TLDR:
Join us for Episode 2 as we dive into the first crucial steps of starting your business. Discover if your product fits your market and play along as we try to guess how famous businesses started out with drastically different concepts.
SPEAKERS
Hillary, Valery, Joshua, Nicolas
Valery 00:28
Welcome back to scaling side hustles a podcast all about breaking out of your nine to five to make your side hustle your full time gig. Now in case you’re jumping right in. You may want to start with Episode one to get the full story in chronological order.
Hillary 00:41
According to Forbes magazine, every entrepreneur needs these 10 skills, curiosity, time management, strategic thinking, efficiency, resilience, communication, networking, finance, branding, sales, how many do you identify with three for all 10s? Come on, let’s be real. If you’re like the rest of us, you’re probably feeling pretty overwhelmed right now. Like you don’t measure up. Sound familiar? No wonder it’s such a terrifying notion to start a business. The barriers to entry seem daunting. But we’re here to tell you your dream is closer than you know. You may think you have it all together. Maybe someones convinced you you need an MBA, or you feel insecure about your mastery of business jargon. Pin about low hanging fruit, scalable,
Valery 01:24
agile, strategic partnerships. Okay,
Hillary 01:27
so we can’t promise we won’t use some of these throughout the podcast. But Donatus you’ve been warned? Well, we want to talk about is the heart behind a business, the life shaping moments that make us human. We hope you find yourself in these stories. But before we jump into that, let’s first tell you who we are. My name is Hilary. I’m an aspiring entrepreneur, often doubtful and insecure. I spent seven years in the nonprofit world living and working abroad in Columbia, South America.
Valery 01:57
And I’m Valerie, I’ve done an assortment of jobs. I’ve worked in hospitality and retail Retail Management. I’m passionate about natural health. And laughing let’s keep it light. This is a dating. long walks on the
Hillary 02:13
beach. We’re gonna keep it fast and loose, heavy and light. So we’re here to build a bridge between why this story and Joshua’s life in general is impactful for us. And for you as a listener to anyone really who is looking to build their business, get past hurdles, overcome obstacles, to really do the work that you’re passionate about. Through Joshua’s story we want to take you through the life of someone who overcame a lot of those obstacles to hopefully inspire, inform and educate so that anyone else who may be on that journey can find inspiration. And in order to do
Valery 02:56
that, we really have to take it back to Joshua’s history. Back when he was a kiddo
Hillary 03:06
it was time to say goodbye to middle school, Joshua and hello to the new and improved High School version of himself. His prospects were bright, a new technical school had opened in the city, and you needed good grades to get in. Joshua had those you would too if you’d spent the last years in isolation, learning how to build your own computer. So he got in and started preparing for his fresh start.
Joshua 03:27
One of the requirements to start ninth grade was you had read these two books. One of them was Who Moved My Cheese and that book was about like adapting to change. And change
Hillary 03:39
was about to hit literally.
Joshua 03:43
I remember one day I left the barber shop and I was going out into the streets, but it was it was raining really bad. And I don’t know how it happened. It happened pretty fast.
Hillary 03:59
Out of nowhere, a car slammed into Joshua launching and 15 feet down the street, sliding down the slick pavement before coming to a halt. Onlookers screamed and rushed to help.
Joshua 04:10
When I stood up, I realized that I had broken my left arm and my right elbow hurt and it was just this traumatic event all over again. You know, like what am I dealing with now?
Valery 04:21
Wow. So at 11 years old, the dog beat your right hand and fast forward at 14. You just broke your left hand does that right? That’s right. All right. There’s no more arms left. That’s crazy
Hillary 04:36
with his dominant hand out of commission. Joshua’s hope have a fresh start was quickly overshadowed by the challenge of learning to maneuver and right so as not to get behind in school before he even started. It was all a bit too much.
Joshua 04:47
I just experienced too traumatic things and three years so I thought oh gosh, in three years so what’s the next trauma that I’m gonna experience? I just decided not to help allow myself to exist in a state of staying the same. I wanted to be wild, but in the sense of trying new things try out life in a different way.
Hillary 05:11
Now, Josh has told me this story before, right?
