Customer Discovery

Let’s Get Phygital

Sachin Sehgal found lasting purpose by starting his first business at the University of Iowa. Along with all that is multimedia marketing, Sachin is building Elevate and Bond Branding as he continues to explore connections between our physical and digital worlds.

You’ll love these shared wavelengths on customer discovery, content creation, value-based sales, balancing personal brands, activating phygital concepts, when to quit, spirit animals, truth-based prompt engineering with AI, collectability with web3 technologies, and playing long-term games with long-term people. As Sachin reminds us, when life gives us stories, tell them.

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By Ben McDougal, ago

Echoes

The echo of an idea is always fading. How can we extend ideation long enough to activate early moves, blow through barriers, and maintain enrollment?

This is clearly a loaded question. Much goes into enabling ideas into reality, and the rate of an idea’s degradation depends on a kabillion factors. Still, let’s sip on the artistry of pushing without being pushy.

Start easy. Personally think through the various angles that might make an idea interesting. This private contemplation requires thought and time. Time is precious, and yet we waste it. The ease of your own thoughts will soon meet the hardships that await those who don’t let ideas breathe. This makes stealth mode precarious and early moves confusing, which makes ongoing customer discovery more important.

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Will you spend time or money?

When we share a new idea with someone else, the situation becomes complicated and complex. That is the moment we put our idea on a hook. It’s also when leaders push past fear and invite doubt. Connecting dots within such complexity is difficult, takes time, and is never straightforward. When the sacrifice is made, research builds confidence and adds clarity to how opportunities are articulated.

As thought through in the Isochronal riff, this makes the efficiency of blunt repetition tempting but ineffective. More of the same without execution—whether by co-founders, mentors, early adopters, or investors—only chases interest.

To avoid the fade, find diverse ways to motivate movement. For a fun visualization, imagine a glass pond. If one pebble drops in, the lonely ripple is loud and obvious but also fades fast. It makes a splash and is soon forgotten. Now, imagine many pebbles thrown in different ways, all around the pond, from every angle, and over time. The pond is now alive! The echo of each pebble is magnified, and the abundance of rippled collisions leaves a more lasting song.

Like a pond of pebbles singing together, leaders can nudge progress long enough to activate action. Conversation in different environments, inquisitive questioning, active listening, creative analogies, talking about anything else, releasing reluctance, and letting others lead are all ways you can keep building without getting too frantic. Intentional diversity allows each different echo of one idea to feel distinct and yet all bounce on a shared wavelength.

Brewed From Within
📖 Entrepreneurship

By Ben McDougal, ago

Captive

Air travel is an elevated time to shake and move above the clouds. Elevation makes us all feel successful, so hammering on some work or catching up on a good read/listen/watch feels great, but a nap is just as nice.

Think back to the last time you warped time by catching a mid-flight nap. Suddenly, a flight attendant shatters your peaceful slumber—not to share a friendly update for passengers but to rattle off a forced sales pitch for their branded credit card. Ouch.

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Attention is hard to earn.
If you have it, don’t waste it.

Now, imagine an alternate scenario. Instead of unwanted interruption followed by an impersonal script that makes us feel like prisoners instead of appreciated customers, what if the same offer felt more like a special little gift?

How might it feel to hear that you have been selected to receive a free beverage or tasty snack, paired with that same credit card application as a convenient napkin? This tasty presentation would naturally snag the attention of nearby passengers. As word of mouth amplifies interest, similar offers could be made for those willing to complete the silly credit card application. Engage or don’t, but this quiet surprise feels less forced and can become more of a complimenting gesture to show customer appreciation.

That’s just a thought exercise, but we’ve all sat in situations where we were part of a captive audience. There is a fine line and a big difference between adding or detracting from an experience after interest is sparked or sales are made.

How do we treat our existing customers? Do they get attention only when there are issues or you have more to sell? How might we inspire more lasting joy by slowing down, setting efficiency aside, even letting go in a way? Instead of being careless with earned attention, consider unexpected ways to delight customers, which will remind them why they chose you in the first place. Giveaways, handwritten notes, or any gesture that shows you care will retain better customers.

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“Once you wow an audience, the same trick may not work anymore.” -Seth Godin, Free Prize Inside

How we treat existing customers sets the scene and determines the realities of attention retention. When customers feel thoughtfulness, they will stick around because they care as much as you do. This translates into customer retention because true fans take pride in staying connected. They have more patience when issues arise and get excited to share your charming work with others.

