Customer Discovery

Early Moves

So you have a business idea you’d like to explore? Yes!

It’s easy to say “Let’s gooo!” but when you say yes to something, you’re also saying no to something else. This is opportunity cost, so be strategic with your early moves. Before you go too far, remember that an appropriate “no” early on is better than a long, wrong “yes.” Let’s explore how to decide what ideas to activate and how to help them bloom.

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Things you dedicate time to will grow.

It takes discipline, but time alone with any idea is a good way to avoid swinging at bad pitches. Dig into online research before going too far. Determine what related products or services already exist. Run some numbers. Talk to potential customers and see if you can snag a few preorders. The goal is to understand the realistic impact you may be able to make in the market by confirming it’s something strangers are willing to pay for.

If you start to feel genuine interest, talk with others who may be interested in collaborating. Think about your own skills to identify where you’ll need help. Attend related events to further qualify early concepts. Even if you’re not ready to share details, the readiness to Show Up and #GiveFirst often leads to new allies who can connect dots as you continue working through ideation, team development, research, and testing.

Before you go much further, take a pit stop with your future self. Is this a business/market you want to work on for the foreseeable future? If you like to quilt, it doesn’t mean you should start a quilting business. The hardships that come with being a business owner can actually kill your passion. Dance with all your ideas, but recognize when something should remain a hobby.

Early moves are exhilarating, but there’s value in being efficient as you decide if something is going to work. If this evolving business idea continues to touch your heart after internal and external analysis, you may have something ready to pursue! Inspiration is perishable, so when this happens, be ready to take action. As you do, stay patient. It’s not how fast you move, it’s that you find ways to keep moving. Avoid the headline trap and find lasting energy knowing that even hints of progress can nurture an idea toward reality.

As you continue moving forward, think big, but remain realistic by doing one thing really well. Stay intellectually humble and welcome doubt by working with others and be ready to iterate quickly. It often takes many versions of an idea to land on something ready for the wild.

By Ben McDougal, ago

Feedback is Data

Customer discovery paves the path to profitability.

This really is the work for entrepreneurs starting a new business. Customer discovery requires curiosity, patience, humility, hard work, thick skin, an interest in being wrong, discernment, and a willingness to adapt.

For many entrepreneurs, impartial feedback can be scary. Customer discovery puts our ideas on the hook and conversations with strangers may contradict past assumptions, but that’s the point! Interacting with the market you seek to serve allows us to learn from “no” in a way that gets us to “yes.” As you collaborate with those who criticize what you’re building, learn why naysayers disagree with your hypotheses. Be humble and make your concepts more compelling to change their minds.

Collecting such real-world data is human and intellectual capital that will attract more network and financial capital. The more you learn from others, the more you’ll recognize—and be able to meet—true demand. This can be a protracted process, which can make it feel unnecessary, but honest feedback will strengthen your value proposition and allow you to eventually go further in the right direction.

When learning from the perspective of others, remember that feedback is only data. This data should be collected, organized, and examined like a scientist. Inference is more effective with more data, so the more feedback you have, the easier it can be to make decisions.

As you translate feedback into action, you must also find your own way. Even with good intent, people who provide you feedback are doing so based on their own experiences. The experience of others is based on the past and is unlikely to harmonize with your exact situation. There are many ways to build your business, so perpetually gather as much feedback as possible and use diversified data to guide your company toward product-market fit.

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My community visit with 1MC Joplin was sweet, this feature article was a neat chance to celebrate Global Entrepreneurship Week, I’m gathering my own feedback by presenting Pour Over Publishing at 1 Million Cups Des Moines, and the much anticipated YDNTB audiobook is almost done!

By Ben McDougal, ago

Life’s a Pitch

Humans are innate storytellers. We use stories to relay understanding. Whether it’s a caffeinated conversation, a business networking event, dinner with friends, or on-stage in front of others, entrepreneurs must be able to translate the story of their business to anyone.

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Pitches are built to impress. Presentations are meant to share. One size does not fit all. Consider the environment, audience, and format to cater how your story is told. Preparation that includes thoughtful awareness will optimize engagement.

Startup founders and small business owners should be able to pitch in any situation, on the spot, and without props. There are many templates that highlight key areas to include within a pitch, but the overall objective is to deliver a lasting impact in the least amount of time. Honest enthusiasm, transparent vulnerability, and concise simplicity are great ways to accomplish this. To prepare for any audience, it’s wise to craft a few different versions of your story. Here’s a collection to consider:

1 sentence – Sharp conversation starter.
42 seconds – Ideal for concise intros in a group setting.
6 minutes – Time to deliver enough detail needed to support valuable Q&A.
10 minutes – Room for more details, but be careful not to numb the audience.
1 hour – A talk meant to deliver value, with details of your business included.

Slide Deck Design

When a slide deck is part of the equation, take full advantage of this opportunity. Building a slide deck establishes the cadence of your performance. Slide decks should create flow while supporting your verbal presentation with clear and impactful visuals. Slides should not include full sentences or too many bullet points for you to read aloud. Titles or short phrases may help guide the audience, but great slide decks use very few words. When it comes to slide deck design, keep transitions between each slide simple, but consider how content comes and goes on each slide. Subtle animations and thoughtful hints of movement will help you stand out without being too distracting.

