8 – The Core of Your Business
Starting Small
What is the quickest and easiest way to get your product or service in front of customers while still communicating the unique benefit you offer? You may not be able to do everything you envision at first, but you can probably simplify your dream to something more manageable. Starting small allow you to serve your customer NOW, not someday, and make the customer an important part of the start-up process.
Customer feedback will help you figure out right away whether or not you have something customer really wants. More importantly, early opinions will help you create the best product or service possible. Start small applies not only to what you sell but also to you produce and sell it.
Examples:
- Rather than opening a full beauty salon, booth rent until you have enough customers to support a full salon.
- Instead of developing a full production process for screen printing t-shirts, have someone make a sample for you first and get customer opinions.
- Before building out a full restaurant, host an event that showcases your food and find out which dishes people love.
How small do you start? Starting too small may fail to communicate the benefit your business offers, inadequately solve your customers’ problem, and result in inaccurate feedback. Starting too big may waste a lot of your time and resources building something that your customers don’t want.
The right size has the shortest timeline to your first customer interaction while still solving your customer’s problem and helping you enhance your solution through feedback.
In starting small, it’s important to focus on the right customer base. While many people may be interested in using your product or service, begin with the customer who wants or needs it the most.
Complete the assignment before moving on. (You can either type directly on the fillable PDF and download it to your device or you can print the assignment, complete it by hand, scan or take a photo of it and then upload it below.)