How to Get Real Feedback on a Different Idea… Before the World Catches Up
Prefer to listen rather than read? Listen to the podcast episode covering this same topic here → The Quietly Disruptive Business Podcast
In our previous blog post we talked about why doing things differently feels harder at the beginning — the absence of instant feedback, the silence, the doubt that creeps in when there are no green lights. Today’s question is the practical one: how do you actually get feedback on a different idea? How do you know whether what you’re building is right before the world has had time to catch up? Because posting into the void and watching the metrics is not the answer.
Online Feedback Is Slow, Silent, and Often Fake
Most founders look for feedback online. They post an idea, share their different approach, put it out into the world and then watch the metrics — the likes, the comments, the follows, the shares. And more often than not, there are no metrics at all. Nothing comes back. It’s like throwing something into a void and hearing silence in return.
But even when the metrics do arrive, they don’t tell you what you need to know. A hundred likes on a post tells you that a hundred people tapped a button. It doesn’t tell you why. It doesn’t tell you whether it genuinely resonated or whether they’d been searching for exactly that thing. Online feedback is slow, inconsistent, indirect, and often silent. A like is not a nod. A comment is not the same as a conversation. And the absence of any response is not the same as the absence of interest.
One Real Conversation Will Tell You More Than Six Months of Content
What you need is feedback you can see, hear, and feel — and the fastest way to get that is to get in front of people in person. Find three people who are close to your ideal client. Not friends or family, but three people who you think could or would want what you’re creating. Invite them for a coffee, a chat, a two-way conversation. Tell them what you want to build and ask their opinion.
Yes, it feels exposing. All those what-ifs start running: what if they don’t get it, what if they judge me, what if I don’t like what they say. That fear makes complete sense. But here’s the reframe that changes everything: asking someone for feedback is not asking for their approval. It’s gathering information. There is a big difference. If they stare at you with a blank look, it doesn’t mean the idea is wrong — it could be the wrong person, or how you explained it, or any number of reasons. The aim is to test for a signal. When someone leans in and says tell me more, you’re onto something. When someone says they’ve never heard anyone put it that way before, you’re definitely onto something.
You Can’t Manufacture the Moment Someone Puts Their Coffee Down and Says “Wait, Say That Again”
Take a graphic designer who wanted to bring emotion back into design — to get people to actually feel something when they looked at a piece of work. They’d been posting about this approach online for months, but nothing was coming back. The doubt was creeping in. Then they went to an in-person networking event, just an informal gathering, and started talking to the other founders there about this different approach and why it mattered to them. Every time they described it, people leaned in and asked questions. They said no one had ever approached it that way before.
That feedback was the signal the founder needed. The idea was sound. There was interest. And that information boosted their confidence to launch the thing and keep showing up, online and offline, with the evidence that it resonated. You can’t get that from a like count. You can’t manufacture the moment someone puts their coffee cup down and says wait, say that again. You can see their face, their body language, what they say and how they say it. That is real feedback. Real evidence. The kind of validation that builds a confidence that becomes rock solid.
Knowing Is What Keeps You Going
Validation gets a bad rap, but it’s more nuanced than the usual black-and-white thinking. When you’re doing things differently, there is a part of you that needs to know that what you’re building matters to someone other than yourself. That’s not weakness — that’s being human. The key is knowing where that validation comes from. Online is a number. In person is a knowing. And knowing is what keeps you going when you’re building something that takes the world a while to catch up.
Doing things differently will always feel harder at the beginning, and the lack of instant feedback is the price of going first. But it doesn’t have to stay that way. Find three people. Tell them your idea. Gather the feedback, the evidence, the real validation. Then keep going. The world will catch up. Your job is to forge the path that others will follow.
About the Author: Becky Benfield Humberstone partners with Quietly Disruptive founders to build businesses that change their corner of the world, on their terms. If you started your business because you believed things could be done differently, and you're ready to make that vision real, she gets it. Based in the UK and working globally via Zoom and in person, she's done this work herself, more than once.
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