IAM2343 – CEO Hack: The Power of Pretotyping and its Importance to Entrepreneurs

Title: Transcript - Sat, 04 Jan 2025 09:34:30 GMT

Date: Sat, 04 Jan 2025 09:34:30 GMT, Duration: [00:22:34.58]

[00:00:00.56] - Gresham Harkless

Yeah, I love that. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit, and I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an Apple book or even a habit that you.

[00:00:15.41] - Gresham Harkless

Have or something that makes you more effective and efficient.

[00:00:20.55] - Annie Sim

I thought long and hard about this one, and mine is actually a philosophy mentality. Have you ever heard of Alberto Savoya, who wrote the book? The Write It. So that is probably the thing that makes me think differently the most. And he has this concept called pretotyping, which is basically, don't waste your time and money developing something until you've tested whether or not it works. So he says you have to. Before you prototype, you have to prototype, you have to sell something or manage something in terms of knowing whether or not the market is there for it. And so we do that actually quite frequently. And it makes me really uncomfortable because I'm very type A. I'm a perfectionist. I like to have everything done and perfect before I sell it. But his concept has helped turn things for me from a CEO perspective of, hey, we have to test whether or not this is going to be successful before we invest in actually developing it. So a good example of it would be like, we launched new destinations for 2025, and we have some feelers out in terms of relationships and people we know. So we put out three destinations. We have not built those trips yet. And we said, hey, if you want, first pick if you want to reserve your spot, because there will only be 12 put down a $500 deposit. And so we almost sold out one destination, and we're half sold out on another destination without even having the product to sell. And so to me, that's really prototyping, which is a hack in knowing before we invest in developing that product that somebody is gonna want it. So that's the concept. That's my hack, and it works really well.

[00:03:39.50] - Gresham Harkless

For.

[00:03:42.47] - Intro

Are you ready to hear business.

[00:03:45.12] - Gresham Harkless

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[00:03:49.62] - Intro

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[00:04:32.06] - Gresham Harkless

Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh here for the IMCO podcast, and we're really looking to kind.

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Of hone in on builders. Those of you who are rolling up your sleeve, you're working more in the business than on the business.

[00:04:53.23] - Gresham Harkless

You're trying to turn your ideas Your vision, your dreams into reality. I'm Gresham, your host and we're going.

[00:05:04.85] - Gresham Harkless

To be exploring ultimately what I think.

[00:05:07.92] - Gresham Harkless

Biggest game changing strategy that was actually.

[00:05:11.50] - Gresham Harkless

Mentioned in one of my episodes called prototyping.

[00:05:16.49] - Gresham Harkless

It's gonna be an essential skill and.

[00:05:19.87] - Gresham Harkless

Tool for builders who want to avoid causing missteps and focus on leveling up.

[00:05:28.00] - Gresham Harkless

The reason I say skill because the thing is often like this mentality that you have to counter tap into. And a lot of times we fall into this perfectionist mentality or perfectionist mindset where everything has to be perfect and sunshine and rainbows and gumdrafts before we launch, before we get those things out. But this is gonna completely change this.

[00:06:00.74] - Gresham Harkless

But this episode is a sneak preview of our CEO flicks and on demand videos.

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Podcasts, but also from other resources.

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That we've been publishing to really help.

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Your builders, you builders to really sharpen.

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Your skills and hopefully level up your business.

[00:06:31.13] - Gresham Harkless

Your business acumen and more than anything else is very much so goes from foundational elements that can help you to kind of take things to another level. So of course you can check out CEOFlix Co to check everything out. But before I dive a little bit more deeply into that, I definitely want to highlight the episode that I got this from.

[00:07:03.57] - Gresham Harkless

This episode was episode number 21 with Annie Sam.

[00:07:09.55] - Gresham Harkless

She's the founder and CEO of the Table West Traveled. She actually specializes in small group international culinary trips. Her entrepreneur journey ties performance and today's topic is actually exactly the hack that I got for the inspiration for this episode. So I was super excited to kind of chat with her.

[00:07:40.31] - Gresham Harkless

She had a wealth of knowledge and information. I think it's a really great listen, so you'll see the information that shows as well too.

[00:07:53.86] - Gresham Harkless

But we're gonna dive into prototyping this one of the great CEO hacks that builders can kind of leverage. And it helps people to really understand how they should go about the business journey. And the reason that it really falls under two different pillars.

[00:08:24.12] - Gresham Harkless

Business pillar, where we're talking about offering.

[00:08:27.85] - Gresham Harkless

Which is essentially a part of yourself, is the thing that you delivery to the clients that you're trying to serve. But also entrepreneurship business, because the idea of it is really in a line with the true aspect of entrepreneurship.

[00:08:50.95] - Gresham Harkless

And I think one of the reasons.

[00:08:52.98] - Gresham Harkless

That businesses fail is because everything has to be perfect before it goes out. The perfectionist mindset sometimes can be the.

