In the Lean Startup model, an experiment is more than just a theoretical inquiry; it is also a first product. If this or any other experiment is successful, it allows the manager to get started with his or her campaign: enlisting early adopters, adding employees to each further experiment or iteration, and eventually starting to build a product. By the time that product is ready to be distributed widely, it will already have established customers. It will have solved real problems and offer detailed specifications for what needs to be built. Unlike a traditional strategic planning or market research process, this specification will be rooted in feedback on what is working today rather than in anticipation of what might work tomorrow.
Questions to ask; 1. Do consumers recognize that they have the problem you are trying to solve? 2. If there was a solution, would they buy it? 3. Would they buy it from us? 4. Can we build a solution for that problem?” “Success is not delivering a feature; success is learning how to solve the customer’s problem.” The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses by Eric Ries Recording Your First Podcast
When getting started, don’t worry about fancy gadgets. You can purchase the necessary equipment for less than $100. Once your podcast gains traction and popularity, you can opt to upgrade. To create a high-quality sounding podcast, follow these seven simple steps: 1. Buy a USB microphone and plug it into your computer. Jason (Internet Business Mastery) recommends the Snowball from Blue Microphones, which is an affordable, high-quality USB microphone. To learn more and/or purchase the Snowball Microphone, visit EZ.com/snowball or use your mobile device to scan the QR code to the left. 2. Download Audacity or other software to record and edit your audio files. Audacity is a free recording and editing program you can download at Audacity.sourceforge.net. Even with Jason’s success, he still uses Audacity, proving it’s absolutely possible to record high-quality podcasts without dropping an arm and a leg to do so. Once you’ve completed steps 1 and 2, you actually have everything you need to record your first podcast. If you’re the star of the show, click Audacity’s record button, talk into the mic, play some music, and you’re good to go. If you want to take things to the next level, bring on guests and/or co-hosts. Unless they’re in the room with you, though, proceed to Step 3. 3. Use Skype and/or other software to connect with others and record conversations. If you’re going to have guests from around the country and/or the world, you want to be able to connect with them inexpensively. A popular favorite is Skype (Skype.com). Next, you need software to record your conversations. For a PC, Jason recommends Pamela (Pamela.biz/en), SuperTinTin (Supertintin.com) or Vodburner (Vodburner.com); and for a Mac, Call Recorder (Ecamm.com/mac/callrecorder) or Audio Hijack (Rogueamoeba.com/audiohijackpro). After the conversation is recorded, you’ll need to import the audio into Audacity and edit it, removing delays and other nonessential elements. Getting the hang of this may take a little while; but once you learn how, it’s easy. 4. Condense your audio file by converting it to MP3. When you’re finished editing in Audacity, you’ll have a large .WAV file. You’ll typically want to condense it to a more manageable size. The best way is to convert it to the MP3 format. For example, a 100MB WAV file will shrink to around 10MB as an MP3. Two recommended programs for doing this are WAV To MP3 Converter (WavToMP3Converter.com) and ConverterLite (ConverterLite.com). 5. Create album artwork to represent your brand. Don’t ignore this crucial step. When people listen to your podcast the album artwork and podcast description will be displayed throughout the show, so it really makes an impact. 6. Upload your podcast to an audio hosting site. Jason recommends using Liberated Syndication (LibSyn.com) as your host for two key reasons: • You can subscribe for as little as $5 per month, which provides up to 250MB of storage. • LibSyn.com offers upgrade packages to easily handle your bandwidth and upload growth. 7. Get your podcast listed on iTunes, YouTube, and other sites. While iTunes.com and YouTube.com are the most famous directories of podcasts, there are many other sites where you’ll also want your podcast to be listed. Use Google to find directories that are a solid fit for your topic. With these seven steps in place, you’re now in the podcast business. Internet Prophets: The World's Leading Experts Reveal How to Profit Online by Steve Olsher We must discover whether we are on a path that will lead to growing a sustainable business.4/23/2013
Yet if the fundamental goal of entrepreneurship is to engage in organization building under conditions of extreme uncertainty, its most vital function is learning. We must learn the truth about which elements of our strategy are working to realize our vision and which are just crazy. We must learn what customers really want, not what they say they want or what we think they should want. We must discover whether we are on a path that will lead to growing a sustainable business.
In the Lean Startup model, we are rehabilitating learning with a concept I call validated learning. Validated learning is not after-the-fact rationalization or a good story designed to hide failure. It is a rigorous method for demonstrating progress when one is embedded in the soil of extreme uncertainty in which startups grow. Validated learning is the process of demonstrating empirically that a team has discovered valuable truths about a startup’s present and future business prospects. It is more concrete, more accurate, and faster than market forecasting or classical business planning. It is the principal antidote to the lethal problem of achieving failure: successfully executing a plan that leads nowhere. Lean thinking defines value as providing benefit to the customer; anything else is waste. In a manufacturing business, customers don’t care how the product is assembled, only that it works correctly. But in a startup, who the customer is and what the customer might find valuable are unknown, part of the very uncertainty that is an essential part of the definition of a startup. The effort that is not absolutely necessary for learning what customers want can be eliminated. I call this validated learning because it is always demonstrated by positive improvements in the startup’s core metrics. Remember that validated learning is should always be backed up by empirical data collected from real customers. The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses by Eric Ries I believe that entrepreneurship requires a managerial discipline to harness the entrepreneurial opportunity we have been given.
