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Successful Solopreneur: It Takes A Village

Becoming a successful solo entrepreneur (also known as a solopreneur) is not something that happens in a vacuum. There are a lot of competencies that are required to successfully run an efficient and profitable business and deliver a quality product. Even if you have expertise in all of the skills required to get the various jobs done you are one person and there are only 24 hours in a day. Success as a solopreneur is achieved through the help of a team, lead and orchestrated by you. It takes a village to become a successful solopreneur, for a variety of reasons.

Focus

Solopreneurs typically launch a business because they are skilled in delivering a service or building a product. They spend so much time working “in” their business creating and delivering what they have to offer that they do not have time or energy to work “on” their business, doing what it takes to get, keep and grow clients and customers profitably. Successful savvy solopreneurs know how to invest in and manage a dedicated team.

Even if a solo entrepreneur can find the time to work on their business, they may not have the energy. There is only so much that one person can reasonably be expected to do and while the temptation to try and take all of your daily tasks alone will always exist, it is better to rely on those who have the expertise, time and energy to fill in the missing bits and pieces of the tasks that are not within your own skill wheelhouse or availability of time.

Successful solopreneurs do not necessarily work harder or have better products and services. They work smarter and put efficient expertise, systems and process in place. The leverage another person's A game and 100 percent effort to trump their own B game. 100 percent of another person's time and energy is always superior to your efforts when you are running on empty – tired an overwhelmed with everything that has to be done to keep your business firing on all cylinders.

Fresh Eyes

When you’re deep within the rabbit hole of the inner workings of your business it’s hard to view it in the same way your market views your business and your products or services. While it is important to employ a set of fresh eyes to look over your strategies and perspectives when you are stuck, it is also important for these eyes to be professional and experienced. A new set of analytical “eyes” can filter out the noise, get clarity on the opportunity and shine light upon the dark or dimmed areas of confusion.

As humans we are subject to our own inner dialog. As humans we also have the power to direct that inner dialog rather than be directed by it. What this means in the context of solopreneurship is to the extent a solopreneur struggles in business is often to the extent to which the solopreneur gets in her own way. A pair of fresh eyes can help you see your challenges and your opportunities in a new, different and better way. What was uncertainty and overwhelm can become simplicity and inspired action that will get you to where you want to go.

It’s not about thinking outside of the box. It’s about getting out of the box entirely.

Farm It Out

Every business needs people who can sell, people who can deliver and people who can analyze. Generally, solopreneurs are great at delivery. They’re brilliant at creating and delivering their products and services. When it comes to selling their great offerings or managing a business efficiently and profitably, not so much. Even if they could do a good job of selling and analyzing they have such energy and passion around delivering that they don’t have the energy or the time to do the selling and analyzing. Those missing bits and pieces will derail a business, even one with a great product or service.

Identify the category in which you excel. If you’re great at sales invest the majority of time bringing in customers and clients. Find people who can do the product development and delivery and someone who can analyze what is going on in your business from an efficiency and profitability perspective. If you’re spending your time selling, you are generating revenue. With revenue comes the ability to invest some of those financial resources in delegating the other essential tasks to freelancers or professional service providers.

If your available work hours exceed the work load required to build and run a successful business then it is in your best business interests to find ways to get the extra work load completed cost effectively. Through websites as UpWork, Fiverr, PeoplePerHour and others, you can find lots of people who can get the job done. Be sure to check for references, work examples and happy testimonials.

Invest to correct what isn’t working for you in your business. If you wrote your website copy and isn’t working for you then invest in outside expertise. Get professional website copy written that strikes an emotional chord to motivate the sales of your product or service. If you invest $1000 in copywriting that significantly triples (or more) your sales conversion ratios then it was money well invested. This isn’t about spending money. It’s about investing so that you can get a high return on your investment that boosts you business.

Another way to create a village is through bartering. My hairdresser bartered her services in exchange for website development and accounting services. The developer and the accountant got several months of hair care and my hairdresser got her site done professionally without having to invest any money. She exchanged her skill for another’s.

The point is there are lots of creative ways to bring in people and expertise affordably to get your business from where it is to where you want it to go. It takes a village to become a successful solopreneur. Enlisting the help of others allows you to focus your energies on the proper tasks, gives you access to new perspectives and strategies and allows you to use your time as wisely and profitably as possible.

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If you liked this post you might also like:

The One Question That Will Rocket Your Business

Target Markets Lie: Some Strange Truth in Pointy Boots

Taking A Gun to a Knife Fight: How Right Competitive Solutions & Messaging Win More Business

Validate Your Startup Idea: A 2-Stage Litmus Test

It might seem great on paper but how do you know your new business idea is going to be a success in reality? Rather than trust to luck, having a handle on what your customer’s problem is and a clear sense of what the solution looks like is the smarter way to develop a product or service that delivers.

