January 7, 2021

 Today was just one of those days where I did not accomplish a lot on my business front. I woke up late and just felt behind every day. The one big difference now is that I am trying to recover and do something with the day. The old me would have just sat on the couch watching television the night.

But I am determined to at least make some progress on my goals each day so here I am, My big goal is to watch a segment of my class about starting your side hustle and read an article that overviews Steve Blank's book “The Four Steps to the Epiphany.

Here is what I am reading or learning about today

“Book Summary - The Four Steps to Epiphany” by Michael Batko

• All entrepreneurs think their journey is different but it is really not, it all follows a certain roadmap
• The classical product development path
  • Concept > Product Development > Alpha or Beta Test > Launch
    • This is set up for failure
      • Not enough learning
      • Not enough focus on customers
      • Death spiral
  • The Path to Epiphany
    • Customer Discovery > Customer Validation > Customer Creation > Company Building

      • This is what you need to do to be successful because it

        • Tests whether you have a business that people want
        • Develops a sales model that scales
        • Creates and drives end-user demand
        • Transitions from learning and discovery to well-oiled machine of execution

      • Customer Discovery

        • You need to get outside of the building
        • There are three different stages of hypothesis you need to go through
          • Sating it
          • Testing the problem
          • Testing the product
        • Your hypothesis should be detailed and embody the mission, business model, and assumptions
        • You need to get buy-in about your business
        • The goal is to test the problem not sell a product
        • Verify that your customers’ problems
        • Verify they will pay for it and you can make a profit

      • Customer Validation

        • Three main steps
          • Get Ready to sell
          • Sell to evangelists
          • Build relationships
        • Need to articulate your value proposition and it needs to be clear
        • Visionaries see the problem and want to solve it
        • Positioning: This must be rooted in facts from customers
        • Verify: summarize all of your findings
        • Make sure you know enough to move on to customer creation

      • Customer Creation

        • Four Steps
          • Get Read
          • Position
          • Launch
          • Create Demand
        • You need to know which kind of startup you are
        • Ned to determine your positioning messaging and this needs to be influenced by your customers.
        • Do not worry about creating departments, focus on customer development
        • Define your one-year objective

      • Company Building

        • Four Steps
          • Mainstream customers
          • Management and cultural issues
          • Functional Departments
          • Fast Response Departments
        • You need to focus on mission-centric management
          • Everyone needs to know where they are going and why
          • What happens if goals are not met
          • Good decisions makers
          • Needs to be understood company-wide not just by managers
        • Cultural of information gathering that disseminates and analyzes the information.

        So not much tonight but that is how it goes at times.