Life Of An Entrepreneur 101

Nowadays, there are products for everything. Just have a look at your local supermarkets’ shelves. They are crowded! Still, you may not have even notice this but many products disappear after only a short period of time because their launch wasn’t successful. If you take a look at lists of product failures, such as this one here you’ll see that the products just don’t seem to correspond with the customers’ needs. And that’s a huge problem!

So, in order to avoid putting yourself in such a situation, one vital step in your product development phase should be to think about your customers’ pains and gains in order to make sure that you’re creating real value for them. And for that, the Value Proposition Canvas can be of great help!

Have you ever asked yourself what job(s) your product does for your customer? If not, it’s about time! We buy things in order to make our lives easier which, to put in another way, means that we buy products or hire services in order to get certain jobs done. Your washing machine cleans your clothes and, in doing so, saves you time and effort – just image you would have to do it with a washboard again! In the same way, the products or services you offer should help your customer get something done easier, to save time or effort, etc. Thinking about your offer this way will give you a whole new perspective and lead to interesting insights or possibly even product adaptation or extension. Continue reading “What’re your products’ jobs?” →

In line with yesterday’s strategy talk post, Lisa & I spent the afternoon coming up with a vision (“Empowering SMBs to make full use of the digital age”), mission (“Showing SMBs the potential of digital marketing and helping them exploit these opportunities by providing a holistic solution”) and strategy (“Spreading the news and constantly updating LA Preuss Consulting’s services to match the individual needs of SMBs”). Continue reading “Strategy in Practice” →

Nowadays everybody talks about strategy. There are strategies for everything – “Strategies for Every Type of Email Pain”, “Feeding Strategies” for cats and dogs and not to forget our infamous “Chocolate Strategy”.

As you can see, strategy seems to be a buzzword these days. But before we continue with our strategy talk, I want to make sure that we’re all on the same page and know what strategy even means. Watkins has published an interesting article in which he nicely defines “business strategy” as “a set of guiding principles that, when communicated and adopted in the organization, generates a desired pattern of decision making”. In other words, a strategy is something like a compass or navigation system that shows you which direction to take to, ultimately, accomplish your desired objective. Plus, besides having a “compass”, there is more you need for establishing a successful business.

Continue reading “What’s all this strategy talk about?” →