ON PURPOSE RESULTS Minimum Viable Products Sonia Simone: Welcome back everybody to On Purpose Results. This is Sonia Simone with Gary Barnes. Gary, great as always to talk with you. Gary Barnes: Well, thank you Sonia, and this week it's going to be a little bit different. We're changing roles in the seats, in that I get to interview you. Sonia: I love it. Gary: It's going to be a lot of fun for me. This is the week that we had promised everyone that, it's Session Number 5, and it's on minimum viable products. Sonia: Yeah. And again, as always I'm going to jump in, so we can really focus everybody. This session is about something that we all run into. Every business owner on Planet Earth has projects they want to implement, but they just aren't getting started. So you might be running your business very successfully, but there's an enhancement or an add on, or something that you want to add, or it could be that you're starting from scratch and you need to get the whole thing off the ground. And you're having a tough time. Inertia is a very powerful force. So a body at rest tends to stay at rest, and a body in motion tends to stay in motion. So when we're not moving, that tends to reinforce itself, 1 2010 Gary Barnes International
and when we are moving, the momentum tends to carry us along, and we tend to keep moving faster and faster. Gary: Absolutely. And it's no accident that we're placing this session at this point in the thirteen weeks. I have found over the years that whether it be myself or some of my clients, that we get very enthused about starting something and we'll get into it, but the longer the timeline goes, sometimes we back off that energy, that initial push, and exactly what you're saying. We sometimes get stuck. And so, I think this is going to be very, very useful for everyone through completing the next step within our process. So, Sonia, let me ask you. Let's back up a second, and just kind of work from the definition. Could you help us with what is a "minimum viable product"? Sonia: Yes, absolutely. This is a term that actually comes out of software. Of course building software is very complicated, and so when you're developing a piece of software, there's a relatively new way of doing it, which is that you build a small, fast prototype that only does the very, very main thing that your software is going to do. So it doesn't have all the features, it doesn't have all the customization, it doesn't have the bells and whistles and gewgaws and all the rest of it. It's just the core. The core, the minimum viable product. So the core of what makes the product work, what makes anybody want to use it. And you develop that, and it's lean and it's fairly quick to develop, and you launch that. And then you go back and you see, once people are actually using the product, well, people would really rather it be blue rather than green, or you know, they want the Mac version, or they want it to have a calendar as well as the egg timer, or whatever it might be. But you start with the core. The smallest, leanest little piece that you can, and you build that as fast as you can, and launch it, and then you refine and put that into practice. Gary: So the examples of that, so people can really get their minds around this guy, I think this is a really important concept to start with. It's not a completed, 100%, tried, tested, true; this is that baby step of getting it out there, getting it started. Sonia: Right. So this looks like different things for different people. If you offer a service, then this might be a bundle, a special bundle. So if you are a chiropractor, maybe this is your "Cure Your Back Pain by Next Month" product. So it's four sessions, on a week, and you work through specific areas of 2 2010 Gary Barnes International
the body, and you create a measurable result in a short time. If you're a coach, it's probably a quickstart consulting package. Something that's well defined. For a lot of us, it might be an e book. It might be an audio lesson, like this course, with a worksheet. It might be one lesson or it might be a little series of three lessons, or it might be a little bit bigger series, of six lessons or ten lessons. But it's the minimum amount, it's the smallest way you can help your customer in a meaningful way. Gary: Well, it also feels like it's a safe way for people to start to be introduced to who you are and what you do. Sonia: Yeah, exactly. It's safe for you, because it's something that you can actually implement. And it's safe for them, because this is not the platinum package. This is not the big box, this is not the Harry and David stack of things that's as tall as you are. This is the small one. It's low risk for you and it's low risk for them. So it works great for you, because you stay out of overwhelm, and it also works great for them because they don't feel like, it's not the $1,000 package that takes a lot of thought for them to take the big gulp and make that jump. Gary: Well, and I would guess that they're in a larger group at this level, too. They have a little more of a invisibility? Sonia: Yeah, for the most part. Your minimum viable product should not be something that your customer really has to walk out on the edge of their comfort zone to pick up. So you're going to define this as something that's going to be, we might call it a no brainer. That's why information products are such a common minimum viable product, because let's say you are the chiropractor but you don't want to necessarily book tons and tons of new clients right now. Maybe you do a video, and it's not delivered on a physical medium like a DVD, it's delivered electronically, about six exercises people can do to reduce their back pain, and you just sell that for $19 or something like that. So it's small, it's something they can consume right away in a low risk way. And it's something you can define very easily. So your minimum viable product needs to be something that, it's just got like a onesentence description. It's not, some of us do work this, when I have to tell people what I do for a living, I just change the subject. Because what I do is complex, and has a lot of different variations. 3 2010 Gary Barnes International