Valery 05:14
Yeah, I mean, from what I understand, he wanted to reinvent himself be someone different in high school, he’s always had that mindset of, I don’t like it, I’m going to make a shift, I’m going to be better. So then what happens? Boom, he gets hit by a car, he breaks the other arm. Probably, at this point, he’s reminiscing over that first break was of his right arm with the dog bite. So now he has to make a choice. Like, are you going to feel defeated? Or are you going to conquer it and really reinvent yourself?
Hillary 05:51
The different way of living involved having fun, a lot of it, Joshua would play the class clown and goof off with his classmates. Some teachers took it as rebellion, carelessness. Others understood it as something more.
Joshua 06:03
I remember being in my technical class, which I chose web design and multimedia to kind of specialize in. And this is junior year of high school. And so we had to go through like the whole Adobe Suite, learning Adobe Photoshop, and Premiere and flash and all these different programs. And we would get these big textbooks for Adobe Photoshop and, you know, kind of walk you through, like how to do different tutorials. And my teacher would always yell at me, her name was Mrs. Sherman. She was such an amazing teacher, but she would always get on my case about not following the tutorials in the book, because I was always taking a picture of my friend and photoshopping their face, you know, and just kind of working outside the box working outside the parameters of school.
Hillary 06:52
Instead of getting angry, Mrs. Sherman would encourage Joshua to learn the fundamentals returned to his textbook, but she also left room for him to explore his creativity. By the end of two years, the dynamic has shifted.
Joshua 07:06
So if somebody had like a problem with their program, or they didn’t know how to use a certain tool, she would be like, go ask Joshua. I realized in that moment that, you know, thinking outside the box has a lot of value.
Valery 07:20
Totally. That’s like a perfect example of what he grew up to be like,
Hillary 07:24
Yeah, I’m like, we don’t know you were like that. Nice. I always go to you when I have a question about anybody.
Valery 07:33
Anything? Headlights? Car trouble? techie problem, business question, tax question. It’s like, yeah, boom, who could figure it out? Go to Joshua. Yeah, that’s definitely his MO.
Hillary 07:44
Oh, for sure. For sure. Yeah, so as you guys may know, Joshua is the founder of multiple companies, and has a lot of experience training and building up freelancers and changing the way that we think about business. So last episode, episode one, we talked about the business of filament tool, which kind of helps set a foundation for building your business, creating a vision. And all of these tools are going to be listed in our show notes. And don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast, we’re going to be giving you guys a lot of resources. And it helps us to reach more people, more entrepreneurs like you, on today’s
Valery 08:20
episode will answer the question, How do I know if anyone is going to want what I’m selling? Does my product even fit in the market?
Hillary 08:29
So let’s jump right into these tools and give out some practical resources to our listeners. What are we going to be talking about today?
Joshua 08:36
We’re gonna be talking about the lamb analysis, which is a derivative of the lean model canvas. And that helps people to identify if they have a product market fit
Hillary 08:46
company. Lamb How do you spell that? Like? Lamb?
Joshua 08:50
Yeah, like lamb, which stands for the Lean Agile Model for business. And it’s basically a tool that has around 13 questions and the first five questions are what we’re going to be going over today.
Hillary 09:05
So what are some common mistakes you’ve seen with people filling out the LAM analysis?
Joshua 09:10
Yeah, well, I’ve seen sometimes people
Valery 09:13
Oh, I
Hillary 09:14
guess Hi, Nico. I
Valery 09:15
guess this is an open office call.
Joshua 09:17
Hey, Nico. We’re trying to like record the podcast right now. So just kind of you know, keep put your mic on mute if you don’t mind. Okay. But But guys,
Nico 09:26
I want to introduce myself to the podcast listeners.
Valery 09:29
Yeah, but we’re just gonna finish our point about the lamb analysis.
Nico 09:33
No, just can we take control of this meaning for a second? Wait, Nico. What
Valery 09:37
are you gonna Nico? What did you just do a Joshua.
Nico 09:41
See about? Not yet.
Hillary 09:43
Oh, gosh, I guess I’m dead.
Nico 09:45
abandoned in the earth to me nobody Nikolas so when I say this are containers, so in Charrier Oh, no. Lynette. Ponyo? No. Okay. So let’s go again. I’m Nico. I’m from monocytes, Argentina. And for those who don’t know Argentina Hello, this is taking the word soft my grill master. When I’m not cooking, I’m working. I’ve been a freelance professional since 2015. But there certainly was an easy suffering answer you have to take some hard decisions. When I was younger, a company offered me a sales position but outside of the stability that a nine to five can give you. I didn’t want to take you because Josh, show me all of the benefits that the NFL announcer has, most of what I do now is creating amazing automated tools and processes to use them. If you’re not one yet. I highly recommend you look into starting a freelance career. I believe it is one of the first step that can lead you to becoming a business owner. Okay, that’s enough about me. Let’s bring them back in.