Stage 1: The Problem

You can’t create a good solution if you don’t know what the problem is. Strangely enough, that’s just what a lot of businesses do every day. Call it a gap in the market or a problem with the status quo, unless your products benefit your consumers you’ll have trouble selling.

The best kind of product is one that solves a serious problem. So, before you rush out and start advertising, here are four important questions you are going to need answers to:

· What is the painful problem?

· What specific group of customers have this painful problem the most?

· What does the problem look like to them?

· What does a solution look like to them?

Here’s a simple problem: How can I get from A to B in my car with the least amount of fuss.

Here’s what the problem looks like: I have to follow written down directions, refer to a complex map which means I have to keep stopping to check the damn thing, or I have to find people to ask the way when I take a wrong turn. I wish I had someone in the car who could give me directions and so get to my destination quicker.

Here’s what the solution looks like: We’re going to make a box that talks you through the journey and when you need to turn left or right. All you have to do is stick in the zip code and wait till the box says ‘you have arrived at your destination’.

It’s Good to Talk

I say, it’s even better to listen. To fully diagnose the painful problem you need to carry out extensive customer interviews. It’s all about looking for patterns, commonalities across the board, that better define what your particular business solution is actually going to deliver.

You need to pay particular attention to the words and phrases your market uses to describe their current situation and, more importantly, what they would like to experience instead. Why it matters to them and the difference their favored solution would make is also important, particularly when you come to creating marketing materials later on in the process.

Top Tips for Exploring the Problem

· The questions you ask when you carry out these interviews should be open ended – in other words give the market a chance to explore the heart of the matter.

· While working with a group is expedient, interviews are best done on a one-to-one basis.

· Your aim is to elicit the most honest feedback you can and explore the issues. This is not a time to sell to your market, there’s plenty of opportunity for that later.

· The tricky part of interviewing is not getting attached. If you start to show bias, even agreeing or disagreeing with certain points, you are likely to skew the information you receive to the point where it is all but useless.

· Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to discover all aspects of the painful problem and, within this, you have to get as specific as possible. Drill deep until you get the real answer.

· It is not up to your customers to tell you what solution to make. Their role is simply to articulate the problem to be solved.

Interviewing is an art form. We can all ask questions and we can all note down the answers. The skill of the entrepreneur is in asking the right questions, to listen well, and to know how to analyze, interpret and order the answers so that they make sense and lead to the right solution. It is perhaps the most important skill that you can develop if you want to produce the business ideas that create an impact and, more importantly, last.

It’s not all done and dusted once you have properly identified the painful problem. Of course, it’s not. Now that you know what it is, you have to find the appropriate solution. Not only that, you have to find the solution that knocks the socks off the competition and wows you customers.

Stage 2: The Solution

As the entrepreneur it is up to you to innovate a solution. This is hopefully one that the market couldn’t envision on its own or hasn’t already created. If you have collected all the information, sifted it and analyzed it then you should be in a better position than most to come up with a strategy that works.

Does my solution solve the problem?

Here’s the bad news: In all honesty, your first solution may well not be the one that you eventually go with. You will have to test it again, to make sure that it works as well as you anticipated. If it doesn’t, you have to go back and try again. And then test…and then…

Is my solution significantly better or different from existing solutions?

There’s no point in reinventing the wheel, as the old saying goes.

Of course, you have to be aware of the competition and what they are bringing to the table and how it differs from, or is the same as, your particular business idea. Competition is any product or service that solves the same problem even if it does so in a completely different way. This includes cobbled together solutions by the market itself. Your brilliant solution needs to be a lot better and significantly different to set you apart from your competitors. In other words, ideally you have to be offering a solution that no one else is.

On Going Product Development

To achieve this you will need to experiment with different iterations of the product through a constant feed-back loop with the market. When this happens for many businesses, customer development will occur at the same time as product development. Thankfully, this is a pretty good thing. Many early adopters of your product will love being part of the further development process – after all, it’s essentially their product. The nub of the matter is that you need to constantly innovate, check back with your market, change, improve, and even sometimes move off in another totally different direction.

There’s always another painful problem just around the corner – in fact your product might create a few itself. There’s always another round of interviews that need to be run. There are always more and more ingenious solutions out there. The market very rarely stays entirely happy for long even if your product was once the most perfect solution in the world.

Here’s what to do next…

1. Leave a comment below telling me what surprised, inspired or taught you the most in this article.

2. For those who want to valuable actionable business bottleneck busters delivered directly to your inbox please add your email to the list. Your privacy is rigorously protected.

