Don’t Trust Ideas, Test Them with Alex Sanfilippo

Alex Sanfilippo is the founder of PodPros a SAAS company that includes PodMatch and PocastSOP which are tools to help podcasters connect and be more efficient.

I am a big fan of PodMatch as it was the primary tool that I used to help me connect with show hosts and be on over 45 podcasts in a four-month block.

We had a great conversation about entrepreneurial creativity and why those brainstorming sessions are so crucial to business success. Also, you can't stop your brain from making ideas — nor should you want to! So, you need a productive way to capture and process them. Alex has some great tactics for that.

You can find the resources and access to Alex on his website at https://podpros.com.

If you’re interested in looking into his ‘dating service for connecting podcast guests and hosts’  just head over to PodMatch and you’ll see what I’m talking about.

If you’re ready to transform your entrepreneurial frustrations into freedoms by cutting through the chaos and using frameworks that help you run an even better business and enjoy an even better life, simply go to:   www.Mohr.Coach

Take the free assessment on the top right-hand side of my website and we’ll set up a time to chat

Are you looking to make some changes in your business and your life in 2024?  Head over to speaktopete.com and book a chat with me to see if we're the right fit!

Transcript

Alex Sanfilippo  00:00

Get a journal, write the whole idea out not to necessarily do something with it, but just write the whole thing out. So it's not stuck in your head anymore. I love a David Allen quote. And he says Your head is for having ideas, not for storing them. And he also says that your head is a crappy office. And it's true, like you can't just keep it all there, get it out. But now it's to talk about the passion that's involved. I think the best thing that we can do, as entrepreneurs as visionaries, is find the place that we want to serve. So to use an example, I love playing soccer, this is not a business that I'm actually going to go with. But I love playing soccer. So it'd be great for me to get into that ecosystem to get into the community to meet the people because I'm passionate about that. And then look for ideas in that place. And you and I actually share a very specific way that we do that, which I'll be happy to share in a moment here. But I think the first thing to do, like I said, write it down after that, find a place that you're passionate about and get into it. So you can kind of hone in the idea a little bit more and get them more specific instead of being all over the place. Again, if you're like me, this morning, I woke up with an idea for airlines to get people on planes faster. Like I'm not going to do anything with that. Yeah, I wrote it all down on a piece of paper, you better believe it when I woke up.

Pete Mohr  01:03

Hey, it's Pete, and welcome to the simplifying entrepreneurship podcast helping you cut through the chaos of running a business and transforming your frustrations into freedoms. And today I had the opportunity to speak with Alex Sanfilippo. And Alex is the founder of pod match and podcast SOP. And he's a really interesting guy and has grown his business exponentially, in really under two years has developed this system, and really grown it to have a huge membership base, and do a lot of good things. So we're going to get into sort of the idea of how to take an idea from your head and put it into fruition. And Alex is going to chat a little bit about why you should stop trusting your business ideas. And what you need to do because a lot of us were visionaries, and we've got all these different ideas, you know, 1000 ideas at squirrel brain. We've talked about it before on the podcast. Which ones do you pick? How do you hone down? And how do you get it to the point where it's making you some money and you can test it and try it. So some good stuff here from Alex. We'll get right in the conversation with Alex Sanfilippo. Alex Sanfilippo It is a pleasure to have you here on the simplifying entrepreneurship podcast today.

Alex Sanfilippo  02:22

Pete Absolutely an honor to be here. And also shout out for you. Thanks for being on my podcast a while back. I really appreciate that now getting to come on your podcast like a dream for me. So thanks so much for having me

Pete Mohr  02:31

here. It was great to be on the podcast. And I love the format. We had a little chat before we hopped on air here, but it is creating a brand, right? No, yeah, that's it. Because I think I called it one day, I think I call it making a brand. I've heard

Alex Sanfilippo  02:43

every variation of it, you can leave it in there, because we will call it creating a brand, create brand, building a brand. I've heard it all and I just respond to all at this point. You know, like eventually when people call you. Like my wife's name is Alicia InterSystems Ashley, but my wife will literally respond to anyone who calls her name. It starts with an A because that's how I feel about podcast. But anyway, again, appreciate you being on it really good guests, you've got a great podcasting voice is a lot of fun. Oh, thanks, man. Yeah,

Pete Mohr  03:06

creating a brand was a great experience for me too. And the thing I liked about that podcast is was I had to get it down into three or four minutes. It's like, what can you say in three or four minutes, it's actually going to drive an impact. And that's one of the things that I like about our podcast heroes simplifying entrepreneurship is we're always trying to keep them into short morsels that you can catch on the ride to work or the bus ride or commute or whatever the case is, or even if you're having a morning coffee in 15 or 20 minutes and absorb some great information to take you onwards and outwards to a better business and a better life. Right?

Alex Sanfilippo  03:40

Yeah. And I love the short format. So I'm excited to add some value with you here today. Thanks. Thanks again for having me here.

Pete Mohr  03:45

Sweet man. So today, we're gonna chat a little bit about why you should stop trusting your business idea and what to do instead and kick us off here, Alex, with your thoughts on the idea around why you should stop trusting your business ideas.

Alex Sanfilippo  04:00

Yeah, so if anyone who's listening is like me, I'm a bit of a visionary. I get a lot of ideas. And I actually start writing them in a book. Here's the thing I can go back months, years later, look at these ideas and tell you that about one out of every 100 is a good idea. But the problem is so many of us, myself included it times in my life, is we think we write down the idea. It sounds so good. We're cyclic, we, we can create passion within ourselves. We're like we're doing this idea. But the truth is normally, we're just idea people like as entrepreneurs as visionaries, but usually ideas aren't good. And that's okay. That's not a problem. But I think it's so important. We understand that we don't have to take action, all of them because we're setting ourselves up for just repeat failure. And some failure can be good. But if you just repeatedly tried to implement these ideas you have, you might not be serving anyone, even yourself.

Pete Mohr  04:44

Yeah, I appreciate that. And I mean, I'm like you, I'm a visionary. I'm an ideas guy, and I'm always coming up and I've got my I've got my flows in my iPad, and I'm always writing stuff down and making notes and things like that. And I like to use tools to sort of frame that stuff up and I know you want to talk a little bit about how you would frame that so that you may not go on it. And what would you do with somebody said, Okay, I'm always got these ideas like you and like me. So what do I need to do to sort of take care of that? And how do I work through that? Because it's not easy when you have these ideas coming at you all the time they happen in the middle of the night, they happen in the morning coffee, they happen in the shower, right? So what do you do with it? How do you address it? What do you pick to move ahead, and what do you pick to leave behind?

Alex Sanfilippo  05:29

So first off, I'll mention that you should write down every idea you have, because it'll just float around your head. And I used to do that. And sometimes I have two or three ideas, just like circling my head, and I couldn't focus on anything, get a journal, write the whole idea out, not to necessarily do something with it, but just write the whole thing out. So it's not stuck in your head anymore. I love a David Allen quote. And he says Your head is for having ideas, not for storing them. And he also says that your head is a crappy office. And it's true, like you can't just keep it all there, get it out. But now it's to talk about the passion that's involved. I think the best thing that we can do, as entrepreneurs as visionaries, is find the place that we want to serve. So to use an example, I love playing soccer, this is not a business that I'm actually going to go with. But I love playing soccer. So it'd be great for me to get into that ecosystem to get into the community to meet the people because I'm passionate about that. And then look for ideas in that place. And you and actually share a very specific way that we do that, which I'd be happy to share in a moment here. But I think the first thing to do, like I said, write it down after that, find a place that you're passionate about and get into it. So you can kind of hone in the idea a little bit more and get them more specific instead of being all over the place. Because again, if you're like me, this morning, I woke up with an idea for airlines to get people on planes faster. Like I'm not gonna do anything like that. Yeah, and I wrote it all down on a piece of paper, you better believe it when I woke up. We have squirrel brains,

Pete Mohr  06:39

right? And it's like, those things just kind of come in. It's like, Oh, I love the idea of just getting it down. i One of the things I've gone to and I mean, I've journals and all sorts of stuff in behind me. And I've literally gone to an iPad, and I'm putting it all in an iPad now still using a pen. But basically, I'm scribing everything down, because I like to actually physically write it. Do you write your stuff too? Or do you type stuff, Alex,

Alex Sanfilippo  07:02

I actually write it all on pen and paper. But here's the thing, like, I don't want to discourage him from this and be like, oh, man, all these guys with their ideas and not doing stuff with them. The act of writing out ideas and flexing that creative muscle is what helps you develop good ideas when the opportunity comes. And I've never met an entrepreneur that will tell you like a successful entrepreneur will tell you that all their ideas are good. Oh, I mean, even if you look at some of these big companies, like, let's use Google as an example, they have entire departments built out to have ideas and they scrapped 99% of them because they just say, it's not really good idea. But they understand that the practice of continuing to just create a culture that allows those ideas to happen for ourselves and for companies is so important along the way. So for me, the practice of writing down creative ideas every day. I love that. As a matter of fact, if I don't have one, I try to force an idea because I want to flex that muscle because I truly believe that creativity is a muscle.

