How to solve your customers’ pain point without writing code
March 4, 2021
In this episode we talk about how to fulfill the promises we make to our customers without building a single line of code.
What's on a call today with a young gentleman named Matthew Lee from Charlotte, North Carolina, and Matthew is building a nightlife app, and he was a little bit worried about the direction of his app because the pandemic happened and there weren't that many nightlife things happening. But luckily I think some of the economies is starting to open back up, and it's, it's, uh, looks like he might have an app again. And he was thinking about all these different problems.
One, he said that he really wanted to be able to raise capital because he needed to hire someone to be a social media manager, and he also needed to hire a data scientist. His app is very data-driven, and for that data-driven side, he wants to hire a data scientist to make sure that they're handling the data efficiently. And I had to stop him again. And I think as entrepreneurs like we're always thinking about the future and all these different things that we need. We try to solve problems that we don't even have yet. But that was exactly that, right? Matthew was trying to solve a problem. He doesn't even have.
So we slowed it down and we put it in the framework to build a minimum Bible markup. And if you're building a minimum viable mock-up and use the vertical method, then you would grow a customer list. You would pre-sell your minimum viable mock-up. Then you would develop your solution, and then you would scale your solution. So this is the opposite of actually building your solution first and then trying to find a market for it. We find the market first, and then we solve the problems that the market already has.
So I asked Matthew. Okay, Matthew, I want to challenge you. Is there a way you can fulfill the pain point that your APP promises without actually having to build an app? So the pain point that Matthews at promises to fix is people want to know how many other people are at different nightclubs, and he wants to be the source to be able to tell people. Okay, this is how many people are at each of these nightclubs, and before building that app, I caution, Matthew, because he might be building something that people don't even want he might feel like this is a problem, and this is a comment that a lot of people might have made off-hand.
But when it actually comes down to downloading an app or paying money for a service like this, it's a totally, totally different story. So I challenged Matthew to figure out how you can solve this problem without actually building an app, and the realization we came to is okay, instead of building this app to get as close to as real-time data as possible. You have different people at different clubs, and maybe you pay them a little extra. You pay the bouncer, you pay the white waitress maybe $20 each night just to send you a text message every hour of what it's like in the club. And then you collect all those text messages and you published that on a Twitter feed, and then your next step that's your minimum buyable mock-up, right, So you build your minimum viable markup.
Your next step is to go market it. So if you're taking that Twitter feed and you want people to come on your platform, how willing are people? Um, how willing are people like actually wanting to get on your platform? How engaged are they? And then you have another product thesis, which is your building, this community that advertisers will want to advertise to. So how many do you actually need for it to be profitable? What kind of advertisers can you already get from the small amount of community you're already growing? You're gonna be able to figure all these things out without building an app at all without building a single line of code.
So before you start thinking about all these problems that you might have and you start solving problems that you don't even have yet think about, how can you fulfill the promise that you're making to your customer without even building with your building and build a minimum Bible markup to fulfill that promise and then see how it goes? What you'll learn is you might not like the business you think you're building or the customers they might not appreciate or value what you're building either.
But just building it going out there is the first step, and I promise you, when you do that first step, you are going to learn so much more. And the stuff that you learn will be it will eventually become how you monetize whatever you monetize in your business. So I hope that helps build a minimum viable markup, and I will see you guys in the next episode.
Continue your journey with me on my other channels:
One, he said that he really wanted to be able to raise capital because he needed to hire someone to be a social media manager, and he also needed to hire a data scientist. His app is very data-driven, and for that data-driven side, he wants to hire a data scientist to make sure that they're handling the data efficiently. And I had to stop him again. And I think as entrepreneurs like we're always thinking about the future and all these different things that we need. We try to solve problems that we don't even have yet. But that was exactly that, right? Matthew was trying to solve a problem. He doesn't even have.
So we slowed it down and we put it in the framework to build a minimum Bible markup. And if you're building a minimum viable mock-up and use the vertical method, then you would grow a customer list. You would pre-sell your minimum viable mock-up. Then you would develop your solution, and then you would scale your solution. So this is the opposite of actually building your solution first and then trying to find a market for it. We find the market first, and then we solve the problems that the market already has.
So I asked Matthew. Okay, Matthew, I want to challenge you. Is there a way you can fulfill the pain point that your APP promises without actually having to build an app? So the pain point that Matthews at promises to fix is people want to know how many other people are at different nightclubs, and he wants to be the source to be able to tell people. Okay, this is how many people are at each of these nightclubs, and before building that app, I caution, Matthew, because he might be building something that people don't even want he might feel like this is a problem, and this is a comment that a lot of people might have made off-hand.
But when it actually comes down to downloading an app or paying money for a service like this, it's a totally, totally different story. So I challenged Matthew to figure out how you can solve this problem without actually building an app, and the realization we came to is okay, instead of building this app to get as close to as real-time data as possible. You have different people at different clubs, and maybe you pay them a little extra. You pay the bouncer, you pay the white waitress maybe $20 each night just to send you a text message every hour of what it's like in the club. And then you collect all those text messages and you published that on a Twitter feed, and then your next step that's your minimum buyable mock-up, right, So you build your minimum viable markup.
Your next step is to go market it. So if you're taking that Twitter feed and you want people to come on your platform, how willing are people? Um, how willing are people like actually wanting to get on your platform? How engaged are they? And then you have another product thesis, which is your building, this community that advertisers will want to advertise to. So how many do you actually need for it to be profitable? What kind of advertisers can you already get from the small amount of community you're already growing? You're gonna be able to figure all these things out without building an app at all without building a single line of code.
So before you start thinking about all these problems that you might have and you start solving problems that you don't even have yet think about, how can you fulfill the promise that you're making to your customer without even building with your building and build a minimum Bible markup to fulfill that promise and then see how it goes? What you'll learn is you might not like the business you think you're building or the customers they might not appreciate or value what you're building either.
But just building it going out there is the first step, and I promise you, when you do that first step, you are going to learn so much more. And the stuff that you learn will be it will eventually become how you monetize whatever you monetize in your business. So I hope that helps build a minimum viable markup, and I will see you guys in the next episode.
Continue your journey with me on my other channels:
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