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Is the Problem Enough of a Problem?

Last week’s book review post on The Mom Test made me think more about Googling solutions to problems. It also reminded me of a post from a few years ago about testing a business as a hobby first ( “Before Starting a Business from Your Passion, Can You Stand It If It’s A Hobby?”).
The gist of both Googling and testing an idea as a hobby is this: is this even important enough to do something about?
Read: Is a problem a problem enough for you to (and others) Google? Is the problem one where people are seekinga solution? Would you even want to solve this problem as a hobby before? Happy enough to pursue part-time, let alone full-time?
There are ideas everywhere – just ask any wantrepreneur. Many ideas just come from happenstance annoyances. These annoyances aren’t problems. They’re rarely big enough or occur often enough to warrant looking for a solution, let alone paying to solve – certainly not enough to build a sustainable business around.
Is it problematic enough?

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The Challenges of Consulting with Startups

The challenges of consulting with startups goes well beyond just “price” (read: “tight budgets”). Many wantrepreneurs and entrepreneurs try branching out on their own by consulting. They believe it’s a great fit with some experience (“expertise”) and startup enthusiasm. Not quite.
I have spent a lot of time consulting with startups after Body Boss. Today, I sit on the other side of the table hiring consultants at SalesWise. With both perspectives, I want to share the challenges I see.
  • Consultants want to bring too much structure to an agile environment. For most consulting entrepreneurs, strategy consulting is where the fun is – it’s like being a part of the vision of the startup. Many see opportunities to bring their experience from big brands and apply “best practices” to startups. This could mean big strategy sessions, long timelines, and structured deliverables. However, for startups, especially early-stage companies, heavy structure won’t last simply because the company is still learning and iterating too fast.
  • Startups want to hire you for X, but they really mean X… + Y + Z. With time and budget constraints, startup employees wear multiple hats. Same applies for consultants to a degree – consultants should be capable of having a comprehensive skill set within a functional area (marketing, sales, design). For example, if you’re a marketing consultant, know communication, social media, and website. Some graphics chops will do you good, too. For design, be able to design + code + CSS.
  • The day the startup says they need help, they actually needed you a while ago. Startups work real fast, and employees are swamped managing what’s in front of them. So when issues start to arise, not much happens until it reaches a critical point. As a consultant, this means you are needed TODAY. Startups have investors to appease. We have to quadruple the current pipeline. We need to launch, learn, and iterate as fast as able.
  • I’d be silly if I still didn’t say, “money”. This is a given, but it’s surprising this is still a shock to many consultants. They believe they can charge the same rate they do with larger enterprises. That may be your “market rate” with enterprises, but realize that your target customers (startups) is a different market. Thus, your real market rate is quite different.

These are challenges/ realizations. However, challenges straddle the “opportunities line”. I made a good living before as a consultant to startups, and I loved the energy of my clients and seeing my actions make a difference almost daily. There’s a give and take, but that’s why you work with startups. It’s not all about the money. It’s about the challenge, the opportunity, the learning.

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Two Entrepreneurs, Two Ideas, Two Approaches, One Style

Recently, I’ve done one-on-one brainstorming sessions with successful individuals looking to branch into the SaaS/ product-oriented worlds. Both sessions were fun with entrepreneurs approaching their ideas very differently. 
  • 1 individual came to an idea that he recognized in others everyday. It wasn’t a problem he’s experienced, but one that he’s been aware of by way of colleagues.
  • The second individual came with several ideas born out of her work and her employees. She had several ideas to solve the many challenges she and her industry constantly face. 
Both individuals will face uphill battles (expected). The first will spend lots of effort getting the first 10 customers, and build a solution that fits their needs as they go along. 
The second will leverage her experience and her day-to-day as the testbed for her idea. Then, she can rely on her network to gain traction. She has a great foothold already in understanding the complexities. On the other hand, the first entrepreneur will need to run more cycles in customer discovery and build a solution from the ground-up. 
What they both have in common is an appetite and openness to learn. Even as one is well ingrained in the industry while the other is approaching as a foreigner, they are approaching their target markets in very organic, focused strategies. Their ideas are great starts, but they know they’re just that — starts. They’ll need to be open to adjusting their direction as needed.
There’s no one way to approach startups… with experience or without… with connections or without… but they’re starting similarly with very bottom-up approaches, and are avid to learn and build from a focused beginning. 
Looking forward to seeing how their paths go from here!
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Start Your Idea Like You Would a Habit – With Micro Goals