But if I have to tell people about my marketing blueprint, that's very easy. It's a step by step class to help people find more new customers and grow their business. It's not complicated to explain, it's very simple to explain. Your minimum viable product should be something simple for the customer to understand, relatively low price point, something you can describe easily to another person you should be able to just describe it in under one sentence and easy for you to execute. Gary: Cool. Sonia: And I want to stress, this is, going back, remember, think about that beta software. Your minimum viable product is not perfect, and it's not complete, and it's not final. It's just your beta version, your starter. You're going to build on it, so you don't let perfectionism kill you, because this is supposed to be imperfect. Gary: Well, I have really liked one of those little things they came up with years ago, God cannot steer a parked car. And that's what you're describing here, it's about the initial steps, it's not about necessarily the perfect results, since you don't know what those are yet. So let me ask you, and I like your abbreviation of this whole process now is, MVP. Why does MVP really help us? Sonia: It helps for a number of reasons. The first is, one of the ways that we kind of added fuel to our systems at the beginning of this course is we created big dreams and big visions and powerful goals. And that's good, that's important, and you need to do that. There was one business book that called it the "big hairy audacious goal," the BHAG. That's very energizing in one way. And in another way, when it's too big and it's too hairy, it can completely stop you in your tracks, because you think, "Yes, big hairy goal! Yes, audacious! Yes, my vision!" and then you actually think about how you're going to do it, and you just stop. So big is beautiful for vision. And small is beautiful for an action plan to actually get something done. There's a wonderful book called One Small Step Can Change Your Life, about using the Japanese kaizen techniques, which is constant small improvement to make a change in your life. It's a great book. If you find yourself kind of chronically stuck on things, it's a wonderful book to check out. 4 2010 Gary Barnes International
Kaizen, by the way, is actually an American technique. It was used in American manufacturing during World War II, and it was exported to Japan after the war. Not everybody knows that. But we used it in World War II to improve our manufacturing techniques for the war effort. So it's about really thinking about what's the smallest step I could take next. What's the very and sometimes it's so small it's kind of, if it kind of makes you laugh because it's so easy, you're on the right track. If it's just so silly and small and just something that you could do standing on your head, that's great. Don't worry about or beat yourself up about starting too small. Gary: And that, I think, is such a key point that some folks may just listen right over that. We have been taught that if it's not complicated, if it's not big, if it's not that grandiose implementation that we're going to do on a launch or whatever it might be, that there's no value to it. What you're sharing now is, that's where the foundation is, that's where the real value is, because it's going to allow you to get to the end result that you really do want, not just something that you got by accident. Sonia: Yeah. And you know, every big accomplishment is made of small simple pieces. Whether it's a cathedral, or sending a man to the moon, or whatever it is. You've got to solve small, discrete problems one after the other after the other. I know that sounds, I don't know, kind of cheesy or simplistic, but it really is just very literally true. All big accomplishments are made of small pieces. Gary: Well, you know that I really love airplanes. And in the early part of aviations, airplanes were put together, and you were mentioning World War II. Airplanes were put together with rivets, and it only took one rivet sometimes to have that airplane fall out of the sky, depending on where that rivet was. So a rivet, for anyone that doesn't know, is just a little connecting piece of steel that holds two other pieces of metal together. But if it's not there, it doesn't matter what that very large aircraft is, that one rivet could have disastrous results. Sonia: Yes, absolutely. And every little piece makes its own contribution. That's what they mean when they say the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. One plus one plus one sometimes equals four hundred and six. And each one is not that hard, it's pulling them all together. The other thing is, there's just nothing as energizing as finishing something. Even something small, there's just nothing that really releases energy like setting a little project for yourself and then doing it 5 2010 Gary Barnes International