Pete Mohr  07:52

I couldn't agree more. It's something that I have in my daily practice as well. Imagine looking back a year from now and realizing that you've just experienced one of your best years ever, things often don't just happen. They're planned. So if you haven't listened to the four part miniseries in season two of the simplifying entrepreneurship podcast around planning your best year ever, I encourage you to go back and binge them. They're four quick sessions, download the exercises that I outline in those and do the homework. You don't want to have the same old year again, do you? Are you like me? Have you tried loads of planners and just not found the right one, I created the one page planner with the entrepreneur in mind. It's a fillable PDF format. So you can either print it off and write everything in a binder or you can complete it on your computer or your tablet. So download it today at simplifying entrepreneurship.com forward slash planner so that you'll be looking back next year at this time with a sense of accomplishment and pride you've never felt before. With regards to what we were just chatting about why should the business ideas that you come up with on their own not be trusted Alex.

Alex Sanfilippo  09:10

So because there's not necessarily a tie to someone that has a problem. And that's kind of the solution that I offer is as a counter to this, if you will, instead of trusting your own ideas, like I said, you find an area of passion get into the ecosystem, you start getting into community and find a problem. So now that like think about that, like if you identify a problem that somebody has in a specific place, now you have freedom to create an idea that fixes that problem, the next step is to offer a solution to that problem. And I find this is the most simple way to just really make entrepreneurship not foolproof but closer to it. Right? Again, you find the area of passion you get into the community, you ask them what the problem is, you talk to real people, when you find that you create an idea based off something can be a solution to that problem. And I find that that to me, is the framework for building something that's going to really succeed. Well. I love that and I mean it's something that I certainly Before we hopped on, I certainly coached to that sort of philosophy as well, whether you're doing it on your website, or whether you're doing it in your one liner, your elevator pitch, you know, all of those things that that sort of step by step framework of what's the solution? And how are you addressing the problems through your goods and services, and then showing them what life looks like afterwards, once they use it, and showing them what the real benefit of of your entrepreneurial venture is, and how it's going to change their life and make it better. So I love your framework around that. And it's something that's near and dear to me as well. You call your PSA problem solution life Afters, which is what you say in your practice, which I still respect. I mean, I think that we just have both probably had too many ideas and too many failures to not discovery on the way is my guess. But really, it's it takes a lot of pressure off of you as entrepreneur, because now you're operating in a place of passion. And there's actual people that you're connected with, there's a problem that they have. And there's a solution that you have the opportunity to come up with a creative idea to solve. I think that if more of us as entrepreneurs, especially earlier stage are maybe just building up a business and maybe in its first few millions, that's the right time to really hone in on this. Because many of us when you hit that point, especially Pete, you know this, people start think about other product lines, who I could add another service, add another product, that's it, if you just repeat this process and say, You know what, let's get back into the community, even me as the founder, I'm going to go back on the frontlines of this thing. And I'm going to start talking to people finding the next problem that they have. So we can create that solution. Once again, I think if you can get good at repeating this, you're going to save yourself in your businesses, a lot of hurdle on the way.

Pete Mohr  11:30

So one of the other things we were going to chat about to Alex was, what's the alternative? Or the better solution for building a business instead of going this route? And just kind of kicking it off