3. If you're ready to get hands-on support to validate your big idea contact me to find out if this is right for you.

Target Markets Lie: Some Strange Truth in Pointy Boots

According to the lyrics of the Southern Culture on the Skids song, we’re all in search of truth and some pointy boots, and maybe a few snack crackers.

There’s only one way to find out what your market really thinks and that’s to get out there and ask them point blank. Sounds simple doesn’t it? Put together a set of questions, gather your market together, work your way through the list in as scientific a manner as possible, rush home, analyse the responses you got and then use all that intel to improve your product, boost your services and send your business into the stratosphere.

Simple? Except it’s not. Of course it’s not.

The only way to find the truth is to ask

If it were just a simple case of asking the right questions (which it is) and analysing them objectively (which it is), then there wouldn’t be a problem. The fact is your market is geared to lie to you. Even if they are the nicest people in the world they are simply hot-wired to reply to your market research questions with misinformation. They don’t set out to do this, they’re not malicious. It’s just the way stuff works in the human world.

To compound everything else, many businesses all too often ask the wrong questions or ask them in the wrong way. Some are so geared to selling their product that they fail to understand they are using a Q&A session to promote themselves rather than find out valuable intel that could help them provide a better service. Others just don’t know how to dig deep enough and find the informational gold that will make a big difference. In short, questions are difficult.

Are you asking the right questions?

You may not be surprised to learn that many businesses will only ask the kind of questions that give them the results they are looking for. It’s understandable – if you have been selling a product for a while all you really want is affirmation that you have a good thing going and your customers love what you offer. Unfortunately, that kind of approach doesn’t give your business anything except a lesson in treading water.

How you ask something is almost as important as what you ask. This is another easy trap to fall into. Businesses can load questions so that they push the individual being asked in a certain direction.

What you really need to do is to give yourself as much chance of getting an in-depth, truthful answer as possible. It’s not easy but it can be done. Those answers will be of more benefit to your business than any number of skewed responses you’ve collected because you hadn’t thought through your approach properly.

Several reasons why your market will lie to you

Ask most people a question and they’ll do their best to provide the right answer. They want to please you and people who like to please are more likely not to give the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. They are more likely to tell you exactly what you want to hear.

Let’s say you come across as passionate about your product or idea. If the person you are interviewing picks up on this they are likely to catch your bug and try to complement your enthusiasm by providing more positive answers.

Conversely, if you go into a Q&A with less enthusiasm than a racoon in a dishwasher, then you will get exactly the responses that match your mood.

People don’t like to be embarrassed. Ask them a certain kind of question and they’re likely to answer how they think they should. For example, if you ask how important home grown, good old fashioned US products are, they might say: ‘Hell Yes! They are very important to me’. What is more important to them, however, may be how cheap and easy the product is to get hold of. In other words they don’t really care where it was made if they can get their hands on a bargain.

Several more reasons why people in groups lie

You might think you will get a better spread of good answers to your questions if you have groups rather than individuals. Unfortunately, the answer to this is no you won’t. Groups have their own dynamics and depending on the type of people gathered in one place the answers can be heavily skewed to reflect the mentality of the gathered rabble. You can also have a situation where one or two people lead the group and effect what the others say or agree to, all of which makes it impossible to get a rational evaluation of the data.

How to dig deep with the right questions

Questioning in market research needs to be non-judgemental and as open as possible. It’s about allowing the person to speak as freely and not providing them with loaded questions that push them in a particular desired direction or leaving them feeling they have to respond in a certain way.

Don’t forget, we’re after truth here, not an affirmation of the quality of your product or service. You should be asking questions such as:

· Tell me more about that…

· I’m curious, in what way does that (the problem) impact on…

· Help me understand how this (the desired solution) would make a difference…

· What would happen if you could…?

· What would happen if you couldn’t…?

· In a perfect world what would you like to be able to do instead?

· In what way will that make a difference?

Conversational questioning is a difficult skill to master but the great news is the more you do it, the more proficient you should become.

And don’t forget: Words can mean a lot but so can those non-verbal communication cues that can prompt you to dig deeper with a particular line of questioning. Get used to recognising and understanding those cues and you could add a good deal of power to your questioning and your final market research results.

The art of being objective

Finally, it’s not just your market that can mislead. You as a market researcher can bring your own expectations and prejudices into the equation, skewing the data even more. You can have all the right questions and the right way of asking in the world but if your own evaluation of the data is flawed then it can lead your business in the wrong direction at the last moment.

Top 5 Pitch Deck Mistakes and What To Do Instead

It’s a competitive world out there. Competition for investor funds is fierce. There is a lot of talk about how to position your product positively against the competition. But how do you compete with the thousands of startup entrepreneurs looking to grab a chunk of the same funding pool?

