5-Steps To Validate A Digital Product Before You Build It
Pre-Launch Customer Simulator
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After $10M+ in digital product sales, we’ve landed on a 5-step validation process we use every single time we create something new.
And it all happens before we build a single product.
Here are the steps:
Step 1: Pick One Problem For One Person
Pick a specific problem you can solve for a specific person in a specific way.
Ship 30 helps beginner writers start writing online by publishing every day for 30 days. That’s it.
One problem, one person, one specific mechanism for solving it.
Step 2: Send A Waitlist Email Or Social Post
Once you have a problem, send one email to your list.
At the top and bottom, write:
“I’m thinking about launching [product name]. If you’re interested in staying updated, click here to join the waitlist.”
When you do this, two things happen.
First, you segment your list into people who raised their hand and said they’re potentially interested. Second, you get your first real signal. If nobody clicks, that’s data. Try a different angle or a different problem.
If 50 people click, you just found a pocket of demand you can build around.
Step 3: Redirect Waitlist Opt-Ins To A Survey
Everyone who clicks that waitlist link gets redirected to a short survey.
You can ask a few questions, but you really only need one:
“What’s the number one question you’d want me to cover about [topic]?”
This lets your potential customers write your curriculum for you.
When you have 30 or 50 survey responses sitting in a Typeform, you’re looking at the exact language your audience uses to describe their problems.
Those responses become the raw material for everything from your module titles to the exact copy on your landing page. You didn’t have to guess any of it.
Step 4: Book 10 Customer Interviews
Take your waitlist subscribers and send them a Calendly link.
Offer 20-minute calls in exchange for free access to the product when it launches. Block two or three days and get on at least 10 calls. Ask what they’ve tried before, what stopped them, what outcome they’re actually looking for, and what would make them confident enough to buy.
You will learn more in ten short customer interviews than in anything else you could possibly do.
Your customers will literally hand you the language for your sales page.
Step 5: Bootstrap Your Product With A Small Group
Get three to ten people into a Slack channel, a Discord, a group DM, whatever.
Charge them at a discount or offer a money-back guarantee in exchange for a testimonial and a one-on-one interview at the end.
Then build the product module by module alongside them.
You are building your product WITH people. So, by the time you sit down to build, you already know it’s going to work.
That’s it.
Now, you might be thinking…
“But Cole, I don’t have a list yet?”
Fair.
If you don’t have a list yet, you can’t skip Steps 2–4.
But you’re not stuck either.
You can start before you have an audience by doing the next-best thing: pressure-testing your idea against simulated customers.
I built a prompt that does exactly this.
The Pre-Launch Customer Simulator generates 10 diverse potential customers for your product idea. The prompt runs each one through a structured interview. Then it synthesizes the questions your sales page has to answer, the objections that would stop people from buying, and a potential 90-day outcome you can lead with in your marketing.
It’s not a replacement for talking to people, but it will help you pressure test a hypothesis to validate or kill.
Click here to try the Pre-Launch Customer Simulator
Chat soon,
Dickie & Cole
Co-Founders of:
PS - Want to build your first (or next) digital product and build a list of ready-to-buy customers?
Then join us inside Low-Ticket Launchpad Live.
We’ll show you how to build & sell a $350 digital product in 14 days (with AI).
Doors open Monday, April 20th (TOMORROW!).
I needed this now - I am in the pre list and validation stage and I forgot the steps. I need roadmaps like this - thank you !!!