The Secret to a Successful Extreme Product Launch

November 20, 2020 by Luke Szyrmer Leave a Comment

If you could only do one thing before you launch, what would it be? I know what I would do.

It's simple. It takes a few hours tops, to make it worthwhile. It's inexpensive, affordable even for a threadbare entrepreneur.

Senior caucasian man holding blank empty banner covering mouth with hand, shocked and afraid for mistake. surprised expression — Photographer: krakenimages | Source: Unsplash

This is what it'll give you:

You easily create a product or service which actually appeals to your chosen prospects.
You describe it in language which resonates with your audience.
You prevent wasting time on counterproductive work (which you can't know about without actually doing this first), both in your business processes and in any software you might build.
You make it much easier for people to buy what they already want (cha ching!)
Your customers immediately understand your product, which means they're more likely to buy it, get excited, and promote it afterwards
Your product's good reputation explodes naturally
You keep your whole team aligned around the customers' needs

What is it?

Photographer: Mimi Thian | Source: Unsplash

Talk to your prospects. Intentionally don't sell them. Just learn about how they buy. How they live. What they need. That's it.

People like to buy, they hate being sold to. If you can engineer your whole sales and marketing process so that it's pleasant, engaging, and persuasive, you will have all of the above. You just need to ask. At the right time. In the right way.

Oh yeah, you'll also have a sales process that scales rapidly.

Seems like a big gain for so little work. High impact. Low effort.

Which reminds me…

There's a whole chapter going deep into exactly how to do this in Launch Tomorrow. What questions to ask…what order to ask them in…what to listen for…and most importantly how to find people to interview.

Grab your copy, and get crackin'.

<< Help Yo' Friends

How to budget for innovation

October 16, 2020 by Luke Szyrmer Leave a Comment

This week I just wanted to draw your attention to an old article on Harvard Business Review about budgeting in established companies for innovation.

Here, on average, is what they estimated they were currently spending: 85% of their resources on day-to-day operations 5% on incremental improvements that produced faster, cheaper, better sameness 5% on small sustaining innovations 5% on big, disruptive innovations When we asked the managers what a better proportion might be, their answers were: 75% on day-to-day operations 5% on incremental improvements 10% on sustaining innovations 10% on big, disruptive innovations.

Personally, I find this intuitive, because of asset allocation is part of my background in finance. In situations of partial randomness, like in the financial markets, the amount you allocate defines your expose to particular risks and profit drivers.

relative and absolute allocation matters when deciding a budget

You can’t control in advance whether an investment will go up, down, or sideways in value. But you can choose how much you allocate, both in relative and in absolute terms:

Relative: Relative to the budget as a whole, what % is allocated to each innovation initiative? Also, what is the relative pool of money allocated to each type of innovation?
Absolute: How much money are you putting in? In other words, are you ok if you lose 100% of it?

The big challenge really, with budgeting for innovation in established companies, is that it’s typically done on an annual basis. Whereas new product development occurs on a much shorter cycle time. That way you are making big decisions about funding without the benefit of market feedback and other considerations which are critical tactically.

<< Help Yo' Friends

Ah, You Got Me… (The 4M framework)

August 27, 2020 by Luke Szyrmer Leave a Comment

Ketchup, chips, and chlorine.

Take any one of them away, and it wouldn't be the same experience.

That was the smell of the local Drexelbrook, PA pool when I was growing up. Technically, that's called a lido, in British English.

Do you remember the kids game Marco-Polo? Usually played in a pool, one kid shuts their eyes and yells "Marco". The rest of the cub-pack yell "Polo".

"Marco"
"Polo""Polo""Polo""Polo"
"Marco"
"Polo""Polo""Polo""Polo"
"Marco"
"Polo""Polo""Polo""Pol-ah you got me"

Based on sound and touch, "Marco" chases a "Polo". Once touched, that "Polo" becomes a "Marco".

Touching anyone who isn't playing doesn't do anything, though.

Sculptural bust of traveler Marco Polo. — Photographer: Egor Myznik | Source: Unsplash

Named after a 13th century explorer, who bumbled his way in the dark from Europe to China (the center of all civilization at the time), the children's game hooks into something primal. It keeps kids engaged for hours at a time.

Marketer and designer Nathan Barry has previously pointed out that this game also serves as an analogy for call-response.

Direct response, even. You only want to be chasing after the Polos, and avoiding everyone else in the pool.

That's my kind of marketing.

The Marco-Polo analogy holds really well for what it's like to enter a new market. You know there are people interested. You want to catch them, yet avoid everyone else.

You just need to figure out how to reach the "Polos". Speak to them. Hook into what interests them.

There's three more twists, though, compared to shouting "Marco" in a pool:

You can use any medium you want to reach them, not just yelling at the top of your voice: advertising, free content, phone calls, events, or anything else.
You can optimize what you say, not just "Marco", to attract & identify the "Polos".
You can be really smart about choosing the first "Polos" you want to pursue.

This is exactly the situation you're in, when launching a product. I call it medium-market-message match. The 4Ms. 😀

Choosing a channel and message and market can feel like choosing an elevator

Choosing media is an interesting game. Essentially, you're tapping into other people's existing audiences, and putting a message in front of them. Depending on how relevant that message is for that particular audience, more people will "convert". And then you can be smart about who you actually go after.

