UNSCRIPTED: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Entrepreneurship

by M.J. DeMarco

into great potential. He’s landed regular commercial clients, local media attention, and outside funding. He’s garnered rave reviews from his customers. He’s been on CNBC on a pitch show. And best of all, he’s having trouble meeting the demand and is often sold out. Ahh, the problems of a productocracy! This business is now the seedling to great enterprise if the entrepreneur can endure the growth. While the idea has a weak scaling economy, directed under a unit model it becomes incredibly potent. And some of the most potent brands in history start small in the same way but explode when unitized through a chain/franchise strategy.

those chasing a customer strategy in the digital domain is a local treasure trove of productocracies just waiting to be systemized and branded into a unit strategy. A unit strategy is the fix to a poor scaling economy in a customer strategy.

#3: Channel Strategy The final scale method is a channel strategy where sales occur indirectly through third-party distribution channels or retail outlets. Instead of selling directly to the consumer (a customer strategy), your product is sold to a channel, or a distribution center. With a channel strategy, your challenge isn’t selling to your end user but selling wholesale to the decision-makers of the channel. Your Channel -------> Your Product ----- > Your Customer

My job as an entrepreneur and a marketer is to leverage those channels by igniting demand. If a productocracy exists, sales naturally accelerate. Most inventions—foodstuffs, clothing, and other tangible goods—scale through a channel strategy. Executional challenges are

If there was ever a magic number, it’s $2,740. This figure represents the daily average profit you need for one year to earn one million dollars ($2,740 X 365 days = $1,000,100). And when you break down this number into its mathematical roots, you’ll see that scale isn’t as daunting as you think.

Before impacting millions, you must impact hundreds.

algebra. You can’t make millions if you don’t learn how to make hundreds.

Scale is a process, not an event.

Represented by “KE” in the UNSCRIPTED Entrepreneurial Framework, execution is where ideas go from napkin to reality. It’s the grind no one sees: Sourcing, manufacturing, learning how to code, enduring endless cold calls, or prepping for a trade show. It’s where life jolts out of balance, a daily slog where friends complain they haven’t seen you in weeks because you’re backlogged in orders, emails, and other urgent to-dos.

You don’t know what you need to know until you know.

When you are led by a need or a nagging problem urging to be solved, the often asked “where do I begin?” and “what do I do? ” quickly comes into focus.

No matter what the goal, getting shit done requires meaningful action, otherwise known as kinetic execution.

UNSCRIPTED Entrepreneurial Framework, kinetic execution is meaningful action before answers, a method of situational and incremental problem-solving graduated to resolve a larger problem, which culminates into your business solution. If you’re starting a business, kinetic execution is the quickest and least expensive path to your first customer. If you already own a mature business, it’s the quickest and least expensive path to a productocracy. The model consists of three core elements:

The Marketmind, The 3 As, and The 7 Ps of Process All together it looks like this:

THE MARKETMIND Kinetic execution’s first component is represented by the outermost circle—

the market cannot be forecast, predicted, or tamed.

The ultimate judge and jury of your ideas isn’t your mom, friends, or colleagues—it’s the marketmind that reacts to them. And as an UNSCRIPTED, Fastlane entrepreneur, your first execution task isn’t speculating on how the market might respond; it’s to engage it (as cheaply as possible) and find out.

act, assess, and adjust. These 3 As steer effort like a propeller (action), a tachometer

Remember, kinetic execution is action before answers, situational and incremental problem-solving graduated to resolve a larger problem, which culminates into your business solution. “Action before answers” means starting now—before you’re ready, before the right timing, and before you know all the right steps.

One week of real market engagement is more valuable than one month of market research and analysis. ACTION “Action” is poking the finicky cat that is

the market and seeing what happens. Most of the time, the cat ignores you; sometimes you’ll hear a meow; and once in a great while, it’s every entrepreneur’s dream: the loud roar of demand.

I learned by solving only the problem that stood in front of me.

Whenever you interact with the market, two types of reactions are inevitable: (1) the most common, diffusion; and (2) the desired, echoes.

Diffusion (White Gumball) Diffusion is when the market absorbs or ignores your message/value proposition and chooses to do nothing. Despite this, it’s still a reaction. Anytime you’re presented with a Facebook ad and choose not to click or read

it, the reaction is d...

A market echo is direct feedback—a reflective, unbiased, and uncensored representation of the marketmind. Of course, the ultimate market echo is a click, a sale, or a conversion. But oftentimes, it’s something else: a complaint, a suggestion, a user-interface problem, or just an email seeking more information.

Whatever echoes land in your lap, it is your

Is this echo actionable? Problematic? Is it an opportunity to redirect or reevaluat...

ADJUST Action and assessment are worthless without ADJUSTMENT. The entire point of grinding the first two As is to uncover how

Whatever name you give it, adjustment is a strategy redirection based upon correlated and compounded market echoes. The key to uncovering actionable feedback comes from recognizing pattern echoes.

I used to record all market echoes in a notebook, which I affectionately called my “black book.” Whenever a pattern emerged, I acted on it. If several people think your UI sucks, you can bet the marketmind is thinking the same thing. For example, every new feature addition at your website should come from pattern echoes. When several people request something you lack, you can bet the marketmind thinks similarly. The same goes for products: if twenty customers ask about a certain color you don't offer,

you’ve exposed a new opportunity and revenue pocket. Heed these echoes, add/subtract where needed, and you’ve skewed value for your market. And skewed value equals more value competiti...

Kinetic execution’s final sequence is represented by the innermost circle and the customer life cycle: the 7 Ps of process. The 7 Ps are where shit gets done. They are: Plan Path Proof (Soft) Prototype Proof (Hard) Productocracy Propagate

PLAN (BUT DON'T GO CRAZY!) Kinetic execution is essentially “winging it” under the governance of act, assess, adjust. However, don’t confuse this with ill-preparedness. The kinetic execution planning phase is relatively short and confirms the strength of your opportunity by a CENTS evaluation. Control Does your solution have any primary dependents

for execution? Example: exclusively sold at Walmart, distributed at Facebook, etc. If so, what control risks can be mitigated? Does your solution have secondary dependents? Partners, suppliers, manufacturing, importers, channels? Entry What are the entry barriers for your solution? What key resources, assets, or relationships strengthen, and can strengthen, your entry walls? Does your solution require substantial resource inputs and/or coordination for execution? Is the concept-to-launch two days? Or two months? How will your competitor(s) respond to your solution? And can you sustain their adjustment? Need Have you identified ALL the value attributes within your industry? Is your proposed skew strong enough to adequately firm a unique selling proposition (USP) relevant to your target customer?

Can you effectively communicate this value skew to your target customer? How is your solution monetized? What are your primary and secondary revenue models? Time What resources, if any, are needed to dissolve your solution from YOUR time? What dependencies are needed to dissolve your solution from YOUR time? What are the future challenges for these requirements? Scale Are there existing mediums, channels, or partners that can reach large numbers of your target market? What is your solution’s scaling economy and their resources—...

PROOF (SOFT) Nothing sucks more than spending months and thousands of dollars only to discover the market doesn’t want your product. Soft proof’s objective is to verify your concept/idea with the marketmind before spending a fortune in resources. In entrepreneurial circles, the soft proof is often referred to as “validation.” You can soft prove your concept, either indirectly or directly, using six different methods.

1. Language Patterns As mentioned in Chapter 35, language patterns are uncovered through observation.

Another helpful tool for exposing consumer shifts and possible emerging opportunities is Google Trends.

Channel Research Another confirmation method is a channel investigation. Amazon is the best for this.

Find a similar product being sold and

check its sales rank and revi...

3. Search Volume The beauty of keyword, cost-per-click (CPC) advertising is that you can peek into the marketmind and quantify the search volume for virtually anything. While there are other keyword-driven search engines, Google is the best. Create an AdWords account and log in to their Keyword Planner tool. Enter your product, service, or solution, and find out how many people are searching for your visionary offer.

Ask/Interview The Market Asking the market is as implied: Find a congregation of your target marketmind and expose them to your idea. For instance, Reddit has an immense variety of sub-forums, which cover virtually any topic or interest. Likewise, Facebook has incredible targeting options where marketminds can be nailed down into specific groups. Looking for females over thirty-five who have a garden? Facebook can do it: Place an ad; send them to a page; see what happens. If your idea pertains to a specific niche, say owners of exotic cars, find the related forum(s) for it and ask.

The predictive power of asking is directly related to how well you isolate your target customer in its congregation.

The other alternative is solution-selling, discussed in Chapter 35. This approach involves talking to various business owners and professionals and specifically asking them about their problems, frustrations, and

challenges. When problems are identified, you try committing them to a solution.

Another variation of interviewing the market is to compel your target marketmind to complete a survey. Using one of the many survey tools, SurveyMonkey, you could target and incentivize your target customer by using any of the tools mentioned above. Of course, incentives and reaching your market via CPC advertising (Facebook, Google, Reddit, Instagram) isn’t cheap, but the data obtained are worth its price.

Market Simulation The final variation of soft proof is market simulation. Here, you present your product or service to the market as if it already

exists. Market tests and their simulations can be costly and time-consuming, but the data gathered are second to none. The two types of market simulati...