to step #5. If it doesn’t return to step #3.

After step #4 you should have anecdotal evidence that you have an idea worth pursuing. Now it’s time for some actual evidence.

This step involves using a tool called Google Keyword Planner. You do need to have a Google account to use this tool, so if you don’t have one, get one.

Once you’re signed in, select “Go to Keyword Planner”, then “Discover new keywords”.

Under the “Start with Keywords” tab, enter a search term. For this example, let’s say you’re a chemistry teacher that is wanting to sell lesson plans to other chemistry teachers or schools. We’ll enter “chemistry lesson plans”. Select “Get Results”.

The results will not only show you the number of average monthly searches for your term, but it will tell you how competitive ads are for that term. In our case, it appears that “chemistry lesson plans” has between 100-1000 monthly searches, and the competition is low.

Additionally, Google will show you search terms that it believes are similar, along with their average monthly searches and competition.

If the search term you chose for your product or service has a high number of monthly searches, then it’s probably further validation of your idea.

What’s a “high number of monthly searches”? Unfortunately, I can’t tell you that. Every product is different.

Generally speaking, I would expect that you will only capture about 0.25% of the searches, at most (especially when you’re first starting). If you have a very niche, high-cost item, 10-100 searches a month might be enough to validate your idea. For example, capturing 0.25% of 10 searches for “yacht sales” would result in a sale every 4 months, and that may be okay.

Now let’s move away from yacht sales and come back to reality. I would say a good starting point would be 10,000-100,000 average monthly searches. If you are selling a product or service that costs $20, that would (potentially) result in $500-5000 a month in revenue. I’d say that’s a valid idea.

 Regardless of how “unique” your idea is, you probably aren’t the first to have it. But that shouldn’t deter you! You just need to spend some time thinking about what makes your version of the idea different. What makes you special. What your competitive advantage is.

Often times this takes the form of a “niche” segment of the market.

For example, I have a friend that wanted to start a business where they visit elderly people to check in on them. Their research showed there was a TON of competition in the “elder care” market. However, most of the competition focused on the health aspect of the visit and the visits were conducted by nurses. My friend’s background was in bookkeeping and management, so they focused on the “niche” of clients that needed help with keeping their bills and home organized instead of those that had significant health problems that required a nurse to visit them.

This step just requires some time spent on a search engine like Google or Bing. Try a variety of different search terms and review the results. And really dive in. Look at what your competitors are offering, how much they are charging, who them seem to be targeting, and more. Then use that information to determine a way that you can position yourself as something different.

By the way, this step can be seen as further validation of your idea. If you are finding a ton of competitors, and you can’t determine a way to differentiate yourself from them, then there may be market saturation (too many people are already acting on your idea) and you may want to consider pivoting to a different idea. If you have someone whose opinion you value, run your findings by them and see if they can find a niche for you or if they agree that it’s time to pivot. 

Now is the time to step back and review all of the information from steps 3-6. You should have a good bit of anecdotal and statistical feedback on your idea.

Even if you view your current progress as “successful”, don’t disregard this feedback. Take time to review the feedback and see if there are any additional tweaks you need to make to create the best possible product or service. Is there a way to turn your “good” idea into a “great” one?

Just make sure you don’t spend too much time here. Review, tweak, and keep the momentum going.

At this point, you’ve determined that you have a solid idea with real potential. Likely, ideas are swirling around about the content that you could create around your product or service. You don’t have to act on those ideas, but it is vitally important that you capture them!

Create a dedicated repository for the ideas that swirl through your head. Recent research shows that any new idea not captured within 37 seconds is likely never to be recalled, and is gone forever within 7 minutes.

Depending on how you like to work, this may be a physical notebook that you carry with you that you can scribble ideas in, or it may be an app on your phone that you can quickly add your ideas to. Whatever works best for you, get it set up immediately so that none of your great ideas are lost.

Personally, I spend a great deal of my day in front of my computer, so I use Evernote which allows me to not only quickly type out an idea while sitting at my desk, but I also have the Evernote app on my phone so that I can add ideas while on the go as well.

In the previous step you created a repository for content you can create around your product or service. Now it’s time tto turn those ideas into real content.

I recommend that you start with writing blog posts. While not every product or service can be blogged about, most can. And those blog posts can turn into SEO (Search Engine Optimization) gold. In other words, when people do Google/Bing searches for the product or service that you offer, it will be much easier for them to find you.

Do you prefer videos, podcasts, or some other media format over blog posts? That’s great! Do whatever appeals most to you, because you’re more likely to do it consistently. I know some people that make videos, then turn those into videos, blog posts, podcasts and more… And I know other people that start with the blog post and use that as the foundation for other forms of media. It doesn’t really matter which you start with, as long as you get that first format done.

Also, keep in mind that search engines (Google/Bing) can’t watch videos or listen to podcasts, so it’s really important that at some point your content be written out (such as a blog post) so search engines can find you. 

If possible, try to create a new piece of content every day. If that’s not feasible, decide what is reasonable and commit to that. But you should definitely try to create at least one piece of content a week.