With a remarkable slide deck in place, practice your presentation and sync it to the timing of each slide. Whether you use animated content or not, it’s best to have a single click to move between each slide. On stage, your attention should be on connecting with the audience, not the slide deck or the clicker.

If questions are allowed after your speak, consider including supportive back slides. Back slides are placed after the final slide. They are used to highlight material not included in the main presentation. Handy back slides include detailed pricing, competitive analysis, marketing strategies, research data, and intricate financial information. People who understand what they’re talking about can use fewer words, and back slides allow you to deliver a strategically simplified presentation. For the audience, this reduces the numbing effect of information overload. With back slides ready, you can indulge in clarifying conciseness. This makes for a more impactful tone. It can even be good to purposefully leave out a curious topic from the main presentation. When the inevitable question pops, you can use the sneaky back slide to share a more focused response. Memorize the order of your back slides and you’ll soon be leading a more authoritative exchange. In short, back slides prove you’re a pro.

To complete your slide deck preparation, export everything into one PDF and create a JPG file for each slide. The richest presentation will always come directly from the software (I prefer Keynote) a slide deck was built from. The PDF and JPG formats can be used as shareable marketing materials. More important, they are quick substitutes to counter any sort of last minute technical issues. Deliver the digital assets on time and organizing everything on a flash drive, just in case.

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Business pitch competitions and grant programs are a good way to financially supplement your business without diluting the equity structure. For example, when we were first building FliteBrite, we won a $10K pitch competition and earned a $25K grant from the Iowa Economic Development Authority.

Being prepared is obviously important when all eyes are on you. Memorize the order of your slides, but not what you plan to say. Memorizing a pitch word-for-word is safe for some, but a more genuine tone comes from the heart. We’ve all seen people lose their place in a memorized script or fumble through notecards. Avoid this embarrassment by practicing what you plan to say out loud. The mirror at home is a fine place to start, but nothing compares to a live audience. The sentiment of your pitch should remain consistent, but it won’t sound the same each time. As you tell your story, feedback from people you don’t know will sharpen the business and help you continuously evolve your transmission.

By Ben McDougal, ago

Pain Relievers vs. Vitamins

Think about the last time you were really sick. In those moments of agony, consider how much you appreciate pain-relieving medicine made to ease the torment. Most of us don’t hesitate to buy solutions that ease our pain.

Now, think about a time when everything was going your way. You may take vitamins to support a healthy lifestyle, but if you miss a day, who cares, right? Think about your medicine cabinet. For every vitamin you routinely take, how many others sit on the shelf collecting dust?

Vitamins are good, but pain relievers are great. This is an analogy we can bring into business. As you consider your product/service, are you providing something that solves the pain of a target customer, or is it a nice-to-have that may (or may not) provide clear value?

If you’re unsure, you probably have a vitamin. If people like the idea, but hesitate to buy, you probably have a vitamin. If you always find yourself explaining why someone needs what you have, you probably have a vitamin. How can such assumptions be made? Pain relievers are easy to spot. They sell as fast as the supply can keep up with demand.

Ready to mutate a vitamin into a pain reliever? Ongoing customer discovery is the best way to keep a pulse on your company and helps entrepreneurs build toward sipping from the holy grail: product-market fit. As you ease the true pain of your target customer, stories that sell (marketing) highlight how you do so. Forget the impressive jargon. Lean into the pain.

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Unrelated to this week’s reflection, I love local bookstores. I always spend more than I’ll ever make in sales of my own book on their shelf, but these places are just so cozy. It’d be hard to get rich, but the wealth of owning a bookstore must be endlessly rewarding.

By Ben McDougal, ago

Super Sentence

Modern gladiators went to battle last weekend and it only took around 11 minutes for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to win Super Bowl LV. It’s interesting to compare such a small window of actual gameplay to the endless pregame analysis, commentary, predictions, production and post-game highlights.

With two weeks leading up to game day and another week highlighting this annual event, the Super Bowl experience basically lasts three weeks. That’s up to 30,240 minutes of potential attention the NFL can earn from each consumer. With those 11 minutes of live action only representing 0.04% of this three week long spectacle, clearly the Super Bowl is about more than professional football. It’s about the host city coming to life, a stadium full of fans, the TV commercials, the halftime show, the food and everyone sharing the Super Bowl together.

This is not by accident. The NFL understands their audience. They’ve achieved product-market fit and since 1920, have built around what they do best. This entertainment behemoth does American football really well, but $15 Billion in annual revenue doesn’t come from 150 snaps per game. It comes from being the best at one thing, then expanding on that with complementing (and profitable) activities. This has strengthened their existing fan base, created opportunities to increase their audience and transformed their product into a cultural phenomenon.

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If your company was given a free Super Bowl commercial, who would be your target audience? What story would you tell? What action would you want viewers to take and would you be ready to convert attention into trust when they took that action?

The NFL makes product-market fit look easy, but building something that satisfies true demand is harder than it sounds. Avoid getting sacked by admitting your idea isn’t special and that the future of your business relies on your ability to consistently execute. Trust that early success relies on clarifying your value proposition, evolving your business based on continued customer discovery and your ability to collaborate with those around you. This takes finesse, thick skin and a special combination of urgency mixed with patience, but as you secure more paying customers, you may be given a chance to broaden the impact.

Can you describe what you and/or your company does best in one sentence? Hit me with it! If you send me your own super sentence, I’ll connect you with someone who can get you to the next first down.

By Ben McDougal, ago