How to find a gap
First, know what you’re really good at, ego aside. How? Do your personal inventory. A collection of the work you’ve done for clients and in your work life. Good and bad —the worst ones too, actually. Having that will give you a better glimpse of the big picture. This is how you start seeing the hidden patterns in what you do and how you do it. How you actually helped. What your contributions and impact are. In the big picture, they’re evergreen. It unveils the deep you, your core and what…
Un-best practices
Best practices. What the mass does. Proofed ways to get somewhere in a safe way, the way everybody does it. By the time something is a “best practice” what you’re seeing is the search for efficiencies. Scaled or not scaled, they try to get something as fast as possible, with minimum risk and in the safest possible way. This is how it happens: Try something that works. Play it safe. Get (some) desired results. Loss aversion kicks in. Low motivation of change (to keep things working)….
You’re not ready
You can have tools data, info, strategy, actions, plans and yet, not move forward. Stay still. How so? I mean, you’ve got it all ready to go, right? One answer that keeps coming in conversation about launching, creating and mindset is “I’m just not ready”. Ready as in ready to do what it takes, to act on it and just jump on. The backbone of it is mindset – and not in the wishy-washy, woo-woo ways you must be so familiar with (self-help and all that fluffy stuff). Mindset, as I’m learning, is…
Buying clothes
When you’re buying clothes, you need to fit into the clothes. When you don’t, you don’t buy them. And if you do buy them, you’ll feel funny at some point. Like it’s not quite the right thing for you. Same thing happens trying to fit a product into a market. You might get it, but in the long run, odds are you’ll feel funny. You don’t need to fit in when you can stand out.
Pricing different
Going into a product-market gap allows you to play a different game from the rest. One thing you can start playing with is Pricing. In a product-market fit “This is how everybody else prices” (eg. costplus) “These are the prices.” Makes you think:How can i make my price “fit” into this place and still make a profit (????) or make it attractive for me to keep at it? WTF [Where’s The Focus] → Yourself In a product-market gap “This is how everybody else prices” (ceg. cost+) “These are the prices”….
Dive certifications
You know what’s interesting about dive certifications? They’re a productized service. You know how much time it’ll take you. You know the scope of work. You have a fixed, published price for it. And it’s scalable (yes, hiring more hands to do the work, but still a kind of scalability). The easy thing for the people interested in diving and get a certification is that they self-select —either by location, pricing or other benefits. Schools, certifications, dives and more are all listed and the…
A perfect combo
A clusterfuck. The perfect combo for failure. To avoid it, start Thinking Like A Diver. Clusterfuck [diving].— A hectic situation where too much is happening at once. It causes stress and can lead to uncomfortable situations for all parties involved in said clusterfuck. Underwater, it increases the risks to everyone involved —the diver himself and the ones diving along with (in so many different ways). Losing control of a situation means moving faster (causing fatigue), wasting oxygen, lose…
Gaps
Most people think you need to fit-in and blend-in, but actually you need to stand out, like a square in a world of circles. You don’t need to find product-market fits. ???? You need to find product-market GAPS.
Price tags
Andy’s at a department store, looking for some things to buy and saw this mic… that didn’t have a price. Approached one of the sellers and asked for help. – Andy: “Excuse me. This mic doesn’t have a price…” – Seller: “It does have a price. It doesn’t have a price tag.” :V It’s funny. The same happens when you stop billing by the hour. – Prospect: “What’s your hourly rate?” – You: “I don’t have one.” – Prospect: “So you don’t have a price?” – You: “I do have a price for you. Just not…
Resistance
When you’re leading, you’ll hit resistance. That’s only natural. Even when the ones you’re leading fall under the innovators part of the curve [innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, laggards], not all of them will have the same risk tolerance. When they feel threatened, they’ll fight with nails and teeth to not break “that tiny part of the new status quo”. Here’s the thing: How do you build buy-in quicker?In 2 steps: Create a system for them to thrive. Build demand. A…