Title: Will It Fly?
Author: Pat Flynn
Category: Nonfiction, Business
Rating: 4/5
10-word summary: Find a business idea that fits you and test it.
About Will It Fly?
Will It Fly? is a book that is meant to help you find a business idea that fits you and your life goals and test it. The author, Flynn, believes that you should test your business idea before launching it. This way, you can save a lot of time and money and only work on products and services that people are truly interested in – and that you will want to work on.
This book has a lot of interesting and useful exercises. It’s more like a guide or workbook than a textbook. And this is not the kind of book that will talk about hacks and how to get as many customers as possible and make a lot of money easily.
Will It Fly? is meant to help you find a business idea you believe in and that you will want to work on. Flynn also believes you should treat your customers with a lot of respect and create a product you believe in. I think this book can definitely be useful for you if you are thinking of starting your own business – but this may not be the best book for everyone.
What I like about Will It Fly?
1. Flynn’s perspective on business
I really like the way Flynn approaches business. He advises you to focus on creating a business that fits you, your values and your life goals. Instead of talking about get-rich-quick schemes, he focuses on building a business and a career you want to focus on for a longer time. I think his approach is not as popular in this field, but I love it!
2. This book includes many interesting and useful exercises
The exercises will help you reflect on the type of work you like so you can take that into account when making plans. The exercises are also meant to help you do research on your business idea to see if it would be viable and find ways to market it.
3. He gives clear, step-by-step instructions
This is one of the reasons why I loved this book. I feel like many books about business often give advice that is general, vague and abstract. While the ideas are often great, they are not easy to implement and act on. Will It Fly? is different because it includes simple instructions for the tasks you need to do. Flynn explains these tasks and his ideas as clearly as possible and that makes it so much more easier to implement.
4. His process can help you find out if your business idea is a good one before launching it
The exercises and advice in this book can help you reflect on your business idea and do research to see if you might be able to make money with it in the future. While these exercises cannot give you an answer that is 100% certain, they can still help you make better decisions.
5. I like the principles and values Flynn seems to have when it comes to business
While I cannot know this for sure, while reading the book I got the feeling that Flynn has some great principles when it comes to business. He advises you to respect and value your customers, to be honest. And I really like his transparency in this book.
What I don’t like about Will It Fly?
1. The exercises are great, but towards the end I felt overwhelmed by them
I really loved the book and the exercises in it – at least, in the beginning. By the time I was getting to the last part of the book, I felt so tired of and overwhelmed by the exercises that I skipped some of them. That’s a shame, because the last exercises were probably the most useful ones. If I had known this when I started reading the book, I think I would have skipped some of the exercises in the first part of the book. Or maybe I would read the entire book and then decide which exercises to work on.
2. I did not like the many examples related to fly fishing
Flynn often gave examples for how to do the tasks in the book. Sometimes he would include examples from his personal life or from his own products – and I loved those! But most of the examples focused on fly fishing and I think that’s something few people relate to. I would have liked to read about several different examples that were either based on Flynn’s life and businesses or more common examples that we could all relate to.
3. I’m not a big fan of the cover, mainly because it is hard to photograph due to its colors and the glossy finish
I usually don’t care what a book cover looks like. Obviously, I care much more about the information in the book. But sometimes, it’s a shame that a book cover is hard to photograph. For example, this cover often didn’t look great in pictures because of the color combination and because of the cover’s glossy finish. I would have opted for a simpler cover with a bit more contrast maybe…
Lessons from Will It Fly?
Test a business idea before launching it
It’s a good idea to see if people are interested in what you have to offer before investing a lot of time and money into your business idea.
Try to find a business idea that makes sense for you and your life goals
Don’t spend too much time focusing on hateful comments
If a comment is disrespectful, feel free to ignore it. Criticism can be useful, but it should always be respectful.
Quotes from Will It Fly?
“Experimentation will illuminate the truth.”
“What I try to teach you is that you don’t have to go big in the world to experience success. You just have to be big in somebody’s world.”
“The riches are in the niches.”
“Great ideas, even ones that have been validated in some way, require great execution in order to succeed.”
Should You Read “Will It Fly?”?
If you want to start your own business, this book might be useful for you. It can help you determine whether your business idea is likely to succeed and make you happy or not. Of course, you can only know this for sure if you test it in some way. But this book can be useful to you in the early stages of doing research and planning.