steps one, two, three, and then crossing it off. So the energy that releases is going to give you energy for your business, and you're going to be quite amazed at how much juice that gives you. Gary: Well, and there's actually been studies done that show that just the mere fact of checking off an item on your list releases endorphins in the brain that gives us that euphoric feeling that we all like. And so, it is more than just a mental exercise. It really is physiological as well. Sonia: Yeah, and I'm a person who, if I do something that's not on my list, I write it on my list and then I cross it off. It is, it's wonderful to have that feeling of, I actually got that done. And you can look back, when you are feeling like, gosh, this isn't going anywhere. Sometimes when we feel stuck, like we're not getting traction, it's just because we don't know we're moving. Gary: Right. Sonia: And so this gives you something that you can say, "No, I did that." I had a funny thing happen where I was giving a talk recently, and during the introduction she said, "Well, you know, Sonia's got these two membership sites and this blog and this business going on," and I was like, "Huh. I do a heck of a lot of stuff." Gary: Scared you a little bit, didn't it? Sonia: Well, because I have that tendency to think, "Oh, you know, I should do more, I should be working harder, I should be putting in more hours." And then when you actually objectively take a step back, if you have completed projects now, if you get 90% of the way to the end of a project and then you don't do it, you've worked almost as hard but you don't have the sense of, I got some things out the door and I did some things. Gary: Well, the analogy that I use many times with that is that you're a farmer, you go out there and turn the soil up, you plant the seeds, you cultivate the seeds, and you never go out and reap in the harvest. And what virtually happens is that it rots in the fields. And we see this, I know you do as well, over and over again. People doing that, they go 80, 90, 95% of the way, and then stop. Sonia: Right. And so the whole point of the MVP is to give you something that is small enough and nonthreatening enough that you complete because completing is scary. And finishing is scary. And it makes 6 2010 Gary Barnes International
us uncomfortable. It makes us visible, as we talked about in an earlier lesson. It puts us out there. It brings up a lot of stuff. So that's why the commitment to the minimum viable product will help you work through something that may not be super comfortable the first couple of times you do it. But it does it in a small enough way that you're going to be able to handle it, and you're going to be able to do it, and you're going to be able to get to the other side and get all those benefits. Gary: Well, I know that everyone is just chomping at the bit. How about if we just drop into, okay, here are the steps that we're going to take this week, so we're not going to be the ninety five percenter, we're going to be the hundred percenter. Sonia: Absolutely. So I've broken this down into seven specific steps. And as you might imagine, your first step is you're going to decide what your minimum viable product should be, what your MVP is going to be. Now you might consider something delivered similarly to the way that we originally delivered this course, which is, we created it on the fly. We created it over time. So we have thirteen sessions, and we record the lessons. We didn't have all thirteen sessions recorded, transcribed, and worksheets before we sold the program. Instead, we opened the program up, and we delivered it on the go. So we made a commitment and then we deliver it. The reason that that works really well, one, is the amount of preparation you have to do is much reduced, because you don't have to create your whole product before you deliver it. And the other reason that it's valuable is that you can actually get feedback as you're creating the course that will help you make the course better. So if you were doing education or if you doing really anything that you deliver over time and that might evolve, that's a great minimum viable product, and I've done a couple of these that way. It works really, really well. So if that's your model, that's a great way to do it. If there's some way that you can kind of get yourself, jump in before you've done all the work of creating the product. That's always a great way to do it. Sell it first, then make it. You will finish it if you sell it first. 7 2010 Gary Barnes International
Gary: It does provide an urgency, if you will. It's something that popped into my mind, and I know you really believe in this as well, is only do this on a topic that you're really well versed in. If I'm going to do this with, say, a cooking product, and I don't know where to turn the stove on, that could backfire. You really have to know your subject. Sonia: Yeah, exactly. Do this in your comfort zone. Just doing the minimum viable product process is going to get you out of your comfort zone. So anything you can do to keep yourself in your comfort zone, in those realms, do. So don't do this on something brand new. Gary: That you'd like to learn about. That's not the formula for success. Sonia: Yeah, you can do that, once you've got your skills, your minimum viable product skills, kind of set, you've done it a few times. Then you can go ahead and add some challenges. But for now we're going to subtract challenges. So step two: set a timer for 15 minutes. If you're having problems, like if you're not doing this today, put it in your calendar. When are you going to sit down for 15 minutes? Set a timer, and write down all of the action steps that you're going to need to take to get from your idea to delivering the products to the paying customer. It doesn't necessarily have to be a paying customer. So it could be a free e book, but if you feel up to it, it's great if this can actually be something that you exchange for money, even if it's $1.99. So write down all of your action steps and try and be very, very complete. Really try and think about every single step, no matter how small, you need to take. And look at that. I like to do it on paper, with pen, but if you want do it on your computer, you can. But you want to circle or highlight anything in there that's making you nervous. There's something called the critical path. The critical path is, I've got steps one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, and ten. And if I don't get three done, I can't do four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, and ten. Three is an obstacle in the critical path. So look at anything that might be, if you can't get it done, you can't keep moving. And just be aware of that. Just draw out all your steps, and make yourself aware of any of the steps that are making you nervous. You'll know. You'll write it out and you'll get a little anxiety bubble in your stomach, and you'll 8 2010 Gary Barnes International
