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FourWeekMBA episodes

  • Bullseye Framework For Marketing Channels Experimentation and Prioritization

    The bullseye framework is a simple method that enables you to prioritize over the marketing channels that will make your company gain traction.

    The premise is that when you grow a company from scratch, in most cases, you don’t have a massive marketing budget. This requires a scientific method for marketing experimentation to prioritize on those channels that have the highest potential.

    Often, this marketing prioritization process will bring you to experiment with new marketing channels which might still be underutilized by your competitors, and for such reason also the ones with the highest potential.

    The bullseye framework was manufactured by Gabriel Weinberg, Justin Mares, in their book, Traction.

    Let me give you a bit of background about the story of one of the authors, Gabriel Weinberg, and how they came up with this framework.

    You find the full free guide here: fourweekmba.com/bullseye-framework/
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  • What is a business model?

    For more you can access the free guide at FourWeekMBA.com

    • What is a business model?
    • A business model is also about how you make money but how you make money isn’t your business model
    • It’s all about business model design
    • What are the primary components of a business model?
    • How many types of business models exist?
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    • Understanding The Dynamics Of Platform Businesses That Dominate The Market With Nick Johnson

      Nick Johnson is the Principal at Applico; he is also the co-author of the best selling book “Modern Monopolies,” which is incredible reading to understand the business model that is dominating today’s business world.

      With Nick, we explored the dynamics of platform business models.

      Contents

      • How did you get to study business modeling and the platform business models?
      • How has the business world changed since platform business models dominate?
      • What is a diseconomy of scale?
      • How have economies of scale changed in a world dominated by platform business models?
      • What’s the definition of a platform business model?
      • What is the core transaction?
      • Why is the core transaction so crucial for a platform business model?
      • How are platform business models primarily categorized?
      • Are traditional business strategy tools like Porter’s five forces still useful?
      • How do you build network effects?
      • Uber network effects case study
      • How do you know when you reached the critical mass to scale?
      • Do platform business models create more prominent and larger markets?
      • What’s the critical difference between a modern monopoly to an old monopoly?
      • Is scale an essential element for any platform business model?
      • What suggestion do you have for anyone starting a platform business model from scratch?
      • Key takeaways
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      • Acquisition Entrepreneurship With Walker Deibel

        Walker Deibel, is an entrepreneur, investor, and advisor. He also the author of a book that is critical to master a framework to become an acquisition entrepreneur: Buy Then Build.

        With Walker, we covered the key steps to get into the mindset and process of acquiring businesses, to then scale them up further.

        Contents

        • How did you get started as an acquisition entrepreneur?
          • Inside acquisition entrepreneurship
          • How did the name “acquisition entrepreneur” came up?
          • What are the critical elements for a good acquisition strategy?
            • Lack of urgency
            • Accusatory mindset
            • Create a sense of urgency
            • Pitch the seller
            • What mistakes should you avoid when acquiring a business?
              • Go after a great opportunity
              • A growth mindset is critical
              • Why is not a good idea to start looking for businesses to buy online?
              • What do you suggest to people that are getting started in acquiring other businesses?
                • Understand your strengths but also your weaknesses
                • Visualize the outcome and take action
                • Find your sweet spot
                • Is there an example of the perfect acquisition you’ve made?
                • When does it make sense actually to use leverage to acquire a company?
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                • Dissecting Disruptive Business Models With Thales Teixeira

                  For this interview, I have with me Thales Teixeira, professor at Harvard Business School and author of “Unlocking the Customer Value Chain,” which is an incredible book and an incredible reading, especially if you’re trying to understand how today’s business world works.

                  I asked Thales a few critical questions to understand the business landscape and each of them uncovers insights that will make you a better business person!

                  Contents

                  • What brought you to study business model disruption and business innovation?
                  • What’s for you that the most effective definition of a business model?
                  • What is the customer value chain and how does that work?
                  • What is decoupling and why is it so important?
                  • How did Birchbox break the customer value chain?
                  • Is disruption about business model innovation?
                  • Didn’t Uber start as a tech company?
                  • What are the three phases of digital business disruption?
                    • Unbundling in a nutshell
                    • Disintermediation in a nutshell
                    • Summarizing the three waves of unbundling, disintermediation and decoupling
                    • How do we know what the consumer is looking for? And how to use decoupling in our favor?
                      • The three customers’ currencies
                      • How important is branding in consumers’ choices?
                      • In this context, are traditional business tools, like Porter’s Five Forces, still useful?
                      • How should I start a disruptive company today?
                      • Is specialization the key to decoupling?
                      • What’s next? Is decoupling the main disruptive force in the coming decade?
                      • Key takeaways
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                      • Understanding The Dynamics Of Platform Businesses That Dominate The Market With Nick Johnson

                        Nick Johnson is the Principal at Applico; he is also the co-author of the best selling book “Modern Monopolies,” which is incredible reading to understand the business model that is dominating today’s business world.

                        With Nick, we explored the dynamics of platform business models.

                        Contents

                        • How did you get to study business modeling and the platform business models?
                        • How has the business world changed since platform business models dominate?
                        • What is a diseconomy of scale?
                        • How have economies of scale changed in a world dominated by platform business models?
                        • What’s the definition of a platform business model?
                        • What is the core transaction?
                        • Why is the core transaction so crucial for a platform business model?
                        • How are platform business models primarily categorized?
                        • Are traditional business strategy tools like Porter’s five forces still useful?
                        • How do you build network effects?
                        • Uber network effects case study
                        • How do you know when you reached the critical mass to scale?
                        • Do platform business models create more prominent and larger markets?
                        • What’s the critical difference between a modern monopoly to an old monopoly?
                        • Is scale an essential element for any platform business model?
                        • What suggestion do you have for anyone starting a platform business model from scratch?
                        • Key takeaways
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                        • Dissecting Innovation With Greg Satell

                          For this interview, Greg Satell, international keynote speaker, advisor, and the author of a book, which I loved, a best selling book, called “Mapping Innovation: A Playbook for Navigating a Disruptive Age,” has answered a few key questions about innovation strategy and business model innovation.

