$100 startup week 4

This week, I read the seventh and eighth chapters of The $100 Startup by Chris Guillebeau. The seventh chapter was about how to make it so your offer could not be refused. One of the tips for doing this is that sometimes there is a difference between what the customer thinks they want and what they actually want. When I first read this I was very confused but then he explained it with an example; he said how almost everyone complains about not having enough space in their airplane seat but then when the airline offers a few extra inches for a few more dollars nobody wants the seat with more space. In this scenario, the customer thinks they want more room but they actually want the cheapest possible flight. Guillebeau said that an entrepreneur should figure out the difference between what the customer says they want and what they actually want but I feel like this would be very difficult without actually testing to see what the customer wants. In a previous chapter he said that you could just ask the customer what they want, but in this situation, the customer would only say what they think they want.

Chapter eight was all about having a big opening. Guillebeau said that a good opening is similar to the release of big movies; there should be lots of people that know about and are excited about your product when it first gets released. At first I thought that the movie analogy was odd but then as I thought about it more, it started to make more sense. He chose to use the movie analogy because movies are coming out pretty much every week and almost all movies come out in the same fashion which is helpful to the reader but I still don’t totally see how a small business could open in a similar fashion to a big blockbuster movie.

The $100 Startup Week 3

This week, I read the fifth and sixth chapters of The $100 Startup by Chris Guillebeau. The fifth chapter was about how to find your customer base and reaching out to certain demographics. Guillebeau listed a few strategies for how to make sure that a specific group of people will be attracted to your product/service; the first one was to make sure that you latch on to a popular passion. The other way was to sell what people buy which included asking people what they buy. I thought that the second way was interesting because I feel most businesses need to know that people would buy the product or service before they start the business. Guillebeau said that entrepreneurs should ask their customers what they want in a survey. This confuses me because I don’t understand how someone would have customers without having a product that they knew people would buy.

Another thing that confused me in this chapter was when Guillebeau wrote that ‘the customer is often wrong’ which opposes the well known statement that ‘the customer is always right’. He explained this with an example: There was a guy selling something online and there were many positive responses and one negative response where the customer asked for a refund. He thought it wasn’t worth it to have a conversation with the disappointed customer when there were plenty of satisfied customers that he had to attend to so he gave the refund and kept working. While I agree in this situation, that that specific customer might have been wrong, it seems like it would have been worth it to see why the customer was disappointed and also I don’t think that this example would justify the statement ‘the customer is often wrong’ because it was only one wrong customer out of dozens of customers.

$100 startup week 2

This week, I read the third and fourth chapters of The $100 Startup by Chris Guillebeau. The third chapter was all about taking someone’s interest and turning it into a business by finding a way to sell their knowledge on the subject. I read about Benny who loved learning new languages. He would travel to countries for a few months at a time which forced him to learn the language. He did this eight times and then he realized that he now knew the best way to learn new languages so he started teaching people new languages. Unfortunately, not everyone’s passions can be turned into businesses; Benny’s company only worked because the knowledge from his passion was desired by many people. There was a list of questions that were supposed to help the reader decide if they should turn their passion into a business. The question that I thought would be the most difficult to answer was “Are there enough people that would be willing to pay for your product or service”. If your product is unique (which it should be according to this book), I feel that you won’t know if people will  be willing to buy your product or service until you try selling it.

The fourth chapter was all about the roaming entrepreneur. The idea of a roaming entrepreneur is fairly new because it is all about having your business being online so all you would need is a laptop, internet and a product that is digital. This allows entrepreneurs to work from anywhere at anytime because there isn’t any person to person interaction. I feel like this chapter was less useful than previous chapters because this chapter is only applicable to people that start a specific type of business while the other chapters were useful to all entrepreneurs. I feel like you shouldn’t try to come up with a product or service that would make you a roaming entrepreneur; I think you should come up with a product or service first and then see if you could make it a mobile business.

$100 Start-up week 1

This week, I started The $100 Startup by Chris Guillebeau by reading the first two chapters. The first chapter was all about how and why to start your own business. One of the main reasons mentioned was that you have a passion for whatever business that you are getting involved in. I thought this was interesting because I always assumed it was a bonus if you loved your work and it was much more important to have a viable business. After reading this I thought about it more and it started to make sense. When someone quits their job to work on a startup, they will be scraping by and I assume it would be hard for them to motivate themselves to stay in the business; but if it is their dream, they won’t stop working until they have achieved their goal. Another thing stated in this chapter is that “to start a business, you need three things: a product or service, a group of people willing to pay for it, and a way to get paid”. This seems very important while considering to start a business.

The second chapter was all about giving the customer what they want. A main point in this chapter was that one should give the customer something that helps them; this could range from something that physically helps them with their work or something that helps them emotionally or mentally. I think that while considering to start a business, it is important to focus on something that you can add or take away that would improve the customer’s life. I feel like this is usually forgotten and people with good, but not helpful, ideas try to start businesses that fail.