Joshua 10:39
Thanks for kicking us out on our own podcast, Nico.
Hillary 10:43
Gosh, you’re the one that taught him a lot of stuff.
Valery 10:46
We’re blaming you, Joshua.
Joshua 10:48
Okay, and you go now you’re officially a member of the podcast. Why don’t you jump in on this conversation we’re having.
Valery 10:54
So Nico. Everyone always loves Nico. He’s Mr. Fixit, organized guy that brings a lot into like the culture aspect of the team. Miko
Hillary 11:05
is an amazing project manager.
Joshua 11:07
Yeah, I think he’s pivotal to any organization as they’re helping to scale their digital transformation efforts. Like he’s been incredible and coming up with new ideas, how to connect programs to each other, and how to make remote work more immersive.
Hillary 11:22
So Nico, now that we have you here, can you and Josh talk about vs. Alam analysis?
Valery 11:31
36 hour labor?
Hillary 11:36
Like, how did it come? How did it come to be for you guys?
Nico 11:39
Yeah, sure. So I think we got the need of creating or developing these these new bearish enough of them analyses because of like an idea that was presented to Josh. So Josh, why don’t you go ahead and tell us a little bit about it?
Joshua 11:54
Yeah, sure. So we created the lab analysis out of a need that like mica set for this company, and this company was trying to build a local news application that could kind of compete with Facebook. But be more news oriented, it was a really good idea. But I felt like something was missing. And I wasn’t sure if the app was going to be successful. So we were being charged with creating the company from nothing, and making it viable for an investor. And so if we look at this through the investors eyes, you know, the investor is going to make sure that it’s going to be profitable, we’re not getting paid to plan it. So we’re only getting paid if it’s funded, we definitely have to prove that it’s profitable. So in the beginning, we were building this local news app, per the investors specifications. But through the process of filling out the business model canvas and the Lean Model Canvas, we recognize that there was something missing in these tools,
Nico 12:54
for me was super interesting, because I was learning a lot of things that I didn’t know. And you know, how how a person, you know, kind of be able to create a company. And when I saw what mainly Josh was doing, and he was teaching me about it, like, I started to realize that people, you know, that create companies are looking into, like the problems and the society, like their market basically is
Joshua 13:17
gonna work out with a lot of clients together. And we’re often using this tool to review what a business does and how they’re serving their customer. Because if you look at it through that lens, then it changes the way that you’re marketing, it changes the way that you’re doing business with your customers. And for the better. So like, if you don’t look at your business through this lens, then you may be serving the customer incorrectly or slightly away from what they’re actually looking for.
Valery 13:51
And again, sometimes they don’t even know necessarily what they’re looking for. So I guess that tool also helps define it better.
Hillary 13:56
Yeah, for sure. What are the main components of the LAM analysis, the main questions that someone starting a business should have to answer?
Joshua 14:05
Yeah, so there’s what what problem are you trying to solve? And who has that problem? And what are your solutions? Like? Those are the main, three questions. And then once you identify those questions really thoroughly, then you want to find out who else is doing this in your space. And why are you different than them? What makes you unique?
Hillary 14:29
I know you’ve said or I don’t know if you’ve mentioned this yet, but when you identify the problems, you want to use first person, why is that? What What’s that mistake that people often use? If you just give them the lamb analysis and don’t explain how to use it?
Joshua 14:44
Most people will take this first question and they’ll say like, oh, the biggest problem in my business is I don’t have any sales. And I’m saying, well, that’s not what we’re asking you. We’re asking you like what is the problem that your customer has? And you Most of the time, I would say like 80% of the time that I ask people that they miss identify their customers problem. Like they’re not really truly empathizing with their customer. So their solution is off the mark.
Hillary 15:15
Yeah, I like that. Because when you say, like, I want to, I don’t know, like an example problems, like, I want to have more time to be with my family or something. I don’t know. Yeah. So you’re putting your empathy. You’re empathizing with the customer?