Alex Sanfilippo  11:41

that way? Instead of focusing so much on the branding? When I say brand? I mean, the brand is not creating a brand? Yeah, yeah, like not on top of like the logo, all the fancy things that go with it, how you're gonna market it, how it's gonna get to the masses, you've got to take your minimum viable product to your minimum viable audience. So as quickly as you can get it to market to the smallest group of people that you can really test it with. And I don't know if there's any science behind this, and maybe there is, I'm not gonna claim to be that smart. But for me, I've always found 100 people, if I can find 100 People that are my ideal client and test it with them, I'm going to do really well. When I launched my last business, what I did is we, we didn't have a logo, it was almost all tech space. All ideas reached out to the 100 people who said it was a problem we had, again, it was an area of passion about found their problem, created the MVP, and went to them. I said, tell me if this works. And some are like, there's no logo, like, are you going to name this thing? I'm like, Just tell me if it works, we'll get there the problem that you have. And we're able to determine that, yes, it does. But you need to make these few changes. And the problem is, so many of us, we skip that upfront. So we build out this really polished, pretty product, we're excited to launch it come and find out, it doesn't actually solve the problem that we thought it did. And so for me, it's always about that MVP, I'm not going to waste a lot of time trying to solve a problem, you've got to go ahead and start as soon as you possibly can. And one more side note of this, Pete, if I can add this, I'm always only going to focus on solving simple problems. Sure, that might not build a billion dollar business ever, because you got to solve a really big hard problem if you want to do that. But for me, I look at the simple problems that really are going to bring a really quick change in somebody's life in a positive way. And that's, that's what I want to do. And so for me, I'm not like looking at, okay, we're gonna need a team of 45 people to do this, we're gonna need this. I don't look at those things. I just say what's the smallest problems people have? And how can we solve that the fastest possible way, and along the way, confirm that it works. And I know I rambled on there, Luna, it's great. That's why I'm just so passionate about.

Pete Mohr  13:33

And for me, I love the idea of just getting it out. I literally had a coaching call with somebody about that yesterday with regards to a product that they're developing, spending all this money and all this stuff regarding getting all the copyrights and the patents and all that sort of stuff, but has only sold $3,000 worth of this particular product. And it's like, Wow, we got to shift focus a little bit and work on actually getting it out there to the public to see whether there's any validity in bigger market. And some of that some of the other things, one of my favorite quotes around that idea, or sort of favorite ideas around that idea from Dan Sullivan, a great entrepreneurial coach from Strategic Coach, and he uses the framework, it needs to be tested on check writers, right? You need to test your ideas on check writers who is going to write you a check, and can you get the check? Because if you can't, don't even worry about it. And if you can, then it's worth pursuing. Right and that's that same sort of idea around the idea that we just got to get somebody out there to see whether actually can address their problem right and can make their life better afterwards.

Alex Sanfilippo  14:39

Dan Sullivan, first off, he's he's amazing, like been very influential in my life. But that to that same point, that the whole idea of like finding the person that's going to pay you a lot of people tell your ideas Great. Oh, I love it. I totally need that. Oh, man. It's the best idea ever, until you say put your credit card information here. And then it's, oh, well, it's good for some people or I don't really need it right now. But it also long with making that MVP is to find a way to charge people as quickly as possible. I don't mean to try and make money. But at the end of day, it is a business. And you have to make sure that it actually is a problem that people are going to pay for. So I'm really glad you brought that up. Because one of my businesses that I launched, I won't call it a failure, but it started off a lot rockier than I wanted it to. I didn't do that. I didn't test it with the money side of it. And when it came time for people to put in the credit card information, a very, very small percentage was interested and then come to find out people were misleading me not meaning to, but they just liked me as a person. Yeah, they want to they want you to succeed. Right? Right. Yeah. And so for I love that you said, it's so important to make sure that somebody is actually going to sign something to pay. Maybe it's as simple as a pre order for some people like, Well, someone even pre order it, give them 50% off or something crazy, right. But Will someone actually pay for this? Finding that out as early as possible, so important, tested on check writers, as

Pete Mohr  15:50

Dan always says, yeah, no, I mean, we we learn and that's the great thing with podcasting. Right, Alex, I mean, that's your business these days, podcasting, and pod matches, one of the ones that I use in podcast SOPs or new one. So tell us a little bit Alex been a good conversation here around business. But let's, let's hear a little bit about your business and your rapid rise. I mean, you've only been added for about a year and a half with this. And it's just been a great rise and successful launch. And you're helping all kinds of podcasters. And you're doing great things out there. So tell our audience a little bit about what it is you do, how they can get a hold of you and all that great stuff.