One way you can distinguish yourself from the masses is for your pitch to be seen as a formidable contender. Get investors excited. Here’s how to avoid the common pitch deck mistakes.

Here are the top 5 pitch deck mistakes and what to do instead:

1. Mistake: Pitch the Product - Solution: Pitch the Business

Investors don’t invest in ideas. They don’t invest in products. They invest in businesses. Investors invest because they want to get a big fat return on their investment one day. A product doesn’t give them a return. A viable, profitable and sustainable business can. If you have traction, lead with it. There’s nothing better to prove that you have something that a market wants, needs and will buy.

2. Mistake: Verbose - Solution: Be Succinct

Too many pitch decks are verbose. They are confusing and investors check out rather than write a check. From the very beginning provide specific and succinct details about the problem you solve, for whom and why your solution matters above all others. Resist over communicating. Get to the point quickly with your first slide.

3. Mistake: Wordy Slides - Solution: Visuals and Bullet Points

Too many pitch deck slides are packed with what the presenter is going to say. Entrepreneurs can read - and they can read faster than you can speak. Investors expect you to know your material without having to read it. Only put the primary points on the slide, a single critical point will do. Instead of a bunch of words on a slide consider using stunning visuals to make your point. Great visuals communicate a clear message and engage audiences emotionally. And while we’re on the subject of slide presentation, ditch the animations and transitions. They distract from the focus of your pitch.

4. Mistake: Focus on Tech (or Product Features) - Solution: Focus on Distribution

Your pitch deck needs to show that you know exactly what it will take to get, keep and grow customers in a competitive marketplace. This is a critical slide because investors will want a clear picture of how you plan to get your amazing product into the hands of lots of customers. Broad generalizations such as “social media networking” is a tactic, not a strategy. Show that you’ve invested a lot of time and energy in developing an actionable distribution plan and leveraging your unfair advantage.

5. Mistake: One Size Fits All - Solution: Tailored Pitch

Too many pitch decks are cookie cutter template-based presentations presented to all types of audiences including investors, channel sales partners and strategic partners. Know your audience. Tailor your pitch to your specific audience. How does your business fit with the rest of their portfolio? Do your homework, how is it smack in the middle of their investment “sweet spot”. Specifically shape your pitch, your business story, to the audience to which it is presented.

If you want an investor to get serious about your business get serious about your pitch deck. Look at your pitch from an investor’s perspective. Make sure each slide delivers a compelling answer to “What’s in it for me?” and “Why should I care?” The main thing is to focus on the main thing in the minds of your potential investors. Turn your pitch into a story well told.

#investor pitch #pitch deck #angel investors #startup funding #Valery Satterwhite

Entrepreneur "Must Have" Mindset

Entrepreneurship is a mindset more than anything else. It's far more than just about starting and running a business. Startup success begins with YOU. How you think informs the decisions you make and the actions you take. Some people have a growth mindset that empowers them to learn, grow and expand. Others have a fixed mindset that limits their ability to see new and better perspectives, opportunities and innovative ideas.

There’s a DNA in the way entrepreneurs think about being entrepreneurial regardless of the setting that they’re in. Entrepreneurs are curious people in many ways. They don’t march to the beat of the status quo. They ask “Why?” a lot. They ponder “If this/Then what?” again and again. They are willing to put themselves out there as they galvanize those around them in their vision of what’s possible. In doing so they attract great experienced mentors and advisors who keep them positively and productively focused on the goal - no matter what.

Entrepreneurs are willing to take a beating and are determined to keep on ticking. They are willing to face rejection after rejection and see that rejection as an opportunity to grow rather than be diminished. They are able to strike a balance between being pig-headed about their passion and vision while at the same time be open to influence.

The fatal flaw of many entrepreneurs is to be so attached to their idea that they don’t open their eyes and ears to new perspectives. The great idea isn’t the hard part. Figuring out what the journey looks like to get to the destination is the hardest part. It's not about the product; it's about the goal, the objectives of what is behind starting the business in the first place.

Startup entrepreneurship isn’t what you do from 9am to 5pm. It's an all-consuming, action-oriented, lifestyle. If you’re wondering whether or not you’re cut out to be an entrepreneur there’s a good chance you’re not. If you’re wondering whether or not you’re willing to sacrifice a good chunk of your life now, to do what others won’t, so that you can accomplish what other’s can’t, then you might not be focused enough to be an entrepreneur.

If you are relentlessly driven by passion and purpose, and if you are willing to stretch yourself in ways you might not think possible right now, you’re an entrepreneur at heart, mind and soul.

