[Interview] The Launching Point Interviews Me!

I recently had the great pleasure of meeting Mike O’Toole of The Launching Point podcast, and we spent a delightful hour or so together discussing what it takes to get your business going, and why fear so often derails people.

They know they want to start a business. They may even have a good idea.

But they’re afraid to take the next step and launch.

In our conversation, I shared a simple three-step approach for testing a business idea and beginning to find your first clients.

Listen to the original interview here:

Looking Back

I’m keeping this conversation in the Profitable Popularity archives because the underlying idea still matters to me.

We can spend an extraordinary amount of time trying to make an idea certain before allowing the real world to respond to it.

But businesses aren’t built entirely through thinking, planning, or perfecting. At some point, an idea has to encounter reality.

You offer something.

Someone responds.

You learn.

Adjust.

You offer again.

That movement gives you information that another month of private deliberation often cannot.

I’ve developed this idea much further in Test It In The Real World: Launch Before You’re Ready, and Learn What Works by Doing. It’s about replacing the impossible requirement of certainty with something far more useful: evidence.

As an accidental entrepreneur myself, I’ve learned that you don’t have to know exactly how everything will unfold before you begin.

Sometimes the next step is simply to let the real world answer back.

N.B. Post revised 2026.