Alex Sanfilippo  16:29

Sure. Thanks so much for the opportunity. And first, I just want to mention, you gave me like an amazing testimonial earlier, like we were talking like literally my day, my week, my month has been made just your kindness. So that's helped me a lot. I'm glad to hear that. So for me, like I follow this framework, I mean, one day, I was on a podcasting stage, and I tell my wife, when I get off, I'm gonna talk to as many podcasters as I can, because I'm passionate about this area to find what they're struggling with 100 Different people said the same thing. When I got that stage, they all lined up, and they're all saying I'm having trouble finding ideal guests, we built a solution for that we tested those 100 people. And then from there, it was just about building the community further, because already in the ecosystem. Now I'm like, hey, help me spread the word. If no other podcasters that need this, we'll find some guests along the way. Let's try to build this thing together. And really, it's just been making sure we keep that vision at the front like beginning with why I believe that's such an important thing to do, like keeping the why out there. Make sure that remember, we're here to support podcasters. And why we're in this is to help get those independent voices out, and then just stay in focus on continuous improvement. And because of that pod match has done really well. And for anyone who's wondering what that is pod match literally connects podcast guests and hosts together like Tinder connects people for dates. Yeah, same idea. If I'm both similar interests, podcast, SOP, the new one is a basically project management software specifically for podcasters. Because we find the people that don't have any experience with project management software, when they're new podcaster already overwhelmed and stress. You tell them go download Asana go download monday.com great tools, but it does about 20,000 things. So they're already feeling overwhelmed. And now you just overwhelm them even more. So we've built something that just helps with episode releases. And again, going back to the whole framework, to find out that we should we should make podcasts as a paid, we went back to our community and said, what's the next struggle? And this is what we heard. So those are the things I'm really involved in. And absolutely love what I'm doing full time podcasting. It's just been, it's been such a blessing to be part of so Thanks for Thanks for asking that everything I do there, though. That's, that is my focus right now.

Pete Mohr  18:13

No, that's cool. I mean, you tied it into Docker, what we talked about too, right, you're addressing the problem, you're coming up with solution, and you're giving people a better life so that they can, you know, get their time back or get whatever it is that they want back. Basically, from that perspective. For me, it's like, I want my time back, I have a limited amount of time and pod match saves me time. So that was the most important thing of using that service for that. And that's the whole thing that we've been talking about today that the problem and the solution. And you know, all of that sort of stuff really aligns to what you're doing and aligns to our conversation today. And it is a great service. And I will certainly give you that referral you're looking for down the road here. So it's been a pleasure having you Alex, and really great chance to reconnect here. And I thank you for being on simplifying entrepreneurship podcast today.

Alex Sanfilippo  19:01

Yeah, Pete, thank you so much, everyone who listened really appreciate the time today.

Pete Mohr  19:08

Well, I hope you enjoyed that. And thanks for spending some time with Alex and I here today and think about how you can rearrange your thoughts, get them down onto paper, you know, Alex was talking about he uses a journal, I've moved all of my stuff. Now onto iPad. I still like that idea of putting the pen in my hand and writing it down as opposed to typing things. And that's just me, it's up to you how you like to do it. But record all those ideas and then flush them through this model that we talked about today. What's the problem your client has or the person has with the solution that you're trying to develop? Come up with the solution and then show them the life afterwards? Such an important piece of flowing whether your business idea has any legs to it and then getting the business out as soon as you can to the public and getting those checks in like we had talked earlier in the conversation about Dan Sullivan's idea of tested on a check writer, so important to start getting that flow of stuff back into the business. So you can see if people are actually flowing through the way you had thought about it. And if they haven't make the changes, it's okay to make the changes if you haven't invested so much money upfront. So all of those things, lots of great lessons here from Alex today, and I really enjoyed our conversation. So if you like the podcast, share it with your friends, and subscribe to simplifying entrepreneurship YouTube channel if you can. I'd love your feedback in the comment section of YouTube. And I'll personally respond to each one of them. If you have any questions around what Alex and I talked about here today, I'm interested to hear your future topics that you might want us to cover or future guests that you'd like to hear from. You can help me out by subscribing to the podcast on Spotify or Apple as well and rating and reviewing this episode on Apple by leaving us up to a five star review. If you like the podcast and would like to support it. I have a Patreon at patreon.com/pete Mohr where you can support the podcast at whichever level you like. Connect with me on LinkedIn, Instagram or Facebook. The links are in the show notes. And lastly, you can check out my website at more coach that's mo hr.ce o ACH and until next time, make it a great day

21:25

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