This is actually an easy question to answer and I hope that by answering it, you may understand a bit why I talk about the things I do with respect to testing the market, talking to customers, etc.My biggest failure as a freelance came when I released a product into the wild called WP Field Guides.My idea was what I builtIt was to educate people on the best practices of WordPress and targeted to businesses wanting to manage and grow their website.I got the idea from the leads that would come into my business, but then either because of budget or timing, they didn’t become clients.I took those reasons of budget and timing as a reason to build this product that I could offer as a sort of down-sell to leads that didn’t sign up with me.I went off writing up these guides, posts, created a website, social media profiles, linked up the e-commerce store and laid out all the pieces to fulfill the orders.Why it failedWell guess what? I sold 4.What happened you ask? Well here’s what happened. I took the WP Field Guides as the solution to the timing and budgetary reasons.I thought that a lower cost solution to their projects where they could essentially manage things on their own but have the manual to do so would be the answer they were looking for.I was wrong.I assumed when I should’ve gone out and spoke with the potential buyers to see if this was the solution they were looking for.After this time spent, all the late nights and resources I put into this, I folded it all up and gave the money back to the 4 people that made purchases.Validate the idea before building itI went back to the drawing board, only this time I had conversations with people and found that they didn’t want a DIY solution, what they wanted was a done-for-you solution and they didn’t mind paying for it.What I realized was that the offering I had at the current time wasn’t a fit because it wasn’t built for the type of clients that were turning me down.In fact, I learned that the ones turning me down were actually willing to pay a bit more if there was more depth to the services. Which I didn’t provide at the time because: 
I didn’t think of it because I didn’t have the conversations
I couldn’t take them on with the way my existing client base 
So as some projects ended, I started to offer a higher end service to those that I spoke with, refined the model and validated the idea for the business with paying customers.Ever since WP Field Guides, I will always test the idea first with real people and potential customers. Never again will I be Kevin Costner and think "If I build it, they will come."-------------------? For full show notes and to build out your own custom Ask Rezzz playlist. -------------------