“Nothing happens till somebody sells something.” (Dave’s one-time boss and mentor, Randy Root of Root Learning)

How do you get someone to buy what you're selling?

Instead: how do you figure out what you can sell that customers will buy?

And what if you could figure that out in 6 weeks?

In a nutshell, that’s what this course is about.

You need to know:

1. you're going to figure this out using conversations, intuition and experiments – not surveys, desk research or spreadsheets.
2. there are no templates to fill out, and nobody's going to ask you to know what's going to work before you started. There's going to be just enough structure that you can figure out what works for you.
3. it's going to be 10% information and 90% co-creation, practice and accountability so you'll actually take action. If you don't want to have customer conversations, don't join!

To sell something, you need to know what your customers want. You need to know what you have to offer that they might value. You might feel you need to have your offer clear before you can start that conversation. I respectfully disagree.

Possibility: Let’s block out 6 weeks, grab a bunch of great people who are in the same position, help each other and hold each other accountable, create a load of customer conversations and learn a lot. We’ll emerge with new skills, a better idea of what we can offer the market, and — hopefully — some customers.

The course will take you through:

Six weeks

1. Purpose. Making your list, creating an invitation. Gentle/less scary warm outreach.
2. Generative conversations, asking questions, discovering pain points (Documentary Conversation, Diagnostic Shop Along, Pain X-Ray)
3. Connecting pain points to your own purpose ⇒ . Use Pitch Provocations to poke the market
4. Practicing, role-playing –
5. Real conversations. Get people on a Zoom call
6. Reflections and insights

Participants: You’re hoping to create a customer but don’t know quite where to start. You know you have many possible ways to offer value, but you don’t know which there’s a great market for. You want to figure out how to focus on the right offer for the market, and how to get it out there so you can create customers. • The concepts we’re working with are great for solopreneurs and creators just starting out, for small startups working towards product market fit, and for bigger companies trying to figure out new value streams. • The common theme is that it’s about figuring out something new for you, not about optimizing something that’s already getting loads of customers. We’re at the 0-1 stage, not 10-100 or bigger.

Parameters: This course will take place on Tuesdays from March 12th – April 16th, 2024. Each Tuesday we will hold a 90 min session at 5pm GMT (9am PST, 12pm EST). • You don’t NEED a deck, I’ll provide all the cards and additional material that we’re going to use, but students will get a special discounted price for the deck. At least 10% off, but I’m seeing if I can get a bigger discount for you.