This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
What's up, hello, and welcome to Side Hustle School. This is your host, Chris Guillebeau, kicking off a new week here with the classroom episode. We're gonna call it the MVP of minimum viable products. Whoa, am I using some startup language? I'm afraid I am, but don't hold it against me.
I'll explain as we go along. In recent classroom episodes, we have looked at all kinds of topics, how to decide between competing ideas, the three elements of every compelling offer, which might come up again today. And then last week we examined the difference between what people say they want and what they really want. Now over here in my world, it is 28 days until the money tree comes out. This is my new book, "The Money Tree, Finding the Fortune in Your Own Backyard." Very excited about it.
I'm gonna go on the road to 40 cities. I look forward to meeting many listeners and readers. And as a quick reminder, you can pre-order the book now. It actually helps authors when you do that. Pre-order the book from your local bookstore.
Just go in and tell them you wanna order it in advance or any online retailer, including of course Amazon.com. All right, so essentially what's happening here in this classroom series, we are going from thinking about ideas to designing real offers, concrete offers, actual products and services. And I do want to borrow this terminology, this concept from the startup world, which I almost never do. I try not to use buzzwords or trendy words or startup-y words, but I like this concept of minimum viable product, MVP, which is essentially, if you've never heard the phrase before, an MVP is basically a version of a product with just enough features to satisfy early customers and give you feedback for future product development. Okay, so we're thinking about something that's really basic.
The idea is to get to market quickly. You might have an idea, let's say, to launch a series of eBooks. I did that long ago. I had a business called Unconventional Guides. And when I first started thinking about Unconventional Guides, I was like, wow, what is my series of eBooks?
But then I realized, you know, I shouldn't try to think about what are the eight eBooks going to be. I should just have one, right? Let's start with that. Don't worry about your series of eBooks. Don't worry about the 10 products you're going to have.
Don't worry about your entire service line. Break it down and find a way to start with one of those things. So what is your MVP? What do you need to make that happen? If you already know, that's great.
If not, you might be inspired by one of these examples. What examples am I talking about? I'm going to give you three examples of minimum viable products. Number one, a little shout out to one of our listeners who mentioned this at some point, the Skype Your Dog service, a service to call your dog up and have a conversation or maybe a video chat while you're at work. Then number two, Yoga Mat Private Label.
So that's all about importing yoga mats with some kind of design or text or some form of customization. And at number three, Improve Your TikTok Profile. So this is also a service. Notice that two of these are services, the Skype Your Dog and the Improve Your TikTok Profile. And one is a physical product, all right?
And with that Improve Your TikTok Profile, it's probably a one-off service. You just do it once. You know, you're going to help somebody in, you know, what, six seconds or less make better videos. Whereas the Skype Your Dog service is more like a dog walker or somebody who's providing, you know, an ongoing service. You're gonna pay monthly and there's gonna be, I don't know, three video calls during that month.
So remember the lesson of thinking about offers. What is the promise, pitch and price of each of them? How will it change someone's life? What should they buy now? And how much does it cost?
That last one's kind of a two-part thing. How much does it cost and how can they make a purchase? So in a moment, I'll break down each of these examples, talk about what needs to happen to get them to market quickly within 30 to 60 days. And then I'll give you your assignment. First, I have a shout out to our sponsor.
I want to thank them for making all this series completely free to you. So a message on their behalf and then breaking it down further. [Music]
All right, we're back. So number one, Skype Your Dog service. This is all about helping dog owners feel less guilty for leaving their dogs at home while they're off at work all day.
So it's about dogs, but your target market is not dogs themselves, it is dog owners. So what are the MVP needs, minimum viable product needs, to get this going? By the way, I should just clarify this. MVP, minimum viable product, can also apply to a service. Okay, so product in this phrase, at least in this concept, just refers to anything at all that you are offering.
So you might already know that, but just to be clear, MVP can be product or service. So what do you need? Well, it's pretty basic. You're gonna need a computer with internet access. That's what you need to actually provide that service.
