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Win the fight for attention by communicating with relevance

July 16, 2020 by Luke Szyrmer Leave a Comment

The biggest challenge when introducing a new product is establishing a connection with your audience. Often, this is because you can’t do anything else until this is in place. This detail really hit home for me, when I went to an accelerator event in Mexico.

In this 2006 photograph, a man was receiving an intramuscular injection in his left shoulder muscle from a trained, registered nurse (RN), while his family was observing from over the nurse's shoulder.
Photographer: CDC | Source: Unsplash

One of the speakers was an immunobiologist client of mine, who’d developed a unique salmonella vaccine that could be combined with other vaccines. And it looks as though his vaccine is the only salmonella one which can do that.

I’d worked with him briefly as an innovation expert, and had a discussion about commercialization options as well as some pitch training. At the time he was struggling to see entrepreneurship as a viable route to greater impact. He felt comfortable as an inventor, and wanted to do more of that, not become a businessman.

It turned out I had unleashed a force of nature. Also drilling him in giving pithy explanations helped him hone down his message to something much more concrete for anyone who wasn’t already a fellow immunobiologist, or even a scientist. This one insight allowed him to communicate the relevance of his work to the wider public.

But more importantly, he started to believe that entrepreneurship was a viable route to greater impact. As it would force him to confront institutions that held him and other scientists back domestically.

As a result of both, he’s pretty much gone from a booksy academic researcher to a serious contender in getting funding to help spread the use of his product vaccine. This is the power of relevance and empathy in an age of dwindling attention.

One of the best ways to get (and stay) relevant is to focus all of your marketing and product efforts around a client profile. In theory there are millions of ways to reach an audience; in practice, you only need to reach a specific group of people. So figure out who they are, and then just focus on them. The best way to do this is the Hero Canvas tool. Grab a copy and get a quick intro for free with my Hero Canvas course.

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Filed Under: assumptions, case study, find people, innovation, startup, stories Tagged With: attention, relevance

How to simplify a complicated process, so that even a 2.5 year old would understand it

October 2, 2019 by LaunchTomorrow Leave a Comment

A few years ago, we had a significant challenge with our 2 year old daughter. Morning and evening routines were an uphill battle every day. Getting out the door to her childminder quickly enough to make my first meeting in the morning was often a drawn out battle of wills.

It was clear she wanted to collaborate and appease us as parents. But she didn’t understand what we expected of her. Moreover, her brain development still seemed to behind. The neocortex doesn’t kick into overdrive growth until later. She was also awash hormones, which is completely normal for this age. This caused the temper tantrums typical for a two year year old. They’re called “terrible twos” for a reason. We were also frustrated as parents, and we didn’t know how to help her. Fundamentally, this was an issue of her feeling overwhelmed. And unable to sort out what’s important from what isn’t.

In a professional context, visualization works really well to help stop overwhelm. Whether to map out a business process, plan a large scale software system, or figure out a business model, it helps to have everyone involved “brain dump” onto post-its. And then to organize them. This approach unleashes a lot of latent creativity. Plus it helps front-load difficult discussions. You find out really quickly what the major challenges are with a new initiative.

Filed Under: case study, stories, tools for founders, vizualization Tagged With: eventstorm, lean value stream map, personal story

The one thing Steve Jobs did that turned around Apple

July 26, 2019 by LaunchTomorrow 2 Comments

After a nasty battle with Apple shareholders, Steve Jobs, then the original founding CEO, was ousted. He went on to create NeXt computers (later acquired by Disney). In the meantime, Apple drifted as a company. It proliferated product lines. Lost focus. And the share price entered a death spiral phase. A few years later in 1997, he was recruited back to save the company from very poor public share price performance.

“Saint Steve” at Macworld 1998

When we got to the company a year ago, there were a lot of products. There were 15 product platforms and a zillion variants of each one. I couldn’t even figure this out myself. After about three weeks. I said, “how are we gonna explain this to others, when we don’t even know which products to recommend to our friends?”

In this keynote at 1998 Macworld, he announced early successes, such as a 3rd consecutive profitable quarter. In my opinion, one of the most powerful parts of his talk was the following grid:

Filed Under: priorities, stories, velocity Tagged With: faster time to market

Dropbox explainer video? You’re missing most of their Lean Startup story…

March 21, 2016 by LaunchTomorrow 1 Comment

Drew Houston launch tomorrow
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Filed Under: case study, experiments, extreme product launch, landing page MVP, minimum viable product, stories Tagged With: drew houston, dropbox, explainer video, lean startup, video

Mapping customer development to stories on your landing page

March 8, 2016 by LaunchTomorrow Leave a Comment

Riemer on Story Structure from Tara Loomis on Vimeo.

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Filed Under: landing page, landing page MVP, marketing, stories Tagged With: customer development

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    Luke Szyrmer is an innovation and remote work expert. He’s the bestselling author of #1 bestseller Launch Tomorrow. He mentors early stage tech founders and innovators in established companies. Read More…

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