Joshua 15:32
Yeah, so that’s a good point, because you said, I want and want as a desire, not a problem. So you need to address the problem from it being a pain, or you need to reframe it as not a problem. But a desire. For example, if you started a restaurant business, it’s like, you know, I desire to have Mexican food. And, and you kind of work backwards from that desire. But you always need to work backward from the problem. The problem is not like, I’m, I’m in need of Mexican food. And you know, I’ve got to find, are you sure?
Hillary 16:09
I mean, I’ve often said that to myself.
Joshua 16:13
And the process of developing the lamb for your own business, you might start with some desire like that. But what is the root problem of I want to strengthen my immune system? I’m sick. Yeah, my immune system is weak.
Hillary 16:31
My body craves delicious, spicy food. So really, oh, that’s still desire, what is the root problem of wanting Mexican food? That’s a root there’s a desire for trying to get I’m using as an example,
Valery 16:45
well, I need to strengthen my child’s immune system,
Hillary 16:49
know, my child’s immune system is terrible.
Joshua 16:52
My child keeps getting sick. Because Because what we do as business owners, is we think people know how to solve their own problem. And that’s the fallacy is, the customer doesn’t know how to solve it. That’s why they need our business. Like you come in from valves perspective, and you say, well, obviously, their immune system is weak. But people will say I keep getting sick. And I don’t know why. So what is your solution for their problem? An actual
Valery 17:25
solution? Yeah, identifying what they’re ingesting that’s harming them to remove it. And
Joshua 17:33
higher level, so they don’t even know about their diet being an issue.
Valery 17:38
Okay, so their body needs to be in a homeostasis, right,
Joshua 17:41
higher level, because they don’t understand the word homeostasis,
Valery 17:45
they need to give themselves the right nutrients to prevent illness.
Joshua 17:50
Okay, you’re hitting the mark now. But now you’re in the third person when you should be in the first person, because it’s your solution, how are you helping them,
Valery 18:00
I will be, I will be providing tools for them to give their child nutrients, the right nutrients are something
Joshua 18:09
I’ll provide tools and education so that they can have the right nutrients so that their body can automatically heal itself. Because that’s the direct solution to their problem. So in both cases, whether you’re on the left side and the problem column, or on the right side, on the solution column, you’re in the first person, but one on one hand, like you know the solutions really well. But until you identify the problem really well, and simply, you don’t know what the person is looking for, in order to solve that problem. And that’s what you’re really trying to extrapolate in the process. And then once you do that, then you’re trying to figure out who are you doing it for? And trying to drive down those demographics into the tightest niche possible, so that you can test your solution on that on that customer segment?
Valery 19:06
I mean, why the need to make it a tight niche? I mean, this is a good principle for everyone.
Joshua 19:11
Yeah, if you cast too wide a net, you may lose hope and your ability to solve everybody’s problem. Because you start to find that you’re not doing it well. Because 10% of it is responding well and 90% is not. And that 10% is really your true customer but you’re wasting time and energy and resources on 90% at the same time. So it’s better to go narrow. Yeah, it’s better to go narrow, like look at Facebook as a perfect example. Like he didn’t start it opening up to the entire country. He started it just as a college campus tool, right.
Hillary 19:49
For guys who wanted to rate women. What? Yes,
Joshua 19:53
that’s true. The business model got revitalized over time to be ECAM a broader tool.
Hillary 20:01
So his first audience was douchey. Bros.
Valery 20:04
Yeah. Brah
Hillary 20:06
brah. Haven’t you seen social network? Yes. But it’s been a while I didn’t realize how many problems do you think are good to identify like is there should you identify like a gajillion, or just one,
Joshua 20:17
I would start in the problem column to figure out everything that you’re trying to solve in the world for that one type of customer or the multiple types of customers. So you’re just like mine dumping? Yeah, your mind dumping everything in there. And then once you start to look at your solutions, you can start the process of elimination. So you’ll start to identify a solution. And then you’ll see a problem that you really don’t know how to solve, you really don’t have any realistic skills to solve. And that’s when you start eliminating the problems from your problem column, and narrowing down your niche to say, Okay, this is what’s realistic. So like having a top three, I mean, I wouldn’t put a number to it, especially because once you add in a customer segment, you might find that they have other problems that you’re capable of solving. And a customer can have multiple problems and multiple ways that you solve that problem. And if you add in another customer segment, let’s take Uber for example. Uber has two types of customers. And one of them is the rider one of them is the driver, both have an individual set of problems that the application solves in different ways.