#entrepreneur mindset #startup mindset #founder mindset #Valery Satterwhite #trough of sorrow

How to Properly Price Your Products

Many entrepreneurs struggle with pricing. They look at their costs, add a profit margin mark-up, and hope that people will buy at that price. When they don’t entrepreneurs resort to discount offers much of which is either ignored or results in developing a very expensive hobby rather than a profitable business.

The proper way to price your products in a competitive marketplace isn’t about adding up your costs and then allowing for a profit margin. Its not about being the cheapest. To compete solely based on price is a recipe for disaster because once a more valued competitor meets your price your sales will likely grind to a halt.

The simple truth is your market doesn’t care about your costs. All they care about is how they value what you have to offer based on what else is out there — what else can help them solve a problem or achieve a goal of some sort. All they care about is what’s “in it” for them if they buy your type of product and why they are better off buying it from your company rather than your competitor.

As an entrepreneur, you care very much about your costs. To sustain a viable business you have to be profitable. Essentially you and your customer value your products and services through an entirely different perspective.

How do you align the value of your product in the marketplace? Through a very simple 5-step pricing process as follows:

1. Research competitive pricing.

A competitor is whatever product your market is currently using or looking at to solve their problem or meet their burning desire - even if that product or service is completely different from yours. What are the prices your top 5 competitors?

2. Identify where your product fits in the competitive price range.

Remember, your market doesn't care about your costs or the time it took you to develop your product. All they care about is how they value it compared to the other products they are considering. Based on the customer benefits and competitive advantages your product offers to the market (not costs or features) where does your product fit in the competitive price range?

3. Run your numbers (costs) to see if you can be profitable at this price.

In addition to your COG (Cost-of-Goods) you have other costs.

In this process determine how many products you’d have to sell each month in order to be profitable and what it will take (costs) to sell that many each month. Is this number realistic? What will it take (marketing costs, etc.) to reach this level of sales volume consistently?What is your burn rate until you reach profitability? Consider the difference between actual cash revenue realized each month and invoiced revenue that won’t be in your bank account until days, weeks or even months later.

4. Are you priced properly within the competitive pricing range?

If you can be profitable at that price then you are likely priced properly. If not, then figure out what advantages you have (or can develop) to justify an increase in price, an increase in the value placed upon your product by the market. Find ways to reduce your costs. Leverage channel sales and visibility partners to help you sell more volume.

5. Are you profitable at a wholesale level of pricing?

If you are selling your product through sales and distribution channels then make sure you can be profitable at the wholesale and distributor level pricing.

6. Test Your Price

At this stage you have a price assumption, albeit and informed one. Test this price with people in your market to validate (or invalidate) your assumption. Adjust if necessary and check to be sure the new price point delivers value to the customer and enough profit to your business.

When you price your products based on how your market values what you offer you increase the value of your brand and the relationship you have with those you serve.

#Product Pricing #Service pricing #startup pricing

Top 5 Ways to Overcome Entrepreneur Imposter Syndrome

It is often said that perception is the only reality. Perception is not actual data. It’s a belief based upon a world-view that is likely not entirely factual. Many of the entrepreneurs I’ve worked with over the years told me that they’ve felt like a fraud. They worry that it’s only a matter of time before people will think that either they, or their product, isn’t that great. As a result they hold themselves and their business back from opportunities that might have the slightest chance of revealing something “not so great” about who they are and what they have to offer. The Imposter Syndrome has a death grip on growth, personally and professionally, and in the ability to reach higher levels of profitability.

What is it?

Imposter syndrome has its roots in insecurity that one is not smart enough or capable enough to do anything worthwhile. It is a deep dark well of despair where one has this constant fear of being discovered to be a fraud and an impostor. Every achievement is seen as an opportunity where others can unearth the “fraudulent” you lurking somewhere under the guise of “achiever” you. It becomes a vicious circle of self-loathing to overcome these feelings one works twice as hard and then again falls prey to the destructive feeling of being discovered as a phony. It is an emotional itch that slowly gnaws at your triumphs and turns them into sorrows of the deepest kind. Since most of this happens inside a person’s head, they don’t speak about it.

The symptoms

Imposter syndrome is often characterized by the fear of not being able to live up to the expectations of people. It is the dread of being evaluated and the refusal to accept praise and compliments for one’s accomplishments. It could also be referred to as the curse of the super achievers as they refuse to believe in their own competence and attribute their success to luck, timing or more importantly deceiving others to believe in their intelligence. There is always an overwhelming sense of being not good enough and getting caught for it. Anxiety and panic are the wicked stepsisters of imposter’s syndrome and thus are always trying to make it worse.

The answer lies within.

“Because one believes in oneself, one doesn't try to convince others. Because one is content with oneself, one doesn't need others' approval. Because one accepts oneself, the whole world accepts him or her.”

―Lao Tzu

What You Can Do About It

Learning to separate feelings from facts is the first step towards fighting the imposter syndrome. Just because you have a certain feeling about something does not necessarily translate into reality. You should trust your achievements and your strengths. You should believe that your success is the reward for your hard work and brilliance and not a fluke. Find yourself a mentor who would praise your accomplishments, provide constructive criticism and give you enough room to grow and improve.

As an entrepreneur you have lots of opportunities to win over the imposter feeling. Here are some things you can do to reclaim the full value of what you have to offer and your ability to bring it out into the world.

1. Do Something That Scares the Shit Out of You

When you realize that you are holding yourself back take the attitude of screw it, just do it. Muster up your moxie, your guts, your cajones and take a bold step. You’ll know when you are holding yourself and your business potential back when you are Finding Excuses And Reasons (F.E.A.R.) for not doing what deep down inside you know you need to do or if you feel like you just want to F*#k Everything And Run (F.E.A.R.). As a savvy entrepreneur you will circumvent the downside of any large risk as you keep moving forward anyway. Screw it, just do it? What’s the worse that can happen? The worse that can happen is that it won’t work out as you expected. Something even better can come out of it or, at the very least, you’ll discover a silver lining which will eventually be an essential part of your ultimate incredible success.

2. Own An Achievement

Each and every day you accomplish things large and small. Own and acknowledge all of it. Provide your own validation. If someone gives you a compliment embrace it. Too often out of modesty we deflect the praise offered to us. Note if you’re inner babble-crap is serving up some justification why the accolades are misguided. Stuff a sock in that commentary between the ears.

3. Keep The Bar High

Some entrepreneurs hold themselves and their business back by keeping a low bar on milestone achievement. Stretch what you think it possible. Go for it! Mitigate your risks along the way as you push to reach higher and higher levels of achievement. Accept the fact that mistakes, and the lessons you can learn from them, are an essential part of extraordinary growth. To be seen as extraordinary you have to do extraordinary, out of the ordinary, things.

4. Screw it, Just Do It

We tend to shy away from doing new things because we don’t want to be seen as inept in any way. The problem with that way of thinking is that it takes a lot of practice to get really good at doing anything. If you don’t do anything new you can’t master anything new. Make a point each and every day to take a step forward instead of find a way to avoid what you're scared of doing. Learn something new, tackle something new or do something that you’ve never done before. The experience will give you more confidence that you’re well on your way to excellence even if you stumble and fall along the way.

5. Dare to Be Real

Just as Oscar Wilde said “Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” If you try to shape-shift yourself to please everyone you are valued by no one in particular. Trying to fit your business and your personality into what you think everyone will like is a recipe for mediocrity. Mediocre business cannot sustain. They’re crushed by businesses out there, taking a bold stand, and daring to piss off a few folks. This doesn’t mean you have to build a big business. If a small business is what’s real for you, real for what you want to get out of your business experience, then that’s fine. Many small businesses are great because they can serve smaller amounts of people even more greatly. Be willing to stay true to what you know will rock your world instead of what others think about how you and your business should be. This means that you have to be honest with yourself, authentic in your communications and transparent in your brand. Not everyone will fall in love with what they see. That’s fine and dandy. Just continue to be real and deliver a stellar experience to those you serve.

There's likely to be a bit of the imposter lurking deep within all of us. The key is to recognize if for what it is, and for what it is not, and never allow it to rule over us.

The bottom line is, if you see any signs of the imposter syndrome in you actions and how you feel about your business, hit the pause button. Reach for a new and better perspective – one that will catapult you to confidence, courage and complete competence in every aspect of your life and business.

#Valery Satterwhite #imposter syndrome #entrepreneur mindset

How Lean Startup Methods Apply to Non-Tech Small Businesses

The traditional trajectory of idea, assemble a team, build a product, market the product and sell it as hard as you can has proven to be a recipe for failure in today’s fast-paced competitive business environment. Big and costly mistakes are made when this type of hit-or-miss new product introduction process. The big idea isn’t validated in the marketplace, market behaviors, needs and desires are often misjudged and what could have become a compelling business proposition becomes small business roadkill on the startup highway to success.

In 2008 US based tech startups have used the lean startup processes outlined by Eric Reis, Steve Blank and Alexander Osterwalder. It is a system that values experimentation over planning, market feedback over intuition and an iterative approach to product development instead of a belief that if fully built the customers will come.