[00:09:04.11] - Gresham Harkless

Reason that you fail because you want it to be completely perfect before you.

[00:09:10.25] - Gresham Harkless

Get it out to market to really test it out. So let's first dive into prototyping. So we're builders by nature. As we innovate, we do things and we have this vision, we have this.

[00:09:34.30] - Gresham Harkless

Aspirational we want to do.

[00:09:38.14] - Gresham Harkless

But honestly, there's nothing worse than actually putting your heart into something that your audience doesn't even connect with. I've done it many times. If you listen to the episode, Annie even talked about doing it. She talked about being a perfectionist and how so many times you pour yourself.

[00:10:04.35] - Gresham Harkless

Into this vision of what you want.

[00:10:07.47] - Gresham Harkless

It to be and it doesn't actually resonate with the audience that you're trying to serve. It doesn't actually solve that problem which is at the heart of entrepreneurship business. So prototyping is essentially about testing, validating.

[00:10:25.23] - Gresham Harkless

Your ideas before going all in.

[00:10:30.76] - Gresham Harkless

Albert Sinfoia, I believe, actually explained in his book the Write it prototyping insures.

[00:10:41.07] - Gresham Harkless

Your business is building the right thing before you commit.

[00:10:45.50] - Gresham Harkless

Time and resources is about quick, low cost experiments to validate an idea's potential. Really a great thing to kind of.

[00:11:00.62] - Gresham Harkless

Really think about when you're coming up.

[00:11:04.89] - Gresham Harkless

With these assumptions is how do you experiment and test out these assumptions? You're gonna see the link to that book in the show notes.

[00:11:16.20] - Gresham Harkless

Also the book the Lean Startup as well too.

[00:11:20.35] - Gresham Harkless

Something I mentioned a lot about building out an mvp, the minimal viable product of something that you can kind of test out, get market feedback and then you know how to iterate or to how to grow that from there. So this is a cool concept of.

[00:11:43.01] - Gresham Harkless

The offering pillar at clfx, really helping.

[00:11:49.00] - Gresham Harkless

You to kind of refine your product or service or solution you're creating so that it really solves that problem, it.

[00:12:00.92] - Gresham Harkless

Really connects with your audience.

[00:12:03.25] - Gresham Harkless

And there's so many different aspects actually building that out because sometimes it might be the marketing. So when you put that part of your service out there, it doesn't connect or resonate with your ideal clients. Maybe it's that it's not communicated correctly. Maybe it actually does solve their problem.

[00:12:30.05] - Gresham Harkless

Or frankly it might be a offering.

[00:12:33.35] - Gresham Harkless

Issue where it actually doesn't solve that problem. But that's where this idea of pretty typing really kind of resonates with me.

[00:12:44.53] - Gresham Harkless

What I really loved about you know something about it with Annie. So as we went through the episode.

[00:12:54.42] - Gresham Harkless

On episode number 2110 of the IMCO podcast, Annie shared her journey of building the table. As traveled, Annie focused on creating a deeply personal and meaningful travel experience is a perfect example of an entrepreneur who.

[00:13:19.41] - Gresham Harkless

Understands the importance of validating her audience's needs.

[00:13:26.19] - Gresham Harkless

So just to take Annie she talked.

[00:13:30.20] - Gresham Harkless

About and gave an example like in the episode. But I wanted to kind of drill down.

[00:13:37.47] - Gresham Harkless

If you have a business like Annie.

[00:13:42.20] - Gresham Harkless

Or even if you're thinking about a.

[00:13:44.42] - Gresham Harkless

Business somewhat like that. Here's some ideas. So for Annie, maybe early on she.

[00:13:54.01] - Gresham Harkless

Could have hosted local culinary events to gauge interest in food focused travel. Maybe she could partner with chefs for.

[00:14:05.92] - Gresham Harkless

One day cooking classes, gathering feedback on the experience, or potentially even just using surveys to identify top cuisines, destinations that actually excite her audience.

[00:14:23.03] - Gresham Harkless

So all these go back to this.

[00:14:26.04] - Gresham Harkless

Idea of entrepreneurship and business and of.

[00:14:29.96] - Gresham Harkless

Course the offering, but really understanding that.

[00:14:38.17] - Gresham Harkless

These ideas, these things that we really.

[00:14:41.25] - Gresham Harkless

Hold near and dear to our hard adventures, the things that we want to.

[00:14:47.10] - Gresham Harkless

Do to make an impact or nothing unless they're tested. Nothing unless somebody actually will give us a dollar for what it is that we're trying to do. So we have to be very locked into putting and getting that market feedback rather than spending so much time things perfect.

[00:15:20.87] - Gresham Harkless

That's a really hard thing to do.

[00:15:23.48] - Gresham Harkless

Because honestly, throughout all our lives we're trying to make sure that things are.

[00:15:31.73] - Gresham Harkless

Exactly where they're supposed to be before.

[00:15:34.33] - Gresham Harkless

We turn them in. You make sure that you check the.