Valery 21:32
Yeah, that makes sense.
Hillary 21:34
Okay, hold up. While we’re on the subject of business plans, let’s take a beat, like we’re talking about in this episode, an idea is only valuable once it’s validated.
Valery 21:42
So we want to validate your ideas, go to scaling side hustles.com, and fill out the five questions for a chance to come on the podcast and talk with one of our business engineers, we hope to chat with you soon.
Hillary 21:53
Okay, now back to our regularly scheduled programming. When you’re looking at competition and determining your competition, I think is there a Is it easy to confuse competitors with people, you’re just inspired by? Like, what’s the difference? Can someone be a competitor, even if they’re not in the same industry, because they’re doing something similar?
Joshua 22:16
I have people start drawing out competitors in this stage, because they will typically come up with people who can be partners. And then in the analysis process, I’ll have them drop them down to number six, which is who can you partner with, but in the identification of their key traits. That’s where they’re seeing if their partnership material or their competition material. So I might say like, their website is great. And you know, they, they might get more sales than me, but if they’re, if they’re serving a different customer segment, or offering a different set of solutions, they really are a partner, you know, because I might be able to plug and play with them.
Hillary 22:56
And I see that point number five is determining your unfair advantage. Can you go into how exactly you you bring it down to one specific unfair advantage? Or can they be several?
Joshua 23:09
Yeah, there’s definitely several in each business and each successful business, the unfair advantage is going to be on unfair or unique to each customer segment. So in Ubers case, like, why is a rider going to choose Uber versus Lyft? You know, typically, that’s going to be about price. But I always encourage people not to go down the avenue of price, because they’re you’re always going to be undercutting yourself for the competition, which is the competition that Lyft and Uber are in are in right now. Like, if I’m a rider, I’m checking both apps before I order a ride, you know, because I’m going to nickel and dime them because it’s so convenient for me to do that. But they’ve built that unfair advantage into their system. As a driver, why am I going to drive for Lyft versus driving for Uber, there’s a different unfair advantage there. It might be the benefits that they give me or the legal jurisdiction, the tax breaks or something of that nature. I don’t know about their driver model at all. But I would say in the case that you have a fully formed problem customer solution, and you start to analyze the competitors key traits, only then will you know why you’re unique. Cool. Why is that so important? Well, if you’re not unique, then you don’t have product market fit.
24:30
Because that?
Joshua 24:34
Yeah, so product market fit is very simply the customers that you’ve accumulated in your customer column is your market. This is the niche market that you’re trying to attack. And then the solutions are the product, whether that’s a product or a service, it doesn’t matter. But does your solution fit your market and will they buy it I’m going to use your word homeostasis if you’re able to find homeostasis and questions one through five, there’s a balance that’s achieved. That guarantees you a successful business, if you are able to, like follow the steps of like the rest of the roadmap, but it validates that you have product market fit, and that your business will be successful that that person will buy it. But a lot of people have trouble getting there. And even if you aren’t able to validate it right away, it doesn’t mean that the business won’t become successful, because there’s plenty of business owners that I give this tool, and they fill it out the wrong way. Or I look at their business in a way that says okay, they’re Miss identifying the problem, but the customer is coming for the solution anyway, so they’re just marketing it incorrectly. And I’ve identified this process, which we’ll cover in the next episode, have identified this process while working on marketing materials for big companies and seeing like the main reason that they come after us for marketing services is because their market their current marketing isn’t effective. And their current marketing isn’t effective because they miss identify their customers problem.
Valery 26:17
Just to break up some of this business, talkie talkie. I’m thinking it’s really really fun. If we talk about I have a couple of businesses in mind that are really popular today. But they first started with like slightly different concept and a totally different name basis he gave the case
Hillary 26:39
so you’re gonna give the original name it started out us and we’re gonna guess what the current company is
Valery 26:44
what it became. Okay, go for it. Okay, this one was gonna be interesting. I’m really curious to see if Joshua does this one too. But the original name BackRub What do you think that company is today? Massage Envy. Back Rub it anyone could chime in Antonio feel free if you think what that could be. What could that have evolved to? That was a good guest Hillary about massage. But believe it or not, it turned into Google. Yeah. I don’t know why it was backwards. But I just thought that’s super interesting and crazy. Okay, I’m gonna give you another one. It’s Sound of Music Spotify as your guests. I’m Tony. Okay. I’m gonna say no, but good guests because it’s the sound
27:30
sound of music to be anything. I
Valery 27:32
know. We’re all thinking like Bose like the speakers. Okay. Like we’re headed. Well. No, but you guys are listening to the Word sound and pick. What is it? Okay. Bose is sold in this in this place. Sharper Image. That’s fine. Oh, that’s fine. That was sound with music. That’s fine. I kind of wanted to say it was. I wish it was like RadioShack
Hillary 27:58
that would be a great transition for what’s coming up later. Stick around. Okay, so can you do another one? I have a couple.
Valery 28:05
Okay, last one. Brad’s drink. Like we have any product any company. Lacroix awesome guests. No Pepsi Cola. But Bradstreet. That’s what it was. Why? I don’t know
Hillary 28:22
why I want to throw one in here. Okay. Jerry’s guide to the worldwide web.
Valery 28:27
Oh, being
Hillary 28:29
no close. And it’s also yes, go
Valery 28:35
I don’t I guess I didn’t look I didn’t cheat. I didn’t. Yeah.
Hillary 28:39
Oh, did you know that Yahoo stands for yet another hierarchical officious Oracle?
Valery 28:46
Of course that’s exactly what I don’t say do Yahoo. I say? Oh, you mean look I don’t even know what the why was yet. Get on a top hierarchical imagine let me back rub it. Sorry. I feel
Hillary 29:04
like I’m gonna get I’m gonna get you highly ranked on BackRub let me go. You could be like SEO optimized on back rub.
Nico 29:12
My grip maps. That’s my
Hillary 29:18
Yes. What else would we bathroom my business?
Valery 29:23
Well, that was fine.
Hillary 29:26
How is Product Market Fit measured? Is it like a quantitative thing? Or is it just Yeah, it’s fit. Oh, if there’s like homeostasis everything is kind of a lie.
Valery 29:36
It’s like a piece of the puzzle. Yeah.
Joshua 29:37
So in the in the validation stage, which is what we’re in right now. Like, I don’t want to draw up a 30 page business plan just to find out that my business is not validated. And I never get my first dollar. So there’s two ways to measure did you get your first dollar you know, that’s have a sense of validation, not just from your mom. Right. And did you find this sense of homeostasis on on paper?
Valery 30:07
Oh, have you ever because I’m assuming you weren’t born with all of these tools? Have you ever done like the whole 30 page business plan and then nothing comes out of it?
Hillary 30:17
You mean like, first words weren’t product market fit? Yeah. Of course he wasn’t born with.
Joshua 30:25
But you know what I mean? Yes. I’ve drawn up a couple business plans that were really long and extensive, and never had anything come from it. Oh,
Valery 30:37
just practice of writing long winded. Yes. This is fun.
Joshua 30:42
It was for me, this is what I’m passionate about.
Hillary 30:46
Would it be helpful to go through this exercise with like a fake company?
Valery 30:52
Can that be done on the fly guy? Sure. Yeah. Well,
Hillary 30:56
what what’s what’s coming to mind?
Valery 30:59
Starfish farms? who really want to start a starfish farm? What is that? A little Star Wars? I know. Star Wars starfish. He Laddie stop putting your
Hillary 31:12
Starfish hands on me. Want you to realize so who are the target market? What are you selling?
Valery 31:17
Everyone could buy it? Wrong answer. Actually, you need to have a little niche market.
Hillary 31:24
Josh, how do we figure out who we’re are we selling starfish?
Valery 31:27
Yes. For the farm. So I want people to have a form of starfish like a farm. We can hamsters farm? I don’t know. It’s different. Never been done that I know of. Or I should say I’ve never Googled it. But you’d like to starfish? Let’s just I had a starfish at one point. Okay, and there’s someone else’s name.
Hillary 31:52
Let’s look at a bible camp isn’t a viable idea.
Valery 31:55
I want to be profitable. I want to be a millionaire in three years. Is that your purpose? Is
Hillary 31:58
that your reason? I guess is that one of the I don’t know. Let’s start with question number one.