There are more entrepreneurs operating today than at any previous time in history. This has been made possible by dramatic changes in the global economy. To cite but one example, one often hears commentators lament the loss of manufacturing jobs in the United States over the previous two decades, but one rarely hears about a corresponding loss of manufacturing capability. That’s because total manufacturing output in the United States is increasing (by 15 percent in the last decade) even as jobs continue to be lost (see the charts below). In effect, the huge productivity increases made possible by modern management and technology have created more productive capacity than firms know what to do with. We are living through an unprecedented worldwide entrepreneurial renaissance, but this opportunity is laced with peril. Because we lack a coherent management paradigm for new innovative ventures, we’re throwing our excess capacity around with wild abandon. Despite this lack of rigor, we are finding some ways to make money, but for every success there are far too many failures: products pulled from shelves mere weeks after being launched, high-profile startups lauded in the press and forgotten a few months later, and new products that wind up being used by nobody. What makes these failures particularly painful is not just the economic damage done to individual employees, companies, and investors; they are also a colossal waste of our civilization’s most precious resource: the time, passion, and skill of its people. The Lean Startup movement is dedicated to preventing these failures. Lean thinking is radically altering the way supply chains and production systems are run. Among its tenets are drawing on the knowledge and creativity of individual workers, the shrinking of batch sizes, just-in-time production and inventory control, and an acceleration of cycle times. It taught the world the difference between value-creating activities and waste and showed how to build quality into products from the inside out. Progress in manufacturing is measured by the production of high-quality physical goods....the Lean Startup uses a different unit of progress, called validated learning. With scientific learning as our yardstick, we can discover and eliminate the sources of waste that are plaguing entrepreneurship. The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses by Eric Ries Even if one choose to give everything away for free, it is possible to still make an income.4/17/2013
Even if one choose to give nearly everything away for free (e.g. books, white papers, presentations, etc.), it is absolutely possible to still make an extraordinary income. How? Most people want someone to hold their hand and show them precisely what to do, even if the information provided defines the exact process to follow and does so in alphabetical order using the Dewey decimal system. This desire opens the door to membership programs, live events, consulting services, etc. Therefore, the value proposition must be viewed as an initial investment whereby sacrificing a small percentage of immediate cash flow provides access to clients and allows for the realization of significantly more income down the line.
Internet Prophets: The World's Leading Experts Reveal How to Profit Online by Steve Olsher For providing my name and email address, I receive valuable content. That’s more than worth it.4/15/2013
Though metrics vary wildly, consider Internet marketing standards:
• Marketing response rates hover around 2%. As an example, for every 1 million impressions, approximately 20,000 visits are generated. • Of the 20,000 visits, 11.5% opt-in to join a mailing list or receive a free product. • In addition, 3.5% convert to paying customers within three months. Therefore, for every 20,000 visitors or 1 million impressions: • 700 customers are secured. • 2,300 potential clients are added to one’s database. As indicated, assuming a median cost of $2.52/CPM, a typical expenditure will be $2,520 for one million impressions. Based on the above metrics, the lifetime value of a single customer must be $3.60 to break even ($2,520 per 700 customers). This is certainly a viable proposition if $24.95 books, $97 workshops, and other items are being sold with reasonable profit margins. However, if the ultimate goal is to sell high-end coaching services (e.g. $300/hour with a 3 hour minimum) or multi-session workshops (e.g. $10,000 for six weeks of training) the metrics look pretty darn appealing. That said, conversion is a byproduct of multiple tangible and intangible factors and there’s no guarantee things will happen as planned. Further, many Internet marketers simply cannot afford pay-for-placement/performance marketing and must pursue other options. If this is the case, low-cost or free traffic must be generated to sustain one’s operation if online sales are the primary component of revenue. Providing free, high-value products and driving traffic through synergistic partnerships leads directly to the second step of the equation, bypassing the upfront investment required in step one. Given no out-of-pocket expense, this equates to an immeasurable ROI as each opt-in costs nothing to secure. Even if less than 1% of the 11.5% of visitors who opt-in become paying customers, the metrics are phenomenal. Best of all, the customer views the relationship as a favorable exchange of value: “For providing my name and email address, I receive valuable content. That’s more than worth it.” Internet Prophets: The World's Leading Experts Reveal How to Profit Online by Steve Olsher Early on, Mike did everything in his power to build wealth while freeing up time to enjoy it. He developed a powerful mantra upon which he bases his career and lifestyle choices. In a word, his philosophy can be summed up as F.A.S.T.:
• F = Fun: Without fun and excitement, work quickly becomes stale. People tend to spend more time at work than anywhere else. Mike insists on creating not only profitable endeavors, but also an environment where both he and his employees relish working because it gives them satisfaction, fulfillment, contentment, and happiness. • A = Automation: Technology has made it much easier to create products and deliver them to customers. Mike is a huge proponent of taking full advantage of available tools, ranging from automated webinars and teleseminars to pre-loaded social media messages and press releases. If your business isn’t structured to churn cash while you sleep, you’re doing yourself and your company a disservice. • S = Scalability: You want to create products and services that have the ability to serve the masses without needing to engage in customization. Mike develops each new offer with this in mind. Doing so enables him to sell the same item to thousands of people. This is one of the key tenets the successful use to create wealth. • T = Time-Freeing Ability: One of the tremendous strengths of the Internet is its ability to make things happen in the blink of an eye. If a product is downloadable, it can be provided within seconds of a customer ordering it. And if the product is physical, the confirmation and details of the order can be delivered to the customer within moments…and the automated process of fulfilling an order may begin just as quickly. Luck is the byproduct of preparedness, execution, and fruitful timing: History has repeatedly shown that initiative combined with incentive begets undeniable results and driving traffic requires significant creativity. Look to create your own mechanism when necessary. Leverage, and apply, available technology to your business. Internet Prophets: The World's Leading Experts Reveal How to Profit Online by Steve Olsher Fights are like car wrecks,” he said. “It could be anything, anytime, and it will be unexpected. "4/13/2013
“Fights are like car wrecks,” he said. “It could be anything, anytime, and it will be unexpected. Car wrecks are what they are—you don’t leave in the morning and think, Okay, I’m gonna get hit by a station wagon at the stop sign on that little street. It’ll be a fucking car wreck and you just don’t know how or when it’s gonna happen.” This is a huge concern of mine, because all the confrontations I’ve been in have been planned, fights in cages or rings, with months of preparation. The car wreck fight scares me, because you have to react quickly and surely; hesitation can be doom. I’m sure I can be plenty effective if given enough time to prepare, but wake me up from a nap and how would I act? “When you get in your car, you put your seat belt on, not because you expect the wreck, but because the possibility exists,”
“Think about it like this,” he said. “Every time you perform a repetition of the action, every time you practice it, you put that repetition in your mental storage box. Now, in a crisis, you have to perform that same skill, and you blindly reach into your mental box and pull out a repetition at random. Hopefully, it’s a good repetition, done with the proper form, or you will be in trouble.” The Disaster Diaries: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Apocalypse by Sam Sheridan Often the greatest obstacle to our pursuit of mastery comes from the emotional drain we experience in dealing with the resistance and manipulations of the people around us. If we are not careful, our minds become absorbed in endless political intrigues and battles. The principal problem we face in the social arena is our naïve tendency to project onto people our emotional needs and desires of the moment. We misread their intentions and react in ways that cause confusion or conflict. Social intelligence is the ability to see people in the most realistic light possible. By moving past our usual self-absorption, we can learn to focus deeply on others, reading their behavior in the moment, seeing what motivates them, and discerning any possible manipulative tendencies. Navigating smoothly the social environment, we have more time and energy to focus on learning and acquiring skills. Success attained without this intelligence is not true mastery, and will not last.
Mastery by Robert Greene You must allow everyone the right to exist in accordance with the character he has, whatever it turns out to be: and all you should strive to do is to make use of this character in such a way as its kind of nature permits, rather than to hope for any alteration in it, or to condemn it offhand for what it is. This is the true sense of the maxim—Live and let live…. To become indignant at [people’s] conduct is as foolish as to be angry with a stone because it rolls into your path. And with many people the wisest thing you can do, is to resolve to make use of those whom you cannot alter. —ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER The model goes like this:
You want to learn as many skills as possible, following the direction that circumstances lead you to, but only if they are related to your deepest interests. Like a hacker, you value the process of self-discovery and making things that are of the highest quality. You avoid the trap of following one set career path. You are not sure where this will all lead, but you are taking full advantage of the openness of information, all of the knowledge about skills now at our disposal. You see what kind of work suits you and what you want to avoid at all cost. You move by trial and error. This is how you pass your twenties. You are the programmer of this wide-ranging apprenticeship, within the loose constraints of your personal interests. You are not wandering about because you are afraid of commitment, but because you are expanding your skill base and your possibilities. At a certain point, when you are ready to settle on something, ideas and opportunities will inevitably present themselves to you. When that happens, all of the skills you have accumulated will prove invaluable. You will be the Master at combining them in ways that are unique and suited to your individuality. You may settle on this one place or idea for several years, accumulating in the process even more skills, then move in a slightly different direction when the time is appropriate. In this new age, those who follow a rigid, singular path in their youth often find themselves in a career dead end in their forties, or overwhelmed with boredom. The wide-ranging apprenticeship of your twenties will yield the opposite—expanding possibilities as you get older. Mastery by Robert Greene |
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Some of the links in the post above are “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will add value to my readers. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.” |