I was talking to a wantrepreneur recently who was having a tough time getting started on her idea. She felt overwhelmed not knowing where to begin. Stopping her from starting was her own grand ambitions.
This is pretty common – this paralysis of too much and the unknown. However, we (this wantrepreneur included) can take a step back and realize startups aren’t short-term sprints – they’re marathons (of sprints).
Successful startups don’t happen overnight. Instead, they are successful from learning and iterating. It’s not about that initial jump, but sustained persistence. If we think about it this way, then we can think about approaching our ideas like we approach habit creation.
An anecdote from my life: I wanted to write my book two years ago. I had a couple false-starts where I typed up a couple pages and stopped. I kept stopping because I felt how daunting it was to start from PAGE 1 of a book of XYZ many pages. I believed in what I wanted to do, but it was a massive mountain to climb.
Last November, I decided to write the book again, but with another approach. I listed out all the chapters of the book, and made a decision to two chapters of the book till completion. I attached micro-goals to my macro-goal. Within 10 days, I had the first iteration of my book.
Gregory Ciotti of 99u.com refers to this as “micro and macro quotas”. Before when I stared at page 1 of XYZ, I looked at it as page 1 of chapter 1.
Instead of looking at the whole grand idea and being intimidated by the grandiose, create a plan (that will change), and create micro goals of what to accomplish each day. Build the idea as if you’re building a habit of success.
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PAUSE! Her Startup’s Seeking Funding

I was recently introduced to a wantrepeneur building a platform with an experiential method of consuming media with an ecommerce side to it. I’m skeptical of the experiential component. Then again, I’m skeptical of a lot. Instead, show me the numbers (user engagement, traction, and any revenue numbers). However, she has none to show, and isn’t actively able to provide any.
She has a great v1.0 already that can be marketed to test traction and gather feedback, but she’s reluctant, opting for a feature-full release. After months with v1.0, progress is on hold as she seeks funding to build her “needed” features.
ZERO users. ZERO revenue. Ideas on business model, but that’s it. Trying to raise six figures. That’ll be tough.
Some thoughts:
  • Seeking funding takes TIME! My friend underestimates the efforts to raise funds — prospecting potential investors, setting up meetings, creating pitch decks, etc.
  • With or without funding, what’s happening? Her “startup” is stagnant. There’s no feedback from users (none anyways). No product development. Each day that passes, the market evolves, and a competitor entrenches itself with the market.
  • Life happens. How do you cope? My friend’s early partners have left due to life complications. This happens. However, she’s stuck unsure of how to proceed like hoping a good, cheap developer falls into her lap.
  • Raising funds with no traction in a difficult-to-defend market?! Startups and entrepreneurship are today’s “it” thing, so there’s lots of noise from those seeking money. Investors mitigate some risk by startups’ traction.

I like TechCrunch’s “Wasting Time with the Joneses” article calling funding as “hyperdrive, not a joy ride”. That is, “If you lay in the proper course, it will take you far. If you haven’t, you’ll just be way off the mark and beyond the reach of anyone to save you.”

What are the traps of seeking funding while still in the early stages of product development? How could entrepreneurs be successful in raising capital without traction?
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Use Surveys to Test If Your Idea is Even Any Good

I was recently approached by a wantrepreneur asking how to start a company. She was paying developers to build an app around her idea, but otherwise, she was secretive about the whole business.
I ended up giving her my general first step in any idea – find out if the idea is even a good one. Translated: Do your customer discovery. Consider doing a survey.

I’m a fan of surveys for a number of reasons (assuming your survey is well organized):
  • Who is your market, really? Is this a market of 1? She was convinced EVERYONE in the world would use her app. Yet, she mentioned she needed to get approvals to work with the government, DMV, etc. Well, the DMV requirement just excluded 95% of the world.
  • Is this a real problem? Asking your friends and family questions about your idea is a good start, but can be biased with people of similar backgrounds (education, geography, income, etc.) who may not be as critical as you need them to be.
  • What’s the product development roadmap look like? Speed is key in startups to not only get traction, but to get the right traction. To do so, it’s important to build products quickly, learn, and iterate. Surveys allow you to consider what pain-points (àfeatures) are highest priority.
  • How do you market to your audience? Survey questions about social media usage, device usage, etc. help paint the picture of what consumers interact with; thus, helping you most effectively market later.
  • Now, you have marketing ammunition. As K.P. Reddy cites, “great CEOs know the numbers of their businesses”. Surveys give you stats you can cite in pitches, marketing collateral, etc.

When starting a business or thinking about an idea, customer discovery should be one of the first things you do.

How would you agree or disagree with customer discovery being the first step of building a business or an idea? What ways have you done customer discovery?
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The Mountain Biking Lesson That Gets Us Past What Stops Us

Took a hike on Saturday morning to the top of Stone Mountain to catch the sunrise. There are a million reasons not get up this early, but if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have caught this beauty.
If you’re a mountain biker, you know the importance of picking a line, attacking it, and driving your legs to get through tricky terrain. Turns out, this line-attack-drive mentality is actually pretty applicable in the world of startups and entrepreneurship, too, but not just in navigating the treacherous terrain of entrepreneurship, but also in just starting out.
When I was younger, my buddy and I biked around the neighborhood looking for “mini-off-road adventures”. That meant going down stairs around the ‘hood, flying through the wooded backyards of neighbors, and occasionally, fording a creek bed near the neighborhood pool.
The creek had rocks and dips in addition to the slow current of the creek, so it made for a “risky” adventure – hey, we’re in the suburbs. The key to navigating the traps and obstacles was to find a line, attack it, and keep churning your legs.
At first, my buddy had trouble fording the creek either stopping well before entering the creek or right smack in the middle. But once he focused on a clean line free of rocks and big dips, finding momentum into the line, and then driving his legs, he was crossing the creek almost effortlessly.
I’ve recently sat down with several “wantrepreneurs” and musicians, and so many of them are stuck in this “I’m not ready” phase or “I’m waiting for… [insert ‘stars to align’ here]”. But as they’re waiting for the right people to come aboard to help or for themselves to have the confidence to try, years have passed by. And in most cases, those ideas are now yesterday’s someone else’s successes.
So why are people holding back? How do you just “pick a line, attack it, and keep your legs driving”? Everything’s easier said than done, but maybe being conscious of what’s holding you back is a step towards accomplishing the goals you’ve set forth for yourself. So here are a few thoughts:

Surprise! You’re afraid of what others think.