Nico 32:04
I think we’re getting like literally confused because I think that this idea is so like difficult and like Pictionary or something like that. Do you want to like analyze my side? Hustle?
Valery 32:14
Yeah. Miko, what’s the idea? What’s the side hustle?
Nico 32:17
All right. So I found regarding the first question like this problem, were mainly here in Argentina and want to say is most of this small businesses and shops around here, they don’t have all of the information display in like Google Maps, or Apple Maps. And I think they are not allowing people to get into our shops, get into our businesses and provide more sales. So what’s the idea? So the idea is to create some kind of SEO agency, kind of like a communication agency that can improve, you know, basically the communication between the shops, the small businesses, and the the end customer. Let’s
Hillary 32:57
just go through the question, and you can answer matter of factly. Like, who’s the customer?
Nico 33:00
So the customer right now will be small businesses around here in one side assertion, Tina, most of these businesses are like family businesses and 4050 year old business owners on and what is their pain point. So they their pain point is that they don’t have enough sales, and they don’t have enough visits to their shops in Argentina, we are like a little bit behind with marketing. And I think that traditional marketing, like flyers and those kinds of things, it is not working as well as he Well, he was working a few years ago. So I think that’s another problem that now they have like that traditional marketing is not working.
Joshua 33:42
So I think it’s important Nikka that whenever you say they that you rephrase it to I or we, because that’s that’s like the key factor in properly identifying the solution is really empathizing with the customer, and putting yourself in their shoes grammatically perfect.
Hillary 34:05
So as a company, we How would you solve that problem?
Nico 34:10
So my company wants to solve these problems by providing local SEO solutions for them so they can improve mainly their profiles in Google Maps in Apple Maps and local directories.
Joshua 34:25
Yeah, so like Nico’s coming up with all of this whole list of solutions that he can offer to solve this one customer’s problem. But in fact, the amount of solutions that he’s providing solve more than one problem so as he starts to flesh out these solutions that he knows will benefit the customer because he can start to see them in his mind. He will re identifying new problems that the customer is experiencing, or potentially even new customer segments.
Hillary 34:55
Cool. So I think we’ve covered the three three questions right, so there’s two left Right, what is the fourth?
Joshua 35:01
So Nico, have you found any other people that are doing this in your area that are offering this solution?
Nico 35:09
Yeah. So I found a few big companies that they are doing that on a high level like they are not taking care of. Or it is just because it is not their market they are not working with, with the small companies or a small businesses knocking in the neighborhoods around my house,
Joshua 35:27
right. So he’s identifying a potential competition. And so the fourth question is, who are your competitors? And what are their key traits. And so we keep key traits, like, kind of open ended, it could be positive, or it could be negative, I might look at a competition of Nico’s and see, okay, they have a really great website, that’s key trait, but they serve only larger companies. And so this is an opportunity for me to now define the unfair advantage, because I’m separating myself from the competition that way. So the more competitors I can analyze, that are solving the same problem for the same customer, and the more unique key traits they have, the better I can separate myself and create my own blue ocean.
Hillary 36:14
And you can see in the gaps, right, like the gaps that they’re not covering, right, which is a blue ocean blue ocean. Wait.
Valery 36:21
So what’s the blue ocean?
36:22
So the blue ocean is from this book called The Blue Ocean Strategy. And the idea is that there’s in different markets, there’s red oceans, and blue oceans, red oceans have all the sharks in the water, and they’ve eaten all the fish. And so it’s filled with their blood. Oh, gosh.
Valery 36:37
So that’s symbolic for like, an oversaturation of ideas. Yes, like the same idea. It’s like Tonto
Joshua 36:44
oversaturated market is a perfect way to define that. And so blue ocean is finding a hole in the market, this gap that you’re talking about. And you do that by following these five questions and kind of bouncing around back and forth until you to find enough unfair advantages from the key traits of the competitors.
Valery 37:06
So blue ocean is when you have a very unique idea, essentially, that really is probably no other competitors, right?
Hillary 37:13
A blue ocean refers to the market, right? Yes, that’s right. Like an open market, red
Joshua 37:17
ocean is an oversaturated market. Blue Ocean is an untapped market, well
Hillary 37:21
find this book and link it in the show notes so we can give proper credit. So what would be your unfair advantage?