You might need the ability to talk with dogs. How do you have the video chat with the dogs? You need a website or some way for people to sign up. Like how do people say, "Yeah, that sounds like a cool service. I want to pay for that." And then because they need to pay for it, you need a payment processor or invoicing system.
Now that is pretty much it. That is all you need to actually launch the service, which you could probably do tomorrow. It doesn't mean you're gonna have a hundred sales tomorrow, but technically to provide this service, that is really all you need. You know, a computer with internet access, the ability to talk with dogs, which may or may not be acquired through the process, some way for people to sign up, and then that payment processor, which could just be PayPal.com. It could be Square and or an invoicing system, which could be QuickBooks or FreshBooks, or there's numerous other brands, software, et cetera, out there.
But somehow you need a way to get people's money. Okay, now that's it. Number two, yoga mat private label. So here you're selling a physical product. So you actually need to get the inventory in some fashion.
You need to get the yoga mats imported. You need to have whatever customization done, and then they're either gonna come to your house or maybe you have a range for a fulfillment center or something, but again, minimum viable product, really basic. Let's say the yoga mats need to come to your house. Okay, so you need a physical product, then you need some way to ship that product to customers. I would recommend ShipStation, our longtime three-year sponsor, but there are other options as well.
Of course, you could just take them all to the post office. The point is you need some way to get your yoga mats to people who buy them. Then you need a website, most likely, or you could sell them perhaps on some platform like eBay or Etsy or any other third-party platform. But assuming you're selling online in some fashion, which that is the assumption I'm gonna make, you need some way for people to see the mats and say, "Yeah, that looks really cool. I wanna get one of those." And then just like with Skype Your Dog, you need a payment processor.
In this case, I wouldn't recommend an invoicing system because it's a physical product. You want people to pay for the product before you ship it. Lastly, the Improve Your TikTok Profile service. This is all about helping someone get more views or be more popular on what I believe is now the world's largest social network, which is incredible. I don't think I had heard of it until like a year or two ago.
But anyway, if you don't know, TikTok is all about these short videos. So you're like, "Okay, I happen to be an expert in this. So I'm gonna improve somebody's profile and help them be more popular." Well, what do you need? You need a sales page or a basic website or somewhere online where you explain the service, where you make this promise and say, "Here's why you should trust me and here's why you should hire me because I'm gonna help you be more popular, get more followers, et cetera," whatever the benefit is. And then you need a payment processor or an invoicing system.
And then if you're gonna do this in a consultation format, let's say that you need a scheduling calendar of some kind. And you could just go back and forth with people by email, but it might be a lot easier to have an online calendar. There are many different options for that where people can go and pick a time based on the available times that you select in advance. So you need a sales page or basic website, a payment processor or an invoicing system and a scheduling calendar. That's really it.
Now, obviously to actually provide that service, you're gonna need to have some expertise in TikTok and social media. But in terms of the technical parts, those are the only three things you need. All right, so guiding principle here is really keeping it simple. MVP, what is the most basic? What was that official definition?
The official definition is a version of a product with just enough features to satisfy early customers and provide feedback for future development. I would also add something about keeping it simple for you. The minimum viable product isn't only about your customer, it's also about you. Helping you kind of overcome those obstacles and roadblocks to getting something out in the world, dealing with that issue of not having enough time to work on your hustle, if we're gonna talk about soon, and otherwise getting you to the point where you're gonna get feedback right away. So coming up next, we're gonna talk about finding time to work on your hustle, then we're gonna go into the pre-launch and launch phase, and finally focusing on marketing for the second two thirds of the year.
We're gonna spend a lot of time talking about marketing. This first part is all about getting going, but then the majority of the year, we're gonna talk about how to market your product or service. Each classroom feature includes an assignment. This assignment is, do you know what your MVP is? Everything you need to get your product or service out there.
As you just heard in those three examples, it might be really, really simple. If you don't know what it is, well, that's your assignment. This is gonna help you keep it simple so that we can keep moving forward. Okay, you can read notes for this in every classroom episode this year at sidehustleschool.com/classroom. This has been episode 1164.
Thank you so much for listening. This is Side Hustle School. [Music]
From the Onward Project.
