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Step Number 1 in Grip is Traction. Often, I see people doing a little bit too much before
they know that what they have to offer is of any interest to anybody. At Growth Systems
Boot Camp, which is an academy I run, we have an exercise where people come up with their
ideas, and then they write down and stick to the walls all the things they think they
need to get going. Often, there's this massive list of offices, computer equipment, and this
and that and the other. If it's a brand new business, the reality is, legally if you're
business-to-consumer; you often get away with just a receipt book. You just have to give
somebody the numbered receipt. Your accountant's not going to thank you if you keep doing that
for 6 months, Just to get going in business-to-business, you ought to have a numbered invoice. Some
of the time, that's all you need to get going. Surprising how low the barrier is.
That's an excuse out the window, all these things that we need. All you actually need
is a promise. On the flipside of this promise, people don't know what they want until they
see it in context. Let's take an example. If you, 10 years ago, had some smartass called
Steve Jobs come up to you and say, "I've got this great idea, it's a phone. You've all
got your phones, they're nice and small, and they fit in your pocket. I've got this phone
that if you drop it, it's going to break first time, it only lasts a few hours on batteries,
and it's got no keyboard, which is going to be really inconvenient," and so on. You would
go, "Don't be an idiot." When he presents you with the iPhone, you get it, and it sells
like hotcakes. It's a double-edged sword here. You can sell just on a promise. You can, when
you're starting a business or if you've already got an established business, starting a new
venture in that business, you absolutely can sell a promise if you can deliver it and you're
totally clear about when you're going to deliver it; can be months in the future.
That promise has to be tangible. It has to have ... you have to have something for them
to imagine themselves with that item. Think of a Kickstarter project: They take videos,
they do everything they can to prototype it. The thing doesn't exist yet, but the person's
got to be able to imagine themself with it. You've got to strike a balance. Does that
make sense; between making some ethereal promise which gets you going really quickly and actually
having something tangible people can imagine? Let's draw my first loop. Rather than saying,
"Is there a market for my business?" I like to ask the question, "Is there a business
for my market?"
I'm going to start this home computer support business up in Nottinghamshire.
Where there loads of other people doing computer support, yeah, charging 10-20-30-40 quid an
hour, something like that, do a mediocre job. There's a whole market of people who wanted
better than that. They wanted better quality service, they wanted better aftercare, they
wanted fixed prices rather than 'as long as it takes, mate.' They wanted no-fix/no-
fee,
they wanted free quotes. I didn't know that existed, but I created a business and found
out that there was a hole, there was no business where that market was. If you switch it around,
'Is there a business for my market' can be a pretty useful question. If there isn't,
create one. That's the point. Then who, by a show of hands, has heard of
a lean startup; Eric Ries, people like that? Cool. This will be new to everybody. Just
draw a little loop. Build, sell, adapt. Idea is build something, but it could just be a
piece of paper, could just be a clearly articulated promise, it could be a prototype, a mockup,
an idea; then sell it. Until somebody ... by sell, I mean people either need to part with
money or some other form of commitment; contact details, traveling to you, something to show
that they are sold into your idea. Get some feedback, and adapt and repeat. You start
here with the tiniest little thing; vehicle wraps. You don't actually have to have a massive
printing machine and apprentices ... you just need somebody to say to you "Yes, I want my
vehicle wrapped in the future and here's the deposit for it." You could say, "I can't do
it for 3 months."
Fine. They give you a deposit, you've sold something. Do it. Deliver
it the best way you can, maybe outsource it the first time; adapt, learn, repeat. That's
how most agile businesses go. A business just grows in complexity in response to what people
actually want, not sitting there pontificating about what people might want.
On the flipside of this is, is you have to accept ... a friend of mine did, he came to
my academy. For months, he had been thinking about going out and selling soups on business
parks, just for lunch. I thought it was an all right ... I don't know if it's a good
idea. I said, "I don't know if it's a good idea, only the market does." For months he
just, for one reason or another, he didn't go and do it; fear, at the end of the day.
He came to this thing, we kicked him into action, and he went out and tried it. What
happened? People didn't want it. They said, "We've already got loads of food options.
We don't want your soups." He understood he shouldn't take it personally; the market knew
better than he did, and he's going out and trying something completely different now,
to do yoga. Good on him because he's trying. Build, sell, adapt.
Just to give you some references, what I'll do afterwards, unless you say you don't want
me to, is I'll just send one 'thank you' email to everybody saying, "Thanks for coming. Here
are the things that I referred to," just to save you from scribbling down. One of the
references is 'Predictably Irrational' by Dan Ariely. It's a book that talks about why
people don't know what they want until they see it in context; it's quite an important
point. That's it. That's really ... Step 1 is Grip, Traction.
How do you get grip? Get it quickly because you don't know whether people want what you're
offering. Step 2 is clarity. We go from grip to clarity. The reason I put it in that order
is because if you think in a car, you can't actually steer until you've got some traction.
Until you've got some feedback from customers, you really can't start to flesh out your offer
because you've got no feedback, it's just guesswork. Get grip first. Get people preferably
parting with money, at least contact details and some form of engagement. Number 1: Grip.
Step 2: Clarity. I've got a massive load of material in grip, clarity, organization, flow
and let go. In each of these lanes, I've got loads and loads of material. Tonight, all
I can do is give you a piece from each in the time I've got available. Under clarity
tonight, I've decided that probably the most useful thing for you is to talk about this,
that I call Mad How Disease.