By Ben McDougal, ago

Wireframing

Technology is known for expanding the reach of an idea, but plenty of leaders are not tech savvy.

One common scenario is a concept from someone with industry experience but no ability to code. If an idea has technical components, it’s advantageous to be technical, but this often makes first-time founders feel like there’s nothing they can do without paying for development or immediately recruiting co-founders to help build the product. This locks the idea in limbo, when in fact, there are many methods to make purposeful progress without a line of code.

Tools to make progress without being a developer are absolutely accessible, but knowing what direction to take is time-consuming. Decisions will be needed, but if doubt lingers, one easy way to think through your ideas is to visualize each step of the user experience.

Wireframing is an exercise that requires only a pencil, paper, and time. This activity is thought-provoking and allows anyone to conceptualize the structure and flow of their idea. It helps identify each type of user and user experience (UX) with no tech required.

To start, find a wireframing template to draw everything on screens of the device(s) your product will be used on. For example, if it’s a mobile app, find a wireframing template that includes blank smartphone screens and space for notes (example) to describe each state and how everything connects within the user interface (UI).Wireframing is used mostly to conceptualize digital products, but sketches help jumpstart physical products as well. If it’s a physical product, test your drawing skills by highlighting how different elements collectively come together to form the final embodiment. If it’s a storefront, determine the ideal space by sketching how customers move within it. If it’s a network of parts, draw how the system comes together.

Along with clarifying concepts for yourself, wireframing makes it easier for others to follow how everything fits together. Time spent here saves money if development is eventually outsourced because it curates a roadmap to avoid costly detours. When building a team, wireframes show you’re serious. This visual asset helps to explain the angles and makes it easier for others to contribute.

While product design and the business to support it will need to advance, earnest wireframing helps idea machines dodge melting momentum. Remain willing to learn but consider using this early move to help avoid paralysis by getting crafty as less technology brings more ideas to life.

Brewed From Within
#70 📖 Technology

By Ben McDougal, ago

Melting Momentum

Once something melts, it’s never quite the same.

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Inspiration is perishable.

From the moment we decide to start building an idea into reality, the force required is geared toward finding and then maintaining momentum.

Meaningful momentum is awakened in endless ways. Early momentum might mean showing up at an event for the first time, researching the competitive landscape, testing an early hypothesis, leaning into customer discovery, recruiting potential co-founders, building product, and eventually activating a launch sequence. Once a project is launched, the need for momentum never fades. If anything, it only becomes more important. There are many more examples, but growing the business, achieving milestones, and celebrating progress are all forms of valuable momentum. Even in later stages of a company, momentum drives activities like succession planning, navigating a successful exit, and considering how your human, financial, cultural, intellectual, and network capital can be recycled back into the entrepreneurial ecosystem.

No matter where you’re at in your own journey, if momentum is maintained long enough, the result can be a flywheel effect that feeds on itself. Anything you want to grow will always require endless work, but with less friction, momentum delivers more time, understandings, and space for different activities emerge.

On the flip side, if momentum is melting, it’s difficult to recapture. These are moments to consider when and what to quit. If there’s enough energy to keep writing the story, it’s neat how there’s always the option to keep building. A few sparks that can help regain momentum come to mind. For instance, (re)connecting with the startup community, learning something new, saying “yes” to unlock adventure, saying “no” to create space, travel, revisiting customer discovery, building a new feature, considering a pivot, onboarding new customers, and adding to the team.

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Need help regaining momentum?

The longer stagnancy lingers, the harder it will be to realign momentum. Tactics to maintain a creative state of kamiwaza, even when momentum is melting, starts with communication. Keeping honest communication consistent adds clarity and is the easiest way to appreciate the realities of slowness. Reducing the weird by exposing the why, also keeps different stakeholders on the same page, even during more lethargic times. By reducing the tension that quietly brews in silence, teams may be able to run at lower speeds. If left unattended, this can devolve into a lack of urgency that brings new challenges, but at a lower speed, perhaps less movement is needed to regain/retain the sense of shared momentum.

When we play long-term games with long-term people, momentum is crucial, but set your own pace by exploring the type of momentum you need at different stages within the work. This awareness helps you quit chasing momentum and sets us free to forge better art, at a sustainable speed. This helps us multiply mass and velocity, which equates to momentum when, where, and how it’s needed to keep building.

By Ben McDougal, ago