Every August, my new students and I work through a series of exercises that help them create a business. There’s a lot of getting to know each other, team formation, establishment of a healthy class culture… a lot of stuff that is absolutely necessary to my students and me, but not necessarily to you, at least as your first step.
If you want to start a business of your own, all you really need to get yourself started is the answer to one simple question:
What is your business “about?” No tricks or gimmicks here. I mean it. Your business will sell a product or service. Which one?
Write it down on a piece of paper somewhere. Finish this line:
“My business is about ______________________________________.”
What do you sell? That is what your business is about. And I have an important insight to share with you: Whatever you choose, you’re going to change your answer soon, anyway.
Just last weekend I was speaking to a friend of mine, Tracy Adams, a tech CEO who is working on her new startup. Her software, greetr.io, will make the recruiting and hiring process much more pleasant and less stressful than it currently is.
Her business is about creating and then, when it’s ready, selling this software to recruiting firms and to employers large enough to have recruiters in-house.
I hope your first question about this startup is, “Do recruiters and employers want or (more valuable by far) need this software?”
That’s this CEO’s first question, too, so she’s working with recruiting firms and some larger employers to get to the bottom of that question.
Next up, I’m sure you’ll agree, is, “What features would make this software irresistible?” The flip of that, “What features might be nice but aren’t actually must-haves?” – that’s important, too. Yes, she’s asking this as well.
The answers to these questions will help this CEO build her software. Because she’s doing it right, she’ll have actual, real-life users who will learn to love her software before she’s ever ready to sell, because they helped her build it – she and her team will literally have made it for these first customers.
Imagine how low risk this is, for this CEO as well as for her investors.
Business done right should always be low risk. Your role as a business founder isn’t to take wild gambles and have the intestinal fortitude, brilliance, and incredibly good luck to make those bets pay off. Your role – seriously, your entire reason for starting your business in the first place – should be to uncover something irresistible to your customers, and then… take the money that they’re happy to give you, because you’re selling them what they need.
Here's the thing most founders don’t understand. What your company starts off “about” isn’t what it’s ultimately going to be about at all. Maybe close, maybe not even. But there’s no such thing as a successful business that looks exactly like its founder envisioned it on Day One.
To repurpose a military quote, no business plan survives its first contact with the customer.
Fortunately, my CEO friend gets this loud and clear. Sooner or later – but almost always sooner – my 16-year-old founders learn this, too.
We’ve got our class down to a well-oiled machine by now, so what used to take a month or two is now up and running in days or a few weeks tops.
Every August, once my kids have formed teams, they come up with business ideas.
Immediately, they survey classmates, then fellow students in classrooms near ours, then the rest of the school at lunchtime, and then very frequently they’ll ask their social media followers the same question or two.
I don’t believe in complicated (have I mentioned that?), so their survey might go something like this:
“We’re thinking of selling homemade aguas frescas (a Mexican-style fruit drink) at lunchtime. If we did, would you buy a large cup for $5?”
That survey is awesome – but “would you buy” is pretty fraught. After all, we humans are social creatures, and so we tend to give answers that we think will please rather than the honest truth. So, the very next day, the juice team will set up a table in our lunchroom and try to sell their drinks.
When someone gives you their money, that’s the most honest feedback in their world. We don’t tend to waste our money to make somebody feel good about themselves.
When that paying customer comes back the next day for more, that’s even better feedback – they did, indeed, actually like your thing and they thought the price was fair.
And when they come back with their friends, now you know you’re onto something good. We don’t waste our own money, true, but we certainly don’t risk our reputations by steering our friends and acquaintances wrong.
Now, here’s the magic of all this. The recruiting software may work, or it may morph into another messaging app for the general public or… who’s to say at this early date?
The juice drinks might bring in some money, but my kids aren’t going to stop there. Next, they’ll try to sell horchata, another Mexican drink. Or they’ll offer entire meals. They’ll keep experimenting to see what their customers really want, until maybe – just maybe – they stumble upon a candy item that turns their face-to-face popup lunchtime business into an online juggernaut.
My high school business founders have created over sixty businesses over the past few years. The one I described above is called La Sorpresa Mexicana. As I write this, its co-owners are seniors. They only shipped their first box of candy last week – they’re still ramping up: online sales is their big project this semester.
The candy isn’t the point though. It’s what your business is about: that’s the point.
If you’re reading this, I hope you’re decisive. Overthinking and overplanning create hesitation. As business author Tom Peters likes to say, excellent companies have a bias for action. If you don’t have that bias right now, start practicing.
Because, as I said earlier, your company isn’t going to be about what you think it will be anyway. As we’ll discuss many times going forward, your customers are going to teach you what your business is really about, through what they buy, what they recommend to their friends, and what they ask you to sell them.
Your job, then, is to be in business. To put something out in the world. To try to sell it – even if only to learn that your customers aren’t that into your thing, but they’d like a different thing that, it turns out, you can sell them instead.
Choose what your business is about today. Now that you know that’s only a temporary choice and not a lifetime commitment, your next steps should be a lot easier and infinitely less painful.
“My business is about ____________________________.”
Did you write it down? If not, do that now.
Decide. Do. Learn. That’s your job now. Relish it!
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Notes
Here’s a link to the candy shop: https://lasorpresamexicana.myshopify.com/
If you want to get amazing results asking for feedback from prospective customers, read this short book: https://www.momtestbook.com/
To see what the rest of my students are up to, start here: https://www.highschoolfounders.com/home
Tracy’s company: https://www.greetr.io/
Proud Teacher: