Blind spot
Last week I mentioned Backable by Suneel Gupta. I have recommended it all week to people, for all sorts of reasons. Suneel was a poster child of failure – featured in a New York Times article. Utterly humiliated, he went on to found Rise and exited for $20m two years after launch. He’s studied tonnes of pitches and talked to all kinds of fascinating people and has seven lessons – or blind spots - that distinguish us normal people from the ones who get backed.
One of his lessons is Focus on the central character.
He gives various examples where backable people find the character that hooks in an investor, a film producer, a publisher and from which money flows. It’s obvious really. We don’t buy logical, rational business cases, we buy the chance to help people (as well as make money). What piques our interest is a tension that’s normally set in a human emotion.
I know this. I have given this advice for twenty years to techie types struggling to get execs interested in their project or comms people trying to tell a story. This week I have coached three startups to scrap their pitches to build a story around a real person they’ve met through their customer discovery.
And yet I’ve never done this for Familiarize.
Turns out the “customer discovery founder” hasn’t dedicated much time to discovering his customer. The shame.
The unknown unknowns - or maybe the unknown knowns? (special tribute)
I have spoken to a lot of customers (honestly) and built an impression about what they need in my head. But I struggle to describe my customer just like the clients I am helping.
And I’ve never thought for a minute about building my pitch around my customer, their struggles and how I can help them.
I suspect I’m not alone in being blind-sided by the customer as things get busy, but it’s quite the hypocrisy from me.
Side-tip on getting to know your customer
Fortunately, as I mentioned last week I’ve stumbled on Jobs to be done and am now The Expert (defined by knowing 10% more than anyone I talk to about it). Jobs to be done has a great framework – the four forces – Push (the struggle), Pull (the aspiration), Anxieties (fear of change) and Habit (stuck thinking). Like this that I’ve done for the Familiarize customer (I think):
The idea is that if the forces of Push and Pull exceed the forces of Anxieties and Habit, your customer will Switch (maybe to your product); otherwise they’ll Stick with whatever solution they have today.
This is how I have been encouraging my customers to think - and then validate. I (kind of) got out of the building by quickly developing a survey and testing each of these forces with ten or so of my current and past clients. So I quickly got some validation.
So that’s all good, blind spot removed, action taken. And I’ll continue with this. But it’s led me to think what other blind spots have I got because I have become rather fixated with Familiarize and how I think it’s supposed to work?
Given my blindness, I’m not the person to dish out tips on this, so instead, I have scoured the web to find what works for others – so they’re for all of us:
Control freakery & ego – look at people’s body language when they’re around you. Do they look comfortable, do they seem open to challenge you? Working by yourself is a perfect place for control freakery – I laugh at my own so maybe it’s not a blind spot. But ego shows up in many ways, not simply the obvious “I’m the best”. My time at bp’s Launchpad surfaced a lot of my ego I was completely unaware of because I hung out with different people.
Living in a bubble – easy solution, force yourself out of the building and properly listen to your customer. That’s one. But there’s another bubble called the all-consuming world of our startup and we have family and friends outside that we also need to engage with (he says at his desk at 9.45pm while his wife is watching tv alone – back in a bit for tip 3).
Mental health – as business owners we feel the need to hold everything together, especially if we have people depending on us, staff or family. It’s super important we take time out to reflect whether our mental health is suffering unbeknown to us. Here’s a simple questionnaire on anxiety – turns out mine is mild, maybe I didn’t answer very honestly…another blind spot?
Competition – not the direct kind that we can easily obsess over, but other types: Inertia and Alternatives. Under Alternatives, look for other ways your customer might relieve their pain or distract themselves – these are also your competition. For me, the big one is racing to get product out to the “market” - rather than do the discovery and validation work up front.
Unconscious bias – there are a bunch of questionnaires that can help here, because this is a big one, maybe our biggest blind spot.
One tip I recommend is find yourself a support triumvirate: an experienced coach who knows the questions to ask, a good sparring partner who’s going through something similar and a friend who knows what you’re like and have a tendency to be blind to.
Between these three they should be able to force the mirror round so you can properly and critically evaluate those blind spots and take action.
So, take a walk, talk to a friend or jot thoughts on some paper – what are the blind spots that could be holding you and your business or your career back? Share them in the comments if you’re brave enough.