What is Reddit's opinion of Ask: The Counterintuitive Online Formula to Discover Exactly What Your Customers Want to Buy...Create a Mass of Raving Fans...and Take Any Business to the Next Level?

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I have a couple of questions, mainly I'm looking for feedback and advice.

First off, feedback on my idea?

I live in a pretty populated area, there are 200,000 people who live in my city and two other large cities (at least one bigger than mine, if not both of them) in the surrounding area. We have a very strong "local" culture. There are festivals entirely for our local businesses, a weekly market, and even a corner shop entirely stocked with goods from local businesses.

Enter my idea: A subscription box highlighting the best of our area. The goods will be food and drinks, t-shirts (a lot of the businesses actually have cool shirts), coffee, small pieces of artwork, products, vouchers (for items not easily shipped, like beer baring my local laws and non-packaged foods), CDs from local bands, as well as a digital download section (which might have more music, some backgrounds featuring local photography).

Given what I've told you about the climate of my area, what do you think about this idea? I'm not looking for a huge business, my goal to consider this "successful" would be a net profit of $12,000/year.

Secondly, does anyone have advice on using surveys for product development? I've been reading Ask and I'm wondering if someone cold help me further develop using those concepts and applying them to developing a physical product.

I feel like most of the advice there has infoproducts in mind, and while Levesque sometimes elaborates on "This is how you could use it for physical goods" you're mostly on your own to try to figure it out.

u/lefonty - Thanks for the question. I recommend checking out Ryan Levesque. He has a great system for finding out what a large audience really wants / desires.

Here's his book.

(I have zero affiliation with Ryan and don't benefit from sharing this - I just heard him on Pat Flynn's podcast and he mentors a colleague of mine)

Books regarding how to build your online business / extract value out of an email list come from people who collected their online offerings.

For example: Ryan Levesque "Ask" on how to build products through email lists are a compilation of user stories from what he's done online.

With that said if you're looking for general entrepreneurship books here are a few I would check out:

• My Startup Life by Ben Casnocha. Ben started a company in his teens. Recently he wrote a book with Reid Hoffman (founder of LinkedIn) called The Startup of You

• Crush It by Gary Vaynerchuck

• The Four Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss

The best books to read to get through the thick and thin however are not business books. For example, Meditations by Marcus Aurelius is excellent

I don't have any experience in this but heard that "Ask" is a good book on the subject: http://www.amazon.com/Ask-Counterintuitive-Discover-Customers-Business/dp/1939447720/