Episode 51 | Key Principles to Understand When Starting Your Business

Sophia Noreen: Hello everyone, welcome to another fantastic episode of the Boss It Podcast. My name is Sophia Noreen, and I'm going to be your host for today. Today, we are in for a special treat because I am going to be talking about how to first start your product-based business.

Now for this podcast, we actually have a video recording. So if you want to watch the video recording, you can click the link in the show notes and watch the slideshow. But if you're walking or doing something else while listening to this podcast, no problem at all, you can go ahead and continue listening. And if you would like to grab the workbook, you can grab the workbook at the end and you can fill in all of the exercises we have planned for this show.

But if you are a visual learner, I do suggest listening to the podcast and then also watching the video at the end, and we'll have a link for you to do that as well. Okay guys, let me get started with the presentation.

How do you start a product-based business? This is probably the number one question I have received as a product-based entrepreneur because we started Also Sophia, that's our product-based business that has really been able to progress quickly into large retail. So of course everyone is like, how did you start it? How did you move so quickly? And I'll give you a few tips on what I did to ensure that I didn't get stuck. This is the reason why I think this podcast is extremely important for anybody who's considering entering the entrepreneurial space with a product-based business.

You could actually apply many of these principles for a service-based business as well, so even though I will be speaking about a product-based business specifically when it comes to the Also Sophia examples,  please do try to apply the same concepts to a service-based business if that is what your industry is.  

The first thing that we're going to discuss today is your Minimal Viable Product, your MVP.  Next, we're going to speak about who is your ideal audience, and finally, we're going to speak about how to test and iterate over and over again so you have perfected your service or your product.

So what is a minimal viable product? I'm minimal viable product has enough features to attract early-adopter customers and validate a product idea early in the product development cycle.

In a nutshell, what that means is that you have gone ahead and solved a problem with your product or your service and you may know that it's not at its best. Maybe it's 80% there, perhaps you're like, you know what? I feel like this and this could be changed. These features can be changed or these features can be optimized. But I'm still going to release it out to my ideal customers because I want to ensure that this product idea or service is what they want and what they need.

As an entrepreneur, you are actually going to be releasing things and you're going to be providing services and products that may have never been seen in the market before. You may be putting out something novel, or you could be putting out something that has been presented to your customers before but you've tweaked it some way.

We're trying to make sure that we're standing out in the marketplace. Sure, we can go ahead and we can get products that we know will sell, and there's no problem in doing that as well. But if you're a creative entrepreneur and you know that you want to put something out new and fresh into the world, my best tip for you is to start with your minimal viable product, your MVP. That way you're not wasting time developing and perfecting your product and potentially that product was not what your customers wanted in the first place. So that is a reason why it's great to validate your product idea early enough in the product development cycle so you're not wasting time. 

Plus the benefit is that you get valuable feedback from your customers. You never know what your customers are going to say or think, and so if you are able to quickly get their feedback, then you can even improve your product even more so than you had originally thought you could.

So I've started speaking about a few of these tips already, but why would you start with an MVP? Obviously, you will be saving time because you won't be waiting months and months to perfect your product. You'll be able to release it into the world as fast as possible. You may likely save money as well, because if you create a product that nobody wants and you have spent your time, money, and energy into getting this perfect product and nobody wants it, then the product is worthless. It doesn't have any inherent value if nobody wants to pay for it. So best to test it immediately and ensure that you are putting your money in the right places.  

Finally, you get to test it. If you put it in the hands of your ideal customer, they'll give you the right feedback so you can improve your product even more. And you will be able to iterate, which means you'll be able to improve it over and over and over again. 

One of the things you need to keep in mind when you are actually creating your MVP, your minimal viable product, is you need to create it for your ideal customer or your ideal client, or your ideal avatar. You're not going to be able to serve everyone, and we've spoken about this many times in the past, and I want to ensure that I speak about it again.

When we talk about your MVP, you need to ensure that when you're creating a product, you're creating it for a particular customer avatar. Again, if you serve everyone, I'm sure you've heard this before.You serve everyone, you're serving no one. So if you haven't gotten extremely specific or you are still confused about who your ideal customer or your ideal customer avatar is, then head back to episode 12 where I and Laura speak about this specifically.  

We actually speak about the ideal customer in relation to how to avoid a bad customer experience. But that's where we speak about your ideal customer in depth. You will need to know who your customer is, who are you serving for any of the initiatives you carry out in your business. So best to get really solid on this definition of who your customer is, and this includes the initiative of starting a new product or a new service and leasing your minimal viable product into the world.  

So of course, when you're making your minimal viable product, you should know who your customer is, their demographics, and their psychographics. And again, head back to episode 12 if you have to review those two definitions and complete that exercise, and your MVP should be solving a problem. What is the problem that you're solving?

You can't just release a product out into the world and assume that everyone will understand what you're trying to achieve. Think about the core problem that you're trying to solve and make sure that your product is solving that pain point for your ideal audience. 

I can give you an example from our Also Sophia product-based business on how we solve the problem for a very particular customer that was in our community. So Also Sophia provides product-based solutions for diverse communities when it comes to celebrations.

We started off with the Muslim population, the Muslim community in North America and Europe, and we had pinpointed the problem of them not being able to celebrate their festivities in the same elaborate way as we see our North American celebrations carried out. And so of course, these customers of ours were primarily women falling between the ages of 25 to 45. We're trying to make the celebration beautiful for their families and their children, and they were running out of time.  

