Apologize for the lack of episode last week. Caught a cold from my kid so I didn't want to just have an episode of coughing.

Just a quick update on the progress of Lesson Underground and a digression into an experience getting some insight into what someone who is new to creating an online business might approach some commonly encountered scenarios.

Really short episode today. Not much to report but I just wanted to talk a bit about how beneficial meditation can be for entrepreneurs.

First off just wanted to thank my buddy Jason Rushin at Aloha Startups for writing a small piece about this podcast. I think he oversold me a little but I am grateful nonetheless! :)

I apologize for this episode, I'm running on a few hours of sleep this week because my wife caught a cold and I've been on full time toddler duty. I don't really have a write up with notes for this episode but here are some of the things I talk about:

Progress of teacher idea discovery phone calls for Lesson Underground

Next steps moving on to the MVP phase of this reboot

Digressions into why sometimes not knowing whats impossible is a huge advantage

My history as a professional musician

More of my thoughts on funding

Hey we're on iTunes now!

This week, I'm continuing to do customer calls for Lesson Underground. I got another 4 calls with students in and also 3 calls with teachers. I talked about it in a previous episode, how the general rule of thumb for  customer development / idea extraction / idea validation / whatever you want to call it is, you keep doing these  calls until the answers start sounding the same.

This is starting to happen with my calls and its very exciting!

It's beginning to look more and more like we are moving away from the initial marketplace idea for Lesson Underground and moving towards a concierge / matchmaking service for teachers and students.

The general idea I'm getting from students is:

1. They want to get better at X (X being whatever they're working on. it varies but they all have something)

2. They want to find 1 teacher that they get along well with and is capable of helping them with their X and stick with that teacher for an extended period of time

3. They for the most part aren't interesting in learning songs (D'oh!), but if they are, they want to use a song as a vehicle to get better at the ukulele. Meaning, learning techniques in a song that can be applied to many other songs.

4. They really don't have any specific teachers in mind, they just want someone who is a good fit, and are open to having us use our expertise to recommend teachers

5. The main reason they wanted to try Skype lessons was they were not able to get the feedback they felt they needed from the video courses. Many felt lost and wanted some direction on what to work on next, or how to get to the next step.

 

I also began talking to teachers, and their input is just all over the place right now. This just means I need to talk to more teachers, which is good anyways because I need to build a bigger database of teachers to successfully service the needs of the students.

My general thoughts on the feedback from teachers is that different teachers are going to want different things. I know that sounds super general but basically teachers who already have their set system don't want to deviate from their system and be encumbered by having to learn and use a new system in addition to what they already have. At the same time, new teachers are going to need more guidance and maybe help with things like billing etc.

Doing these calls has also given me a bunch of insight into how customers of UU are doing and what they’re struggling with with that service.

I’m still working on Ukulele Underground as well, and doing Lesson Underground sort of half and half with UU.

These calls really make me want to spend a month or so doing customer calls for UU maybe next month and from there the rest of the years video production schedule can be mapped out.

Tips for Idea Extraction / Customer Development

Some of the things I've learned from recently doing this.

Use warm leads if possible. If you don't have warm leads, you can generate luke warm leads by using referrals or getting someone to allow you to use their name as a referral in email subject lines

Ideally, start talking to customers on the phone BEFORE you even have an idea. Your idea for your business should be based on the problems they talk about

If you already have an idea, don't be married to it. Be willing to completely change your opinion and stance of what you think is good. Conduct the talks with an open mind and most importantly DON'T SELL.

A great line from Dane Maxwell is to use the Magic Wand question or some variation of it: "If I had a magic wand, and could wave it and make one of your problems disappear or get fixed instantly, what would you want to use it on?" This will get the person to stop trying to think and just say what is obviously bothering them the most.

If you discover,

The title of this episode should give you a good idea of what its about. Hopefully it can prevent you from making the same mistakes I made.

I began doing idea (re)validation calls with existing Lesson Underground members this week. I was able to talk to 6 people so far and am hoping to continue to get more feed back and collect more data points.

While doing these calls, it quickly became evident that what we had built was just not what customers were looking for. I talked to my partner Aaron about the things I was hearing from these customers and we both independently came to the conclusion that it would just be too expensive to try to retool what we already have and paid for to effectively solve the problems the customers are telling us they have.

Thus we are essentially starting over, throwing away a $50k investment.

As bad as I felt for wasting our money, I feel equally as bad about not using the app Sudokrew had developed for us. Sure we paid them, but no one likes seeing something they worked really hard on not be used at all.

It's a tough call, but in entrepreneurship,  its important to stay solution agnostic and always be committed only to solving your customers problem(s) and nothing else.

Some of the key lessons I hope you'll be able to learn from my mistake:

It's incredibly easy to fall into the trap of potential revenue. Just because an app theoretically "can" make $X, does not mean you will ever get there, and it definitely does not mean you'll have that day 1. Be practical and stay in the present reality.

Never, ever, ever begin development until the idea has been validated. Also, be sure that your data is current. We assumed things were the same as 2 years ago but markets and customer wants change. If your data is old, go back and do the validation all over again.

