Many of you have spent a lot of time helping your clients or your companies develop quality products for customers that deliver value. I imagine concepts like Value Proposition, User Research, Positioning, Conversion, etc., are familiar as well. Perhaps you facilitate workshops with peers, or your job is to identify customer needs and wants and then turn those insights into compelling website designs that stand out and drive adoption, engagement, conversion, etc.
But, if Greg and I know anything about starting a tiny company, it's that despite knowing how to do this, it is SO difficult to do these things for yourself. The cobbler's children do go barefoot in this case. We have both experienced the struggle of trying to create a strong, brand message for ourselves and the relief of having someone else lead that process for us so we can focus and concentrate on the customer's point of view.
With that in mind, I'd like to introduce one of our MVTs: The Jump Ship! Brand Messaging Assistant. It's a custom GPT to help you clarify the messaging of what you do, the problem you solve, and the steps it takes to do business with you in a simple and clear way. And, if you want it, generate the content of a single-page website with the results.
One of our mantras here at Jump Ship! is to run lots of Minimum Viable Tests (MVT). An MVT does not attempt to look like the eventual product. It’s rather a specific test of an assumption that must be true for the business to succeed. Our approach to MVTs is to run as many as we can WITHOUT spending any money. We want to run lots of small tests, get feedback, and other than our time, do it all at zero to little costs.
Behind the scenes, we've been doing this at Jump Ship! Last year, we ran lots of MVTs. By running lots of MVTs early in the process of starting this, we're taking just enough time to discover our strategy so we can move forward with conviction. By moving forward with conviction, we more appropriately match our hypotheses with the reality that it takes time to know if we're right. We are literally following the Jump Ship! approach to build Jump Ship! Fun, right?!? 😄
If you're really considering starting your own company, we think The Jump Ship! Brand Messaging Assistant will be a great place to start.
And, importantly for our MVT, if you do try the assistant, we want to hear from you in the comments:
- What worked well?
- What could be improved?
- What insights did you discover?
- What questions do you still have?
Cheers,
Ryan