by Clay Ostrom | Sep 11, 2018 | Customers, Marketing