It’s all an experiment

And that’s a good thing

I love pencils. I love the Backspace key on my keyboard. I also love the word experiment.

Experiment. It’s kind of a freeing word, actually.

If I’m doing something new and I’m feeling a bit awkward about it, I say to myself…this is just an experiment. It’s just an experiment, I’m not committed to this particular thing in this particular way.

Hmmm.

Wow, so that means I can make as many ‘mistakes, flubs, mess-ups’ as I want (or need) to make and then just keep going.

Usually, that statement is followed by a deep sigh of relief, if I’m being honest.

Making it an experiment frees me up to make (a bit of) a fool of myself and then say ‘welp, that experiment didn’t work’ and move right on down the road.

Rumor has it that Thomas Edison made 10,000 attempts at the lightbulb before he actually succeeded.

That stat is freeing, too. That means I have at least 9,500 more attempts to get my stuff right, right? And I’m completely okay with doing TE one better, like hitting 10,001. Or maybe I already have…

Business is also an experiment. Some stuff you try is gonna work, some stuff just isn’t.

And, I think in our businesses, we need to run a lot of experiments. It’s a fast-moving world out there. Stuff that works today, may not work tomorrow so flexibility and an openness to experiment are good skills to build. (I need to remind myself of this frequently!)

Sounds time-consuming and expensive.

It can be.

Truth be told, market research is an experiment, too. I like to think of it as a knowledge experiment, one that allows you to run some experiments ‘in theory’ and see what you can learn before committing too much time and energy. I may be experimenting in my business, but I’d like a wee-bit more guidance than throwing spaghetti at a wall! A bit of market research gives me that.

How to experiment using market research?

First, get out those pencils, familiarize yourself with that Backspace button and run some experiments with your Starting Point Sentence.

If you’ve subscribed and downloaded the free worksheets, you can use/reuse those as much as you like for this exercise.

Your first SPS may not sound right to you. That’s okay. You are here to experiment, no one else has to even see your SPS, so it’s okay to test some draft-y versions of it. Make it a little crazy, make it an honest note to yourself about what you plan to do. Then, do some Step 2 work (look at Inspo-Competitors) to help validate or invalidate your intended direction.

To do that, ask: What’s out there in the market now? Is there something in my SPS that’s not addressed by my Inspo-Competitors? Note those things down.

Are those gaps in the market things you know how to do? Are they problems you have ideas about solving? Or are there things your Inspo-Competitors are doing, but you have a different idea about how those same problems can be solved? Are your solution ideas compatible with your own experience and expertise? Note all these things down.

Congratulations! You now have some Step 2 research under your belt, and you’ve started asking some really valid questions. If you’ve run into some roadblocks around your ideas, congratulations on that, too. You’ve run some inexpensive, knowledge-building experiments. Thomas Edison would be proud.

Anyone ready for Step 3? Stay tuned…

-Julie