The ever evolving lean canvas has replaced the established business plan. Instead of assuming that the imagined business model will work, the lean system searches for a business model that works based on actual evidence. It is said that business plans rarely survive the first contact with customers. They often don’t behave in the way you think they will. Boxer Mike Tyson perhaps articulated this truth most colorfully when he said, “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” The same is true for small business owners and the customers they wish to serve.

Small business owners can leverage the lean startup principles and processes used by tech entrepreneurs to build and deliver great products to thousands, if not millions, of customers quickly and affordably. Here are 3 ways you can leverage tech lean startup principles to boost your small business today:

1. Validate Assumptions to Mitigate Risk

The primary difference between the old established route to business success is that the lean startup entrepreneur first asks “Should this idea be brought to market?” instead of “How do I build my product?” Write down all of the assumptions you have about your idea and how the market will respond to your idea. Include what you think it will cost to develop your product, who it will benefit most, how you will drive awareness to your big idea and how you will sell it. Then come up with small experiments to test your idea.

For example, if you’re thinking about starting a food truck business selling meat pies, you could easily and affordably launch a simple landing page announcing that your “Meat Pie Food Truck” is coming soon and a spot for people to enter in their email address if they want to be notified when it arrives in their area. You could then run a series of Facebook ads to drive targeted traffic to your landing page and analyze how many people sign up for the announcement. The campaign could run for 10 days at $5 per day. If no one signs up you may want to rethink your idea or test with a better value proposition, or ad “hook” to motivate interest and the click through to the landing page. Start testing the assumptions that are the most riskiest to your business viability.

2. Talk To Your Market

One of the biggest reasons business owners struggle is that they look at their business and their product from their own perspective. The problem with that strategy is that the market doesn’t think about your business and product the way you do. They have their own opinions, their own perspective. In order to find out, specifically, how your market thinks about your company and what you have to offer you have to talk to them. Google does not have your answers. You need to get away from your desk and go to where lots of people in your market can be found. You might find groups of them at meet ups. They could be shopping at the mall. Figure out what they have in common in the types of places and events they attend and get your butt over there.

Ask open-ended questions about the relevant problems they have, what pisses them off, what creates the biggest pain in their daily life or work. Seek to learn. Dig deep to fully understand their perspectiveimpact of the problem (pain), what difference it would make to have a solution (benefit) and what’s working and not working about the things they are now using to try to solve the problem. Do no selling. Just learn as much as you can.

3. Start with a Minimum Viable Product

Instead of investing a lot of time, energy and money in fully developing your product just build the simplest and smallest version of it to test to see if you’re headed in the right direction. Analyze the feedback you get in your initial talks with people in your market. Identify the one most important thing your product must do to deliver the benefit your market is actively seeking.

For example, if you’re the meat pie food truck visionary the most important thing might be that your meat pie tastes really good. Make a few pies and find ways to do some taste testing with people who don’t know and love you. In other words, friends and family don’t count. Their feedback will likely be biased. Solicit honest opinions from lots and lots of people. Gather and examine what they had to say and iterate from there. You may find that your customers would rather be able to pick up your meat pies at the local grocery store rather than wait for a food truck to arrive in their area.

The continued repetition of continued product development based on a constant customer feedback loop is what will get you to the holy grail of what is known as product-market fit. What this means is that you have a product that you know, rather than hope, your customers will love and buy at a profitable price.

Using tech lean startup planning and development processes in non-tech small business development assures that risks are mitigated, big and costly mistakes are avoided and assures that the business has the flexibility and agility it needs to grow in a fast-paced, every changing, competitive marketplace.

What assumptions have you tested? Where can you mitigate your risk? Let me know what you discover.

#creative startups #non-tech

The Power of Pissed Off People

Aristotle once wrote that to avoid criticism you must “say nothing, do nothing, be nothing.” In other words, the only way not to get on the wrong side of those human beings crowded around you is to sit in a strong box and hope no one notices you.

In purely business terms we can change Aristotle’s musing to define how to avoid being an entrepreneur: change nothing, challenge nothing, dare not to be different. After all you really don’t want to piss off your customers, do you? You want to keep those regular sales coming in, don’t you? You don’t want to find a new solution to their problems…hell, it just might not work?

And if you’re starting up a business, you want to do what everyone else is doing, don’t you?

Dare to be different

Well, that depends whether you want a GREAT business or one that just plods along, meeting half-hearted targets, keeping its head above water…existing. Sure, you can turn round to your friends and say: Look, I’m still going, still making a bit of money here and there, still keeping the wolf from the door.

The true entrepreneur has a different mind-set. If you want to succeed in the competitive, dog eat dog world of today, you have to learn how to embrace innovation. The world of bright ideas. The world of problem solving. Your brilliant solution may well piss off half the world, but the other half are going to really love it.