Keep hubris in check. We (I) got overconfident because Ukulele Underground has worked out ok. Generally for bootstrapping there are a few rules you want to stick to to maximize your chances of success.

Target SMBs as your customers. Consumers are much more difficult and churn will always be an issue (we've found that to be the case with UU as well)

Keep your revenue model simple. You make something, people pay you for it. We tried to monetize of a commission which requires mass volume to create a sustainable company.

Don't start marketplaces. Marketplaces require you not only to build the infrastructure for both the supply and demand side, but you also need to expend more energy and resources to get both sides of the equation into the app which usually means more money. There's a reason why most marketplaces need to take funding.

So Where do we go from here?

Basically we're back at square one. The good new is, by doing these calls, it still seems pretty clear that there definitely is a problem there that these people need solving. It's not like we have to abandon the idea altogether and in fact, this will probably close to a true pivot rather than those fake "pivots" where you basically just start a new company with an existing name.

What I need to do now is continue to talk to more people; customers and teachers to really get a clear understanding of the pain points and problems they want solved. Then we can craft a much simpler product to service their needs with a simpler revenue model.

I plan to keep making calls to both students and teachers for the next week and maybe for the entire month of January. The general rule of thumb when it comes to idea validation or customer development is you keep doing it until the answers become predictable or you know the problem of your customer well enough to explain it to them better than they could themselves. With just 6 data points, thats not enough so it looks like I'll be logging a lot more time on the phone.

Until next week true believers!

In this episode, I talk about what we did wrong so far with Lesson Underground, what we did right, and most importantly what I'm going to start doing now.

Cutting to the chase, we did a lot wrong, but the root cause of it all boils down to one thing.

Laziness. Specifically due to having money to spend on this project.

In the past, we never had much money so we would be forced to figure out how to do things in the most cost efficient way. Now that UU is doing well, we got really lazy with a bunch of things and kind of threw money at problems which lead to extremely sloppy execution on our end.

Here is just some of the unspeakable and embarrassing things we did / did not do

We assumed product / market fit due to the small traction we had with a similar but not exact product within Ukulele Underground.

We failed to validate the delivery method of the solution (skype lessons)

We failed to validate the pricing of lessons with customers before launch and set expectations with customers properly

We failed to test and validate assumptions of user behavior with both teacher and student

Because of all of this we ended up with a solution that really it appears not many people want.

Although we did a lot of things wrong, we did somethings right.

We started with a problem in mind and didn't start with what we could do (didn't matter in the end though)

I built a (albeit small) pre-launch mailing list, so we had users in the door day 1

Got a handful of very high calibre teachers to sign up

So What Now?

Nevertheless, dwelling on the past too long is not beneficial at all, so now lets focus on what I'm working on this week.

Basically, what I want to do is really start back at 1 and revalidate everything from the ground up.

I'm going to begin to revalidate the service, revalidate the customer intentions, the teacher intentions, basically try to get rid of as much assumptions as possible in order to get a clear picture of what the customers actually want and what we can do to provide it for them.

My to-dos for the rest of the week consists basically of reaching out to existing members who have signed up for Lesson Underground (we only have 30 or so, so it should be very simple) and get them on the phone to have a quick discussion about a few things.

What their initial goals were when they signed up to use the site

Why they did not book a lesson (or why did they book a lesson)

What are they willing to pay

I don't honestly expect everyone to answer or get on the phone with me, but I'm going to try to get in contact with as many people as possible and really define the problem they want solved.

From there, I should be able to craft a clear game plan of what to do next.

I'll share my findings and thoughts in the next episode.

 

*Note* I actually recorded this podcast on Monday but am only uploading it today because I've been busy scheduling and conducting customer calls.

The start of a new company and a new journey. In late 2015 my friends and I launched a new company called Lesson Underground. We invested around $50,000 to building a bare bones beta of the app and launched it to a small pre-launch mailing list. Unfortunately, it did not take off as we hoped which brought about this podcast. I've wanted to do a business / startup focused podcast for a while now but I never felt I knew enough to be one of those gurus doling out advice to the masses. I also feel like I don't have as much success as needed to be one of those types of people.

When Lesson Underground did not work like how I expected, it provided an opportunity to create a concept where people who are interested in building an online business or startup can come along with me for the ride. My plan is to share and document as much as I work to build Lesson Underground from an idea, into a profitable business.

Even though we've been in business with Ukulele Underground for 8 years now, there is still so much I don't know about running a startup and I'm learning all the time. I hope that by showing that, it may take away some of the fear and trepidation many first time entrepreneurs may have when they are starting. You don't need to know everything, and almost no mistakes are fatal. You'll see me fail and make mistakes over and over again as this series goes on. That's just part of the deal with becoming an entrepreneur.

If you're interested in building a self-funded startup here in Hawaii but haven't gotten started yet, my hope is that this show will give you a good glimpse of what its like to be behind the scenes trying to get a company off the ground.

If you have any questions, or comments please feel free to leave a comment below or email me. Also if you have suggestions for the show, I'm all ears too. I'm relatively new to this podcasting thing and the first 2 episodes sound like I'm recording in a cave (sorry about that, will change rooms and settings in ep 3!)