✂️$treet $mart$: How To Kill Your Business With 1,000 Papercuts 📃

$treet$mart$ (vol. 16)

Growth Week

One of the worst success metaphors to infiltrate business is “Water the Bamboo."

It's a concept based on bamboo's slow, non-existent, then rapid growth. If you water giant-timber bamboo in the first year, nothing happens. If you water the second year, nothing happens. If you water the third year, nothing happens. But when you water the bamboo in the fourth year, it will rocket up an astonishing 90 feet in only 60 days.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t have four years to fumble around in my business in order to finally experience the fruits of my investment of time, energy, and capital. It also allows us to excuse ourselves from the responsibility of poor execution. To use another metaphor, it is the death of your business by 1000 papercuts.

The most common mistakes I have made, and that I see in new entrepreneurs, or new product/service creation, are:

1. Unclear long-term vision (Where are we going)

2. They do not have a crystal clear picture of their client avatar (Who do we serve)

3. Which results in a weak product (How do you serve them)

The Solution:

• Unclear long-term vision (Where are we going) → Get specific about your 10-year Big Hairy Audacious Goal, Specify what you need to do in the next three years to be on pace (metrics, revenue, headcount, etc.). Develop a plan for the next 12 months and, more specifically, identify the biggest issues that are preventing you from executing that plan. → Prioritize the top 3 to 5 Items over the next 90 days and get to work. → Nothing else matters for the next 90 days → Measure and Score your progress every week, tracking towards the 90-day goal

• They do not have a crystal clear picture of their client avatar (Who do we serve) → Your product or service is the YODA, to someone else's Luke Skywalker story. Said another way, you have the missing piece to their puzzle. It's impossible to build a relationship with someone if you have no idea who they truly are. (Download the FREE Avatar Questionnaire Spreadsheet Below)

• Which results in a weak product (How do you serve them) → Imagine showing up at a hotel after a long day of travel, and the moment you walk in the door, they hand you your favorite refreshing beverage and grabbed your bags because they knew about your old pitching injury. When you walked into the room, the TV was showing your favorite team’s game, and your favorite meal was hot and ready. As you tuck into bed, the phone rings and the concierge lets you know that room service is on its way with a cup of tea, ear plugs, and a more firm pillow because they know you have a hard time sleeping in new places. What would your experience be like? Would you ever stay at another hotel? Products should feel so familiar, that you do not have to convince the customer that it is made perfectly for them. The Challenge: this can only happen when you are obsessed with your customer. Oh, by the way, your customer changes as they go through life, so this process is not static.

Best,

Samson

Growth

Business & Personal

Free Brand Avatar Template

Solidify your customer avatar by downloading our free Brand Avatar Template. This is the beginning of becoming obsessed with your customers & developing the perfect product. (this will re-direct you to our website in order to click the link again to download)

Brand Avatar Template 1 Brand Avatar Template (1).xlsx 33 KB

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