So we were like, okay, if we're going to be providing a solution for this particular customer, for this particular occasion, not only do we have to provide them with the celebratory merchandise, but we also have to make it convenient enough for them that they are able to conveniently grab it, pick it up and it's a fast solution, and they're ready to go. So the first product we released was our money envelopes. You may be thinking if did they absolutely need to have the money envelopes? But our customer wanted the money envelopes.

They wanted to increase the experience and see the delight on the children's faces when they were handed colorful money envelopes with cute designs and cute cartoons. So of course then, we are solving the problem for a very particular population, a very particular customer. We released an MVP, a minimal viable product by first, printing it out at home and pasting together our envelopes and then handing it to our ideal customer and saying, what do you think?  

And that is really the start of our product development cycle, is knowing what we're solving for, knowing who the customer is, and then providing them with the MVP so we get their feedback, and of course, we got positive feedback, and so that's when we started doing the mass production.  

So that's a great example there where we really knew the pain point of our customer when you know who your customer was, and then we were able to design a solution for them. And then once the solution was designed, we went ahead and we were able to put it into their hands so they were then able to say, yes, we like this. No, we do not like this. And getting that feedback, that real-time feedback from them. 

Okay, let's move on. How are you going to test your MVP? So you have a product already that is ready to go and say you're like, I want to get into people's hands. So we have a few solutions for you. One, you have to test. My suggestion is to find a small focus group of individuals, a small group,  and you want to be able to give the product to some and potentially try to sell the product to some others. You could try to get the focus group through friends and family.

I know some individuals would say that's not the best place to start, but my suggestion is that if you have to start somewhere, it's a safe space, hopefully, will give you some honest feedback then you can start branching out and see who is in their network that would be interested in your product and your services, as long as they are your ideal customer.

No point in going to somebody who is not your ideal customer. So when you're sampling, try to ensure that the sample is your ideal customer. One great example could be if you are planning on producing baby products. You're not going to go to your grandmother and ask her about the products because likely she's not in the phase of life where she's looking at newborn clothes for her own self unless your product is really a gifting product for babies. It's doubtful that your grandmother would be your customer of choice or your ideal customer.  

So ensure that when you sample your groups, that they are representing your ideal customer or who you think might be your ideal customer, and then see if you can work through their networks to grab a small focus group. While you give them the products, ask some questions. Ensure that the questions that you're asking them are giving you the feedback you need to improve the product. For example, with the money envelopes we asked, is this envelope the best size for your bills?  Naturally, we had created the product to fit the Canadian bills and the American bills. But if we fly across the pond to Great Britain, their bills are much bigger so we had to recreate the size of the money envelope. We wouldn't have known that if we had not sent a few money envelopes over, or we may have not known that if I had not measured the bills in Great Britain and ensured that they would fit into the money envelope.

So make sure that for every question that you ask, you will get the feedback you need to better your product. And then, of course, you need to implement the feedback. You don't want to just collect the feedback and then your customers or your clients see no actual improvement in the service or product provided. In order to run your company with the level of integrity, you want to ensure that if you're asking for feedback, you're going to act on it.

And that's it guys, so I'm going to go from the top just so that we do a quick review for you. Today, we spoke about your MVP, your minimal viable product. We spoke about why it's important to start releasing your product into the world, even though you think it might not be a hundred percent ready to go. We spoke about how important it is to ensure that you know your ideal customer avatar or your ICA, and I have not used that abbreviation ICA in this whole podcast. But that is what I refer to it as in episode 12, in which you can go back and listen to refresh your mind on what are the psychographics and demographics, and why it's important to know both of those characteristics of your ideal customer, your ICA, before even getting started with your MVP, your minimal viable product. 

Then we spoke about how to set up a focus group. Ensuring that your focus group is an actual representation of your ICA, and ensuring that you are not asking questions that are not going to help you improve the product. You can also ask open-ended questions and say, what is your feedback? Because you never know, you may not have thought of something and your customer has thought of something.

So yes, ask the general questions and be open to receiving feedback. It's really difficult sometimes if you are sensitive and you think that the product or the business is an extension of you. Best to think of it like this, that you're the scientist and you're testing and iterating the product and service so it can be better and better, rather than it being looked at as: Oh, my product is not good enough, or my service is not good enough.  

Your job is to create the best product or service for your ICA, your ideal customer avatar, and the only way that you'll be able to do that successfully is by getting the feedback from them and iterating over and over and over again. It has nothing to do with you personally, because again, it's all about serving the ICA, and in turn that will help serve you in the long run depending on whatever your big goals are.

That's it, guys. I hope this episode was helpful for anybody who's thinking of releasing a new product into the world either a  physical product, could even be a digital product, or a service. So again, the concept of the MVP or the minimal viable product and your ICA, your ideal customer avatar can be applied to all realms of business and you should take these concepts and try to apply it to any new initiative that you have going on in your business, or something that you can get you're considering releasing into the world.

Again, we have some links below in the show notes. One of the links will be to the video presentation. The second link will be for the workbook that's included with this podcast episode, so make sure you go ahead and you click the link so you are able to, of course, complete the exercises and get started on making your MVP.

I am so excited to see what you bring out into this world. Again, if you have any questions, you can always send us an email at [email protected] and remember, make a plan and take action and yes, you can have it all. I'll talk to you guys next week. Remember, same time same place. 

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