Why you can’t please all of the people

Select any global brand – Nike, Coca Cola, MacDonald’s, Apple or Microsoft. If you pick someone from a crowd of mall shoppers during the next Black Friday Sale and ask for their opinion, you’re just as likely to find someone who likes one of these brands as hates them.

Why?

Each company stands for a set of clearly defined values that may or may not meet the expectations or agree with the person you are asking. Just as importantly, each business continues to innovate, to change and bring something new and exciting things to the table. Some people don’t much like change whatever it is. Others aren’t going to like the particular changes that are being made. Still more are probably going to love what’s been done.

The success of any brand depends on it being true to its values. You cannot be all things to all people and if you have a defined set of values then, along the line, you are going to make part of the population cranky without even trying. If you run a fast food restaurant you aren’t going to attract love letters and fan blogs from vegetarians who cannot eat anything that hasn’t been grown organically, preferably in their own garden using compost developed from the decayed remains of their own lost hopes.

What we’re saying is: Don’t ever think that you are going to appeal to everyone from your next door neighbour to the King of Siam, because you’re not. Make your brand bold and different, stay loyal to your values and walk quickly past those who would shout that what you are doing everything wrong.

Why pissed off people are actually good

When there’s a problem, some people see a problem. Entrepreneurs, on the other hand, see a possibility. Do you think the taxi app Uber would have come about if people were actually happy with the way they got a taxicab? It was created because someone listened to the pissed off people and decided to find a solution for their problem. Of course they were helped that Wi-Fi and smart phones had come along (otherwise they might have been using flares and smoke signals), but they knew the kind of thing they wanted to see and were prepared to develop it from the idea stage, right through to innovation and development.

If someone is pissed off, then there is a problem. If there are enough POPs, then you have an entrepreneurial opportunity.

Look Ma, I cured squeaky doors!

Not all Uber ideas lead to a marketable product or service. Ask any entrepreneur worth their salt and you’ll find a long list of ideas that hit the fan at the speed of light and were never seen again. If any entrepreneur tells you their current business was a first idea you should sit back and wait for their nose to grow.

Entrepreneurs go through several stages before they get to the ‘big one’.

· They have to find pissed off people with a problem that needs to be solved.

· They need to talk to as many POPs as possible to come up with a clear idea of the central problem.

· They need a lightbulb moment when they come up with a solution.

· They have to test said solution and make sure it works (in truth, this is where many a business idea hits the floor like a sack of potatoes in a chipping factory).

· They adjust and rethink but finally bring the true nature of the problem in line with the right solution – the product that their pissed off people are going to just love.

The problem any solution is that it may well then piss off the people who liked the status quo, those who didn’t want things to change, who thought they could count on things staying the same until they went belly up and left this world.

First of all, these people are forever and always. If you invented a way to teleport to China in a millisecond you’d still find plenty of naysayers lauding the benefits of plane travel and weather delays. And if you invented a way for people to socialise and interact with each other online you’d still find other people who wonder what happened to the art of conversation. Secondly, you actually don’t need them at all because there are going to be plenty enough people who really, really love your idea.

Entrepreneurs as truth seekers

That may make entrepreneurs sound like latterday prophets, but actually it’s not that far from reality. They look at the truth of a problem, however big or small, and devise a solution that sets it right. The good ones do this by often stepping outside their comfort zone, pushing into areas which are not comfortable. As Captain Kirk put it: Boldly going where no man has been before.

There will be brick walls to run into, there will people who laugh and scorn as you happily drop into the commercial abyss with a product they can’t see the point of and there will be times when you wonder if you shouldn’t give up the entrepreneurial life for something more sedate.

But then there will be times when you solve that damn problem, see the light of hope in your customers eyes, and may even be those few times of pure gold when your solution catches on and changes the world you live in.

Stay true to your values, dear entrepreneur. Who else is there to help assuage the anger of your average consumer?

Many entrepreneurs struggle with pricing. They look at their costs, add a profit margin mark-up, and hope that people will buy at that price. The simple truth is your market doesn’t care about your costs. All they care about is how they value what you have to offer based on what else is out there — what else can help them solve a problem or achieve a goal of some sort. All they care about is what’s “in it” for them if they buy your type of product and why they are better off buying it from your company rather than your competitor. Learn how to properly price your products based on market value and profitability.

Many of the entrepreneurs I’ve worked with over the years told me that they’ve felt like a fraud. The Imposter Syndrome has a death grip on growth, personally and professionally, and in the ability to reach higher levels of profitability. This post provides the top 5 tips to overcome the imposter syndrome.

#Entrepreneur: How to Leverage the Power of Pissed Off People