How many times are we afraid that others won’t like what we’re doing, or they “disapprove”? Funny thing is that everyone has their own priorities, and you should too. That priority? Yourself.

I happened to meet a young girl in high school who said she liked to sing, but she didn’t consider herself a singer or musician. In fact, when my friend and I asked her why she didn’t share her music more, she mentioned “mean girls” at her school. Wow. That was truly sad. She was holding herself back from her passion, afraid of being teased by others who really didn’t care for her. Meanwhile, those who did care for her encouraged her, but it was the rotten apples in the group with nothing positive to say who held her back.

What you’ll learn in any marketing exercise, especially in startups, is that you’ll have multiple levels of the market, and those who your message resonates with are the ones who matter the most. It’s that depiction of a funnel where the right audience who comes through at the end. And believe me that there are plenty of people who will care about what you do and say.

You think you’re not ready.

“If we wait until we’re ready, we’ll be waiting for the rest of our lives.” – Lemony Snicket

Truth is, I don’t think we’re ever truly ready for a lot of things. Couple examples:
  • I hear from my friends who are now parents of little ones that they didn’t think they were fully ready, and even when their kids were born, they weren’t. But they learn on-the-fly.
  • As I’ve started consulting independently, I’ve had to rely a lot on my own experience and skills and my ability to quickly learn. Once I sold myself on projects and started working on them, I’ve continued learning which has been my way of powering through (the drive). Sometimes, it’s smooth, sometimes it’s not. But each time has been a great learning experience.

When we pursue a dream or a passion like entrepreneurship, we have to be strong, smart, and vulnerable enough to ask for help. Those capabilities you think you may lack can be learned, and asking for help is one of the best ways to do that.

It’s amazing what happens when we actually push ourselves and keep our legs churning – we accomplish what we didn’t think we could.

With more time (and falls), you seek the path of least resistance.

I was hiking on Stone Mountain this weekend, when I realized I started picking lines on the trail with the smallest “steps”. I remember I used to love jumping down the larger boulders. Now, I’m nursing a sprained ankle (I’m like Mr. Glass these days), and I’m consciously more cautious of what line I take.
When I was younger, I would dream about mountain biking up and down this granite. Now? Now I’m slowly, cautiously stepping down each boulder. Ah, how the years have affected my risk aversion…
As we all get older, “wiser”, we’ve got more experience and scars that keep us from both getting hurt and attempting anything too risky (like a growing family). Sure that can be a good thing, but it can also hold us back as we settle into a pattern. It’s important to weigh risks against the opportunities and realize, too, that some risks aren’t really risks at all. Instead, they’re just excuses.

You don’t think you’re good enough.

Patrick McKenzie (of Kalzumeus Software) wrote a post about the need for salary transparency in Talking About Money, but he also shared a little nugget of truth about skill growth. Patrick increased his consultancy rates dramatically from $12K per week to $30K to $50K (PER WEEK!!) DESPITE his skill levels being largely the same. Instead, it was his ability to continue to market and sell himself that drove up rates.
When we’re afraid to venture out on our own or to share our music or our ideas, most of the time, it’s because we THINK we’re not “good enough”. However, in most cases, we are. Patrick continued growing his consultancy rates by learning and iterating over the years. It took practice to learn and iterations… practice and iterations he would never have if he never started.

You put others and others’ obligations ahead of yourself and your own.

I was talking to my musician friend the other day. I’ve heard his stuff, and he’s genuinely a great musician, but due to his work with others, he hasn’t put out any new music in years. At least, he hasn’t shared it. It makes me sad a bit.
I explained it to him like his personality… he’s a great guy, has a good heart, and has some deep, creative thoughts. However, most people don’t know him that way because either he doesn’t open up to others or strangers don’t just say hello. I just happened to be the Curious George to say hello.
His music, like his personality, will never be liked, disliked, or even known it ever existed if he doesn’t share it with the world.
It’s easy to be so focused on the day-to-day that our true passions fall to the wayside while we earn the paycheck that puts food on the table. Important, sure. However, perhaps it just takes being conscious of the lack of effort we spend on what we’re truly passionate about to seize the opportunity and share.

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The most successful DO-ERs know that stagnation is a trap, and it’s got this gravitational pull that keeps us there. They know that the only way to success is to… well, DO. Pick your line (your direction), attack it (you do), and drive through it (learn, iterate, keep doing). 
How would you use the Line-Attack-Drive mentality to achieve some goal you’ve set? What other step do you think is missing from this?
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