John Wall: So in part of growing your business and evolving to become a successful business, you can create a feedback loop that works around your value proposition, your minimum viable product, and then your product positioning. And that’s a lot of MBA talk. So we will break this down a little bit to make it more understandable. So first you have your value proposition, this is just your best story pitch. You know, this is your case as to why you should be buying the product. So you’re saying, here’s the value proposition, if you buy this, you’re going to be able to do X, Y and Z. Your life is going to be better because of these things. And the first thing you’ll do is be making that pitch. And you have to figure out is this resonating with the audience? And in the beginning, it’s pretty clear, because you’re going to make this pitch, and either people will sign up for it, you know, they’re going to come on board, or they’re going to be nonplussed, they’re not going to be interested or, and there’s two major breaks with that. One is that you’re missing empathy, right? You don’t really understand what they want or what they need, or it’s not viable, right? Maybe they’re interested in it, but because of their situation, they don’t have the authority to buy it, or buying it would break something else. So those two things help you dial in the value prop, and that helps you figure out if it’s resonating attached to that is, as you’re going and starting out, you’ll have a minimum viable product. You’ll have the first thing that you’re selling. And the important thing is, if your value prop is working and they buy now you give them that minimal product, you have to validate that it’s actually doing what you originally proposed, right? Because if you’re making these promises and the product doesn’t deliver, you have a whole bunch of other things to deal with. And even if it does work, going back to the customer and figuring out where to reposition the things that will make it go smoother or make it more effective so that they can make more money or get more efficiency out of it, be more effective, whatever. So creating this loop of coming up with a pitch, putting a minimum viable product out there once they agree, proving that that pitch works, letting them use the product and make sure that it meets that, and then, if necessary, going back and pitching the initial value prop. As you continue to work through that cycle, you’ll get more efficient in telling your story, in dealing with your customers, and the product itself will get stronger as you go.
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