                          Let’s dive into them!

                          Contents

                          • How did you fall in love with the quest for understanding innovation?
                          • Is innovation about making quick decisions?
                          • What are some of the myths surrounding innovation?
                          • How does the Innovation Matrix work?
                          • How important is sustaining innovation?
                          • In which scenario, the lean startup helps to find the right path toward business innovation?
                          • What instead is a classic example of breakthrough innovation?
                          • Are tools like Porter’s Five Forces and SWOT Analyses still useful in today’s business landscape?
                          • How has the business world changed?
                          • Is the business model canvas a useful tool for that?
                          • How do we understand ecosystems?
                          • How important is to build ecosystems for scaling up a business?
                          • Key takeaways
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                          • The Art Of Unlearning To Be A Better Businessperson With Barry O’Reilly

                            Barry O’Reilly, is a business advisor, entrepreneur, keynote speaker, and is the author who has pioneered the intersection of business model innovation, product development, organizational design, and culture transformation.

                            Barry is the founder of ExecCamp, the entrepreneurial experience for executives, and management consultancy Antennae.

                            He wrote  an amazing book, “Unlearn: Let Go of Past Success to Achieve Extraordinary Results” and he is also the author of “Lean Enterprise: How High Performance Organizations Innovate at Scale.”

                            We’re diving deep into “unlearning” and how it can help organizations thrive in this era.

                            Contents

                            • How did you get into the study, research and practice of unlearning?
                              • A change in mindset
                              • What’s the learning organization and what’s unlearning instead?
                                • Recognizing what’s not working
                                • Learn fast and rapidly innovate
                                • Is disruption organizational or it happens at an individual level?
                                • How does the Cycle of Unlearning work?
                                  • Not a one-and-done cycle
                                  • What are the key characteristics of unlearning?
                                    • Curiosity
                                    • Ownership
                                    • Commitment
                                    • Recap of the key characteristics to master unlearning
                                    • What’s status quo leadership and why it might be damgerous?
                                      • Avoid to just copy and paste frameworks
                                      • Define the outcomes
                                      • Build a system to continuous innovation through unlearning
                                      • How to use the Three Cultures Model to build a successful company?
                                      • What are unlearning prompts? And why they matter?
                                        • How do you know you need to unlearn?
                                        • Is there a number one reason people don’t unlearn?
                                          • Build a growth mindset
                                          • Fixed vs. growth mindset
                                          • Switch the focus from the person to the process
                                          • Recap about growth vs. fixed mindset
                                          • What suggestions do you have for executives to bring this process in their organizations?
                                          • Key takeaways
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                                          • Inside The Lean Startup With Ash Maurya

                                            Ash Maurya is a practitioner and entrepreneur. Author of Running Lean, Scaling Lean and the Lean Canvas, built on top of the Business Model Canvas. Ash is also the founder of LEANSTACK.

                                            In this session, we focused on continuous innovation and scaling lean.

                                            Contents

                                            • How did we go from lean manufacturing to continuous innovation?
                                            • What’s the key difference between an entrepreneur and a scientist?
                                            • What are the key ingredients for an effective entrepreneurial experiment?
                                            • Why monetization is a building block you want to test early on?
                                            • What can we learn from the early Facebook on monetization and execution?
                                            • How did Tesla instead execute a staged rollout?
                                            • How do you go from problem/solution fit to scale?
                                            • When is the right time, if there’s any, to take venture capital money?
                                            • When does it make sense to bootstrap?
                                            • How do you build the optimal business model?
                                            • How is traction different from revenue and why is it a key metric?
                                            • What is throughput accounting, and how it works?
                                            • How does the 10x growth model work?
                                            • Why do we need to remove failure from our vocabulary?
                                            • Key takeaways
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                                            • Inside Digital Transformation With David L. Rogers

                                              David L. Rogers, is an author, speaker, and consultant. He is the Faculty Director of the Digital Business Strategy and Leadership at Columbia Business School. And he is also the author of a fantastic book which is The Digital Transformation Playbook.

                                              This is a must-read because it helps you to understand how the business world has changed. I asked David a few key questions to understand what digital transformation is really about!

                                              • How did you get into digital transformation?
                                              • What are the myths surrounding digital transformation?
                                              • How can we define digital transformation? What is it really about?
                                              • How do you think the business strategy world has changed?
                                              • What are the five domains of business strategy in the digital era?
                                                • Customers
                                                • Competition
                                                • Data
                                                • Innovation
                                                • Value
                                                • How have customers changed in the digital era?
                                                • What are the customers’ core behaviors in the digital era?
                                                  • Access
                                                  • Engage
                                                  • Customize
                                                  • Connect
                                                  • Collaborate
                                                  • What is the business model most suited for this digital era?
                                                  • What are the fundamental principles for a successful digital strategy?
                                                  • Key takeaways
                                                  • Conclusion
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                                                  About FourWeekMBA

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                                                  Digital business models podcast is hosted by Gennaro Cuofano, creator of FourWeekMBA.com, a leading source of insights for digital entrepreneurs. You can get the top-tier business education by…