[00:15:37.99] - Gresham Harkless

Work before you turn it in.

[00:15:40.57] - Gresham Harkless

All those things happen to us at a very young age that often it's kind of reversed for us to actually put something out there that maybe isn't actually ready, get feedback and improve it from there.

[00:16:01.69] - Gresham Harkless

So it doesn't make, and this is.

[00:16:07.12] - Gresham Harkless

Why entrepreneurs should be such a big part of that pillar. It doesn't make the idea in the actual pottery service. The final thing that we're doing is actually the iteration that we stake to.

[00:16:31.07] - Gresham Harkless

Get to where we are. That actually is a really big thing. So that's why solarfish is central to builders. So here's why you really want to think about it.

[00:16:48.01] - Gresham Harkless

It's fast. First of all, you test your ideas.

[00:16:51.27] - Gresham Harkless

Quickly without that long term commitment, it's affordable. So as builders, you don't.

[00:16:58.47] - Gresham Harkless

You have more time than you potentially have money.

[00:17:04.68] - Gresham Harkless

So you want to make sure that.

[00:17:06.63] - Gresham Harkless

As you start to become more of an architecture, but you do get to test these things out, but it becomes more affordable because honestly, you try not to drain the budget. You're trying to test out these ideas and see what happens. And lastly is strategic.

[00:17:29.47] - Gresham Harkless

You focus on what works and let go what doesn't. That's all around, you know, being on the jungle gym, letting you on that.

[00:17:38.77] - Gresham Harkless

Previous one so you get to the next one. We have these assumptions. If you let go of that assumption and get to the next one, it's.

[00:17:48.19] - Gresham Harkless

Gonna allow you to to make more of that impact. So one of the really big things.

[00:18:00.40] - Gresham Harkless

That you really want to understand that if you're building out your first product or even you're testing out an idea, try to get into market as quickly as possible.

[00:18:16.04] - Gresham Harkless

It could be as simple as a.

[00:18:18.00] - Gresham Harkless

Survey or it could be as big.

[00:18:21.93] - Gresham Harkless

As.

[00:18:24.75] - Gresham Harkless

Creating an entire.

[00:18:32.06] - Gresham Harkless

Offering.

[00:18:34.39] - Gresham Harkless

But you just ask your family or friends before you put it out there. So really think of like how can you take that next step right now? How can you get in that action oriented.

[00:18:53.34] - Gresham Harkless

Space?

[00:18:54.13] - Gresham Harkless

And a lot of times I talk about the.

[00:19:02.15] - Gresham Harkless

This 12 week year because.

[00:19:04.66] - Gresham Harkless

A lot of it is focused on action. But you have to make sure that you do that more than anything else because if you don't do that then that can leave you in a place.

[00:19:18.98] - Gresham Harkless

Where you're not ultimately doing all the things that you ultimately hope to do or you launching things that are quote.

[00:19:29.59] - Gresham Harkless

Unquote complete but they haven't even really been snipped by the audience that you want to serve.

[00:19:38.24] - Gresham Harkless

So really remember that you are taking.

[00:19:42.79] - Gresham Harkless

Those steps to test those things out. That is part of the journey and part of the process and that's finally part of how it's how you gonna make that impact and make things are so much better. So with that being said, I'll leave you with this. Builders prototyping isn't about affording failure. It's actually about ensuring success. Understand that the failures, the mistakes, the.

[00:20:19.30] - Gresham Harkless

Things that don't go the way you.

[00:20:21.30] - Gresham Harkless

Want them to go is actually a partner of the process to get to success. You cannot have success without having that failure. Once you understand that it's going to.

[00:20:36.57] - Gresham Harkless

Open up so many things for you.

[00:20:39.39] - Gresham Harkless

It's about making smart, informed decisions that save you time, money and of course energy.

[00:20:47.61] - Gresham Harkless

So don't forget to of course, you.

[00:20:50.55] - Gresham Harkless

Know, check out the show notes. Check out the two SEAL hacks, the one that Aries Sims Sim mentioned, you know, in the podcast. You of course check out her episode as well too.

[00:21:08.19] - Gresham Harkless

And of course please you know, check.

[00:21:10.90] - Gresham Harkless

Out our CEO flicks as well too. Sealflix company. Thanks for tuning in to IMCO Podcast builders.

[00:21:20.66] - Gresham Harkless

Keep building, keep innovating.

[00:21:23.47] - Gresham Harkless

And we're back.

[00:21:24.25] - Gresham Harkless

Remember, more than anything else, if you've.

[00:21:26.66] - Gresham Harkless

Won your own race, you cannot lose.

[00:21:30.25] - Intro

Thank you for listening to the IM CEO podcast powered by CB Nation and B16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at IMCEO Co. I am CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Want to level up your business even more. Read blogs, listen to podcasts and watch videos. At CBNation Co, ex you check out our IM CEO Facebook group. This has been the IM CEO podcast with Gresham Harkness JR. Thank you for listening.