On Speed to Customer Value

Trying to build a perfect product on your 1st shot almost guarantees you build something that takes forever and ends up sucking. Don't do that.

This is not the Speed we’re looking for…

You customers want one thing: for you to solve an acute pain point they have as fast and reliably as possible.

For this reason - there’s two attributes that dictates a winning company in the modern era better than anything else: speed to market and ability to iterate to improve.

In the software world, this means developing a strategy to build and deploy customer value in terms of features, enhancements, and bug fixes fast.

How fast? At PushPress (Gym Management Software) our long term goal is to be able to push releases that solve customer problems or add value to our platform multiple times a day.

(We’ve recently made great strides, going from one or two releases per month, to a multipole times per week cadence - still have work to do!)

Pre-Mature Product Birth is OK

This often means releasing things a little pre-mature. Often times this is seen as a mistake - both by software developers and customers alike. However this is actually critical to building the worlds best software.

How could that be?

Common logic dictates this is the way to go - put your best, bug free and feature rich product out there.

When you hold your products until they’re perfect, you’re missing one important thing: customer feedback.

In the end, it’s the customer’s value that matters. Without their feedback and guidance how can you be absolutely sure you’re building software that people want or need?

Customers decide: great or garbage. No matter how hard you tried.

Our Appointments v1 Sucked

At PushPress, we made this very mistake long ago. We built appointments based on what we thought customers would want and value.

We got tons of feedback from customers that they wanted appointment setting functionality. We talked to many of them to see if our approach and mindset would work.

We then went into the cave and built our appointments feature. When we emerged months later, thinking we nailed it - we found out it was quite the opposite. Our customers, en masse, let us know we missed the mark.

So rest assured, as we are rebuilding Appointments v2 we’re taking the opposite approach. Involving our customers early. Asking tons of questions and getting feedback. Making adjustments as we push towards a final version.

Swallow Thy Ego

The hardest part of this process is you have to be willing to put things out into the world before they’re done - and you must commit to listening to feedback and taking corrective actions FAST.

If you cannot do this, do not take this approach.

We now will push things out when it’s at a usable state and then start gathering feedback, sentiment, and opinions to help us deliver weekly (soon, we hope daily) updates to the product.

Appointments v2 is going thru this process right now, as we speak!

Don’t build a car before you learn how to build a great axel system.

Build a Skateboard Not a Car

A wise CEO once told me, when you’re looking to build a car - start with a skateboard. A car is complex, has lots of problems to solve, and takes years to design and build.

A skateboard, on the other hand, can be built and put into customer hands in weeks. Solve one small problem (axle and wheel design) and find out what people like from the board.

Maybe the board is what people have wanted all along, and you can make a better skateboard (and not the car you thought you needed to build!)

Take your learnings from the board and build the next iteration - a scooter.

Keep doing this process to quickly iterate your ideas, product and customer understanding, and design to build something your customers actually want.

How Does This Apply To Your Business?

Most of my readers here are small business owners, not software developers, so how can this apply?

The idea is really the same, but tweak it for your use case.

If you’re in fitness, instead of designing a full blown 12 week transformation product, which would include private training, nutrition, goal setting, biometrics, and the works start simpler and faster.

Offer a one week “get started” bootcamp which is group fitness only. But use your time with those clients to ask them if they’d find it useful to work for more than a week. Or if they’d value nutrition alongside this.

Whatever program you’re building in your business to bring to market, there’s a simpler version of it you can get into the hands of potential clients to test.

Not sure how this might apply to you? Ask in the comments and I’ll try to help you figure it out!