Nico 37:29
So I think it is the experience handling the different types of technologies that will improve, you know, the communication channels between the small businesses and their customers. And in this case, because I couldn’t find any, like competitors right now that are topping on on the market that I want to that I want to going. So I think that’s another unfair advantage that nobody’s taking care of. They’re just small businesses around here.
Joshua 37:55
Right? So So Nico, identified two main unfair advantages. I have experience in these technologies, and I’m serving small business owners. But which of those two is not actually an unfair advantage?
Hillary 38:11
The experience why? Because a lot of people have experience, right?
Valery 38:16
They’re just doing it for other markets or other countries, right. The unique thing about this is that for our listeners is that Nico’s in Argentina and digital marketing all that isn’t as prevalent as it is here. So part of me is like, I can’t wrap my head around, like, What do you mean, not everyone utilizes all of those the digital ways to get your word out in SEO, but I guess it’s totally different with the American
Joshua 38:38
Right. Like, we recently took a trip to the Virgin Islands. And in the Virgin Islands, we experienced how most of the Google Maps like ratings and everything is outdated. So if you see something that’s open at 9am, maybe it’s not open at all that day, or it’s been closed. Nobody reported it.
Valery 38:58
Yeah, you’re right. It’s totally not updated. Like it is here. Like, you gotta have that right. Or someone will give you better you. It’s not even updated. Well, that’s interesting. Good. Hopefully that wasn’t too difficult. Well,
Hillary 39:08
yeah. Nico. So are you ready to go out and
Nico 39:10
start? Yeah, I’m working in it. I’m working in it. I subject today. I have like a a test with a friend of us that has same glasses on shop sunglasses. Yeah, sunglasses on red glasses, too. So I’m going to be working with them and trying to gather some case studies same time.
Valery 39:34
Nice. Yeah, that’s hot that market. Yeah. You know, people because like the younger generations, Nichols considered Generation Z, right? He’s a Gen Z here.
Hillary 39:48
25 Happy birthday. And
Valery 39:52
I feel like your segment is going to be on top of like, if if you’re seeing that potential where there’s like nobody’s tapping this digital Look, what do you call it? Digital Marketing in our small businesses, somebody’s around the corner that’s in your generation. That is going to tap it quickly. Quick breathing
Hillary 40:09
down your neck ready?
Nico 40:12
Yeah. Right.
Valery 40:13
Like if you’re thinking of it, or if you’re seeing it because you work with a lot of American companies, then I’m sure other people are too.
Nico 40:19
Yeah, yeah, I’m sure that our people like working right now on on eight, but more like with a freelancer structure and employee, like, they are not so professional. So I want to, I want to put that on on the play to like that professionalism and, you know, a good structure to take care of the customer.
Joshua 40:40
So what Nico’s saying here is like he has three unfair advantages. The first one is going to be that nobody’s serving local businesses, if they are serving local businesses, they’re not professional, and he has a particular recipe that works.
Hillary 40:55
Can we put your email in our show notes so that people can reach out if they want to your business? Sure. Yeah, I think we can all see that. The future of work is changing and shifting. And so we’re hoping to get ahead of that and prepare everyone for this kind of uncertain future and help you discover your passion and align that to your own business to be your own boss, and thrive.
Valery 41:24
Go to scaling side hustles.com and fill up a five questions for a chance to come on the podcast and talk with one of our business engineers. We can’t wait to talk with you.
Joshua 41:34
Next time on scaling side hustles.
Hillary 41:39
So it’s only fitting that one of his first supernatural encounters took place at his favorite store, Radio Shack.
Joshua 41:45
They locked eyes and they made the weirdest sound. These guys are so weird. There’s friggin aliens. And by the time he looked at the security camera, they hadn’t walked out of the store. What what marketing does is basically scale what you’re doing right? And it totally looks like a UFO helicopter. So
Valery 42:13
if you’ve liked what you’ve heard, leave us a review, but only the good stuff. It helps us reach more people who are looking to break out of their nine fives. And while you’re at it, why not tell a friend? We’d love to have them along for the ride. Yes, join us. So we’ve asked about a lot of it your ideas. While you’re here, might as well mentioned the company behind podcast Chris.
Hillary 42:37
So Cressio is a company that has a huge heart for providing business engineering and consulting for minority businesses and social impact companies.
Valery 42:47
Want to find out more check them Cressio.com
Hillary 42:50
That’s cressio.com