Pol-ah, you got me.

And the best way of testing these combinations?

Why, never thought you'd ask.

Landing Page MVPs.

There's a good book on this topic called Launch Tomorrow. Arguably, I'm not the best person to judge that, since I wrote it. But I'm right anyway–this time.

It goes into constructing constructing tests around the 4Ms. Put all of your ducks in a row.

Catch the "polos" who are keen to hear what you have to say.

Even better, build products which are popular with lots of "polos".

<< Help Yo' Friends

How your business can use Forms to deliver a unique customer experience

May 8, 2020 by Luke Szyrmer Leave a Comment

There are a number of ways to think about designing a business. There is the traditional business plan, which is defined up front and then used as an accountability mechanism. There is the business model canvas, where things are mapped out and tested one by one, until you get to a decent and self-sustaining business.

The Business Model Canvas as way to articulate a business model

And then most recently, Megan Macedo pointed out that business forms are useful as business prototyping tools. In other words, in what form does your business show up? What structure does it have? And what is the resulting customer experience? This is largely defined by setting certain boundaries and then converging on something specific.

Creative Forms

The original source of this “WhatIf” was her own creative process. The benefits of creative form are easiest to understand by starting there.

For example, the sonnet. 14 lines. Iambic pentameter. Like it, love it, or despise it, it is a very particular structure. And it has been used to get across different types of messages: love, coming of age, nature. The form was the same, but with very different messages, reader experiences, and external outcomes.

Or the Haiku. Also a clear structure of 5-7-5. Used for a large variety of messages.

Novels and non-fiction books have a form, too. And some are better than others. Frameworks like Story Grid help authors create a structure or form that feels intuitive. Or authors like John McPhee literally map out a novel’s structure visually before writing it–as part of the creative process.

Or song lyrics. Verse-Chorus-Verse-Chorus etc.

From a business perspective, your key business slogan could live in any of the above forms. A podcast intro. A business novel like the Goal. Probably even a sonnet if you gave it a proper shot.

You can choose to broadcast a message across in any of the above forms. And they could work, or not. In other words, the form doesn’t tie down the message to anything in particular, but as the delivery mechanism–it’s part of the message. And part of the audience experience.

Physical Forms

Or physical forms, to get a bit more concrete. For example, at the moment, the main form my business exists in is that of my book, Launch Tomorrow. In fact, it is only sold at the moment in electronic form. So the “physical form” is that of a kindle. That is the main way customers experience Launch Tomorrow.

Photographer: Amanda Jones | Source: Unsplash

Consulting is another form Launch Tomorrow exists in. At the moment, consulting is remote only for reasons outside of my control. So the physical form there is a computer screen and headphones.

Zoom software starting a meeting on iPhone and laptop during the pandemic stay at home order — Photographer: Allie | Source: Unsplash

These are physical objects that structure the business, without really tying down the “content” of the business.

Each of these delivery vessels also imply a way of finding customers, and who those customers are, and pricing structure, and all the rest of it. There are lot of assumptions that everyone has around any given physical object. So choosing a physical form piggy backs on those assumptions, and makes the experience more tactile.

Business Form

Megan Macedo tells a good story about Doug Sohn, who ran a gourmet hot dog stand in Chicago. He wanted to make sure that everyone had the experience of eating amazing food, even if it was a hot dog. He’d work long hours, charge low prices given the quality of what he was doing, and pretty quickly had a long line of customers at his stand.

I went shooting one day with the purpose of capturing what one might see on a summer stroll through Manhattan. I love the quirky things about NY. side note: I’ve never had a NY hot dog from a hot dog stand. — Photographer: Emily Fletke | Source: Unsplash

He didn’t go for the big location scale-up, or turn his business into a franchise, or follow any other received wisdom around the restaurant business. He just did his thing.

He did write a book, as a passion project. He later opened up a second stand near the local Cubs baseball stadium. Probably due more to his wanting to be with the fans than purely a foot traffic (read:business logic) thing.

And then, one day after many years, he closed shop. He’d had enough. Just wanted to do something else.

We choose our own containment

The key message I found in Doug’s story is that we choose our own containment. And it can be liberating–a way to create something unique. It might not be the “go big or go broke” approach which VCs will expect you to take, as laid out Peter Thiel’s Zero To One. But it can be a lot more rewarding and fulfilling.

In Doug’s case, the business form was a hot dog stand. And he really played it out. until the end. Trying things which hot dog stand owners wouldn’t, like offering gourmet food. Thus becoming unique. And globally famous, since a lot of his customers were tourists who’d just come to have one of his hot dogs, sometimes even as repeat customers.

This story also shows how all of the traditional advice around business can be a type of containment. A form, in and of itself. One which some people will love, others will feel imprisoned by. And Doug knew himself enough to make sure that his successful business existed as an extension of his life, and not the other way around.

Isn’t is all artsy-fartsy clap trap?

You’re probably thinking that I’ve been in lockdown for too long by now.