say, Oh God, I wish I didn't have to do that part. So the first thing you're going to do is just put them down there and get aware of them. Step three is, you're going to set a deadline. Going back to our accountability lesson. You're going to announce this to your accountability partner, or you're going to make an announcement to your community if you're in the Third Tribe or another forum. You're going to make an announcement. I'm going to have this done by my deadline. If you don't have a situation like that, then of course you're going to email Gary. Gary@GaryBarnesInternational.com. And you're going to say, I'm going to have my minimum viable product done by, you know, January 1st or whatever it might be. Your deadline belongs to you. You set it. You're the boss. Don't set it for a year from now; that's not what a minimum viable product is about. A little something you can do. I would say anything from the two to six week timeframe. And six weeks is really pushing it, but different people have different business models, and what you do might be complicated. But the two week timeline is regressive, but the shorter your timeline, I think the better this exercise is going to work for you. Gary: I agree. Sonia: And then step four is we're going to go back. We've already set our deadline, and we've announced it, and now we're going to look at our plan again, and we're going to simplify it. We're going to cross off steps that over complicate things. So if you have to figure out how to use your email system to send a broadcast email, that's not that big a deal. You're going to be able to do that in three minutes. It's just a matter of reading the stupid help file and getting it done. If you have to get a merchant account, cross that off. If you have to go into your storage facility and get it reorganized, no. No, no, no. So all the complicated, like, well, I really want to make this is where people get lost every time. They say, well, to really get the most payoff out of this, I really want to have this incredibly difficult thing to do done first. So you just take that and you cross it off. Do it later. Put it in your calendar, if it's going to create a great payoff for you, put it in your calendar, make a space for it. 9 2010 Gary Barnes International
Your minimum viable product is not the time to do large grandiose things you always wished you could do, in order to get this out the door. Again, we re going to put as much of this in our comfort zone as we can, so we can get it completed. Keep it simple, sweetheart, as they say. Gary: You're so nice, doing the KISS in that way. Sonia: Well, as you know, we have a small child in our house and so I found myself saying, many times this week, "We don't use the word stupid in our house," so I can't say keep it simple stupid. But do keep it simple. Step five is the big one. You execute it and you get it out the door. You go through your plan, you do your tasks, and you get it in front of some customers, and you say, I have something for you. Here's what it'll do for you, here's what I want you to do next. Go get Paypal or whatever it might be, send me a check, or come to my house and give me a bag of Halloween candy, whatever it is that you're going to exchange. But you get it out the door, you get it in front of people, and you ask for something in exchange. It's going to be sloppy, and it's going to be imperfect, and there are going to be parts of it that will probably make you cringe. And that's how it is. It's normal, and everybody goes through it, and it's very good for you to get something out the door that you're not really 100% comfortable with, because you're going to have it done. Step six, you're going to observe what happens. This is a very important part. You're going to get feedback. You're going to be amazed because nobody's going to cringe at the things that made you cringe. But there are going to be things that they didn't like about it, or they wished you had done differently, or this would have been really great for me but I would have liked it on blue, or I would have liked the egg timer. So you're going to listen to what people needed to be different or better, and you're going to take notes on all of that. And I would say, calendar a day after your launch, after you put this on and get the response back. Calendar some time to look at the feedback, positive and negative, and make some notes about what you think would be good to do differently. And then the most important step after step one is step seven, which is you go back to step one. And you start planning the relaunch, and you make plans to do a bigger version, or a more complete version, 10 2010 Gary Barnes International
