Scan time: 2-3 minutes / Read time: 3-5 minutes
Howdy rebel ideapreneurs 🦸♂️🦸♀️
Erin writes a weekly newsletter about making dumplings and bao from scratch — soft dough pockets folded around a savory filling.
It started on a quiet Sunday, when folding dumplings became her little ritual.
Her pitch is simple: anyone can fold a dumpling — you just need someone to show you.
Erin's readers feel it too — they'd fold dumplings tonight, if someone showed them how.
⛳️ Problem:
Erin wants to sell a paid dumpling class, but she keeps building instead of selling.
She's filming lessons, making slides, buying a nicer mic — and weeks keep going by.
She still hasn't asked one person to pay, and dreads that nobody will want it. That one hurts.
Her struggle:
She's building first and hoping, instead of knowing anyone will actually pay.
🔥 The recipe
➡️ The Pay-First Test
Think about a food truck planning a new taco.
It doesn't cook a hundred and just hope they sell.
It takes paid pre-orders at the window first, then cooks only what people already bought.
Turns out the smartest test is tiny and cheap.
That's what Noah Kagan figured out.
He founded AppSumo, which now does tens of millions of dollars a year.
He starts every product the same way: by collecting money first.
His rule: don't build first and just hope.
Get real people to pay before you make the thing.
Not a thumbs-up or a "looks great" — actual money, upfront, for something that doesn't exist yet.
If a few won't pre-pay, the idea isn't ready — change it before wasting a month.
A week of asking beats months of building something nobody wants.
The money, not your hope, is what tells you the idea is real.
🚗 So Erin tried it her way.
Here's Erin and her dumpling newsletter, again.
She'd been filming lessons and buying gear for a class nobody had paid for yet.
So she flipped it, and got paid before building instead.
First she wrote the offer in one plain line.
"A live Zoom class: fold your first dumpling this Sunday" — clear, and easy to say yes to.
Then she emailed her list: "$15, only ten spots — pay to save yours."
She hit send, then braced for silence.
No class existed yet. Just the offer and a payment link.
Get this — five readers paid that same afternoon, before she'd filmed a single thing.
Plot twist: she'd almost spent a month building blind, hoping people would show up.
Now she knew it was real — so she built it, for the five who'd already paid.
Cha-ching.
🧸 Don't build and hope. Get people to pay first — if they won't, the idea isn't ready.
The prompt below turns your idea into a pre-sell you can run this week.
So you find out people will pay before you build anything.
🏄♀️ The prompt
Save this prompt as a Skill or add to Project in your favorite AI tool — build once, use often.
Update your input values in the prompt, or just run it as is. Your AI sidekick will use the example values and give you an output.
CONTEXT:
- (use what's available, fall back to the inline values)
- If my Voice Profile exists, write in that voice. Otherwise, write in a clear, warm, no-jargon voice — first-person, plain words, no startup-speak.
- If my ICP / Audience doc exists, target that reader. Otherwise, use the audience below.
Inputs:
The thing I want to make and sell:
{e.g. a live Zoom class teaching beginners to fold dumplings}
Who's already asking me for it (my most likely first buyers):
{e.g. newsletter readers who keep replying "how do you fold these?"}
The price and how many pre-sales would prove it's real:
{e.g. $15 a spot; if 3+ people pay, I'll build it}
For Outcome: {e.g. a pre-sell message I can send this week and a clear go / no-go}
Outputs:
1. The offer in one line — what it is, who it's for, what they get.
2. The pre-sell message — a short, warm note asking people to pay now, with the link.
3. My go/no-go number — the exact count of pre-sales that means build it.
4. If it flops — what a "no" is telling me, and how to tweak the offer before I try again.
Then flag the excuse I'm using to build instead of ask, and what to do today.
That's it, my fellow trailblazers!
Yours 'proving to you that most business failures are preventable and success can be engineered' Vijay Peduru 🦸♂️