From a traditional business lingo perspective, the form is the product. How something is productized. You need to accept design constraints to create it. And then turn it into a both a delivery mechanism. And ultimately, a customer experience.

Source: Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore

In terms of software or technology, Geoffrey Moore’s Whole Product model shows how much more there is to “product” than just getting the technology bits and bytes to work. Of course, having a working technology is a necessary condition to reach early adopters. But as you start scaling the product up and out to the larger market, you will need all of the above to make the product usable and relevant. So that it “sticks” in the customer’s world.

Essentially, we are talking here about the form that a customer engages with it.

Is it a SaaS app?
Is there a community of power users in forums to help answer questions?
Is it available via the App Store?
Do you need a particular type of cable to get it work?
How do you configure it and apply it in your particular case?

These are all “form” decisions, in the context of a technology product. And notice that most of them don’t require deep engineering knowledge, even though they are super relevant to customers. If anything, they require a deep knowledge of customer needs.

Taking advantage of the momentum

Like Doug, we need to choose our own box, before starting to think “out of the box”. This is just as much a note to self, as anything. That simple act of choosing is paradoxically empowering.

Aligh Remotely, a book on remote team leadership

Taking my own advice, the form that I am exploring is that of audio, for my upcoming book Align Remotely. This is a book to share my experience in managing remote teams, which will hopefully come in handy during the lockdown (and whatever remote friendly regime we’ll have afterwards). I’ve spent close to a decade either participating in partially or fully remote teams as a software guy and author. And most recently, I ran a remote program for a client, with 3 sub-teams of around 30 people.

At the moment, I am starting to release it for free, chapter by chapter, on LeanPub. Or pay what you want, if you insist. Eventually, there will be a lower bound of the price; but it’s free for now.

From a “forms” perspective, if you grab a copy, you will get details of how to get the audio form of the same content.

<< Help Yo' Friends

What songs are in your personal soundtrack?

April 30, 2020 by Luke Szyrmer Leave a Comment

While fiddling around during the lockdown, I decided put together a Spotify playlist of songs I like, and that I found inspiring as a founder. Even though I have a reasonably eclectic taste in music, my roots will always be in rock. Rock and 80s hair metal were the audio backdrop to my mis-spent teenage years.

Just to call it out explicitly, I’m not really a fan of Gary Vaynerchuck “hustle” or Grant Cardone’s “massive action”. Being deliberate first matters (to me) a lot more, so you don’t fritter away lots of pointless energy. By nature, I’m more of a systematic strategist, which I think appeals to the deep tech founders I enjoy working with.

The theme song of my entrepreneurial style

In my own case…

If there was a theme song for my own style of new product development, it would probably be “Learning to Fly” by Pink Floyd.

Learning to Fly was released and massively popular right when I was still a pre-teen. You couldn’t not hear it on the radio for a period of a few months. It was the first time I was away from my parents for a few months, living abroad in Montreal with my family to pick up French. I had autonomy to explore and learn in a completely foreign environment. Safely.

Learning to fall in a safe environment, before going skydving

And I had no idea what I was in for. I had the hormonal excesses of teenager-dom ahead of me. But this song nonetheless just kept playing over and over in my head. That song is ultimately full of hope and possibilities and everything I feel when starting a new business.

This song nails the feeling of entrepreneurship for me, at least my style of it. Initially difficult, but slowly through consistent effort and system building, everything eventually works. And I take off.

Also, it articulates one of the Launch Tomorrow core messages: test and validate before you expand. Especially when working from first principles. And when you do expand, keep testing in your growth until it really takes off.

You need to learn how to fly, before you can try achieving escape velocity. In fact, going for escape velocity before you know how to fly is the fastest path to a crash. There’s lot’s of advice on the details, but premature scaling is a real thing, especially among venture funded startups.

Flight was one of those seemingly impossible tasks for humanity, until about 100 years ago. The best of us, including:

Da Vinci’s sketches during the Renaissance
the Montgolfiers launching a duck, a rooster, and a sheep to impress King Louis in 1783
Sir George Cayley building a manned glider in 1849 to fly his coachman down a hill
the Wright Brothers finally achieving manned flight in 1903 on the sandy dunes of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina

We needed all of this to happen first, before Robert Goddard could starting thinking about how to conquer escape velocity, and come up with the idea of a rocket.

Why manned flight is a good analogy for the early stage

Arguably, it was the Wright Brothers figured out where it mattered most: getting humans in the air. Through systematic experimentation, they pulled it all together. There were a lot of instruments, a wind tunnel, and lots of prototypes until they figured out how to use the shape of a wing to lift a much heavier plane (that happened to be carrying a person too).

You don’t want to just jump off a cliff without knowing what you are doing, and the only way to truly know is through systematic experimentation.

At least until the coronavirus pandemic, we largely took flying for granted. But it’s one of the most amazing discoveries every achieved. And spawned an entire industry as a side effect.

What song do you find motivating?

Feel free to check out the full playlist on Spotify, and give it a whirl. And let me know in the comments or via email about any songs or playlists you find motivating, powerful and helpful, as I am curious. And I might want to nab and add it to my own playlist. 🙂

<< Help Yo' Friends