or a more polished version of this MVP, or maybe you go back to step one and you start another MVP, and you do something else that's small, and then down the line you can bundle those two together. Again, the big accomplishment comes from aggregating small accomplishments. So that's it. Seven steps. They're simple, they're going to be challenging, but anytime you feel like, I can't do this, I want you to go back to step four. I want you to look at your plan and cross some steps off. Simplify it. If it's freaking you out or slowing you down, you have defined an overly large MVP, and you need to whittle it down just a little bit. Gary: Well, and I think, in that what you're doing is eliminating the fear factor. There is going to be fear but I know that we've covered that in a previous session. The element where we make it so large again that we create fear and that fear creates that immobility, that deer in the headlights, and we get stuck. And what you're saying is that it's okay to simplify. It's okay to take things off our list, and it doesn't mean that it has to go away or that we're throwing it out, it just means that it's going to be in a different order. Sonia: Yeah, and you know, one thing that really helps is something that David Allen, who's a major productivity guru, calls the "someday, maybe" list. So if you need to take some things, maybe you're really attached to getting that merchant account or doing that big ambitious step. And that's fine, if you don't quite know where it fits in your calendar now. You just create a list for yourself, and you keep it somewhere, and you refer to it, maybe once a month or two, of someday, maybe. I am someday going to do that for my business. I am someday going to create that ambitious product. But that's not what I'm working on today. Today I'm working on something, and sometimes you even want to take 20 minutes out of your workday, and sit down and make a bunch of notes about that someday project. Because you really, that's your dream. And again, you don't want to ignore your dreams or squash your dreams. You want to go ahead and capture them, but then you park them, and someday, maybe, and you turn your attention to the work at hand. If it's like a four page e book and you're just embarrassed because it's so small, that's great. Because you do your four page e book, and then when you're working on it, you might get a little rush of energy and make it a six page e book. 11 2010 Gary Barnes International
Bump the margins up and get a cover on it and get it out there. Then you can always take, I know a gentleman, his name is Sean Desouza, really nice guy, he's a marketer. And he has a multimillion dollar company called Psycho Tactics, and the multimillion dollar company was started when he wrote, I think it was an 11 page e book that he sold for under $20 on how to sell more effectively to your customers. Something about the psychological triggers of selling. And he does everything this way. He makes something small that he can handle, and then he builds it, and he refines it, and he makes it a tiny bit better, and he makes it a tiny bit more expensive, and then he builds something else that's small and he adds these little things together. And so Sean has a great life, he's a millionaire, he travels the world, he always makes plenty of time for his family and his friends, and he's certainly not some kind of Richard Branson business genius. So if Sean can do it, you can do it, and I can do it. Gary: Absolutely. And I think that the concept there is that it doesn't have to be huge to be valuable. I know there's an author I won't mention the name but when I read his materials, it's very good. But I'll read his materials, and three or four pages later, I think I have gone back three or four pages because he's restating the exact same thing, sometimes in the very same words. And so it's for a different purpose, but it still does not have to be a very large whatever, to have tremendous value that someone's willing to compensate you for it. And in reality, the more synthesized you bring something down, the more valuable, many times, it is to a person because they can implement it much quicker. Sonia: Yeah. I mean, another example of this is the software company I know called 37Signals. And I use a lot of their products, and their whole philosophy is that they make these little tools, and they're very small. Their tools are very, very small. They don't have very many features. They keep everything small, they keep everything streamlined, and they release stuff in beta, and they go ahead and let people use it, and then they get feedback and they make it better. But they have very, very valuable products that are not expensive, and they're small. They make my life better in a small way. They give me a place to keep my files and my notes. It's a small thing but it's very valuable to me, even though what the software does is super, super simple, and I could kind of do it myself with Google Box or something. 12 2010 Gary Barnes International
But they make it simple and easy, but they're doing something valuable. So that's what you want to look for. Something where you can create value. It could be in a very small way, but that doesn't make it not meaningful. Gary: Absolutely. Well, Sonia, I think everyone has gotten a lot this week. And I know that out of the seven steps, they're going to be getting another push to gather and gain momentum, and I'm really anxious to see the feedback that we get from this particular session, because I know it's going to be very meaningful for them. Sonia: Yeah, absolutely. We talked about traction, and we talked about what you've been doing is really fueling, adding your fuel and turning the ignition. So now we're letting out the clutch. We're going to move forward. Gary: No excuses, right? Sonia: That's right. No excuses because, if you're stalling out, make it smaller. Gary: And keep making it smaller. So on that note, if anyone does have any questions from this lesson or any lesson or session before this, please remember to reach out to us. You can send your two lifeline emails to Gary@GaryBarnesInternational.com, and you're not bothering us, it's something that's there for you to use whenever you feel the need. So, Sonia, thank you very much, it's been fun to sit on this side of the desk. It's a little bit unique. We talked about being a little uncomfortable at times, but it is very enjoyable and we always have a lot of fun together. Sonia: Yeah, this has been really good. So everybody, thank you so much, this is Sonia Simone and Gary Barnes with On Purpose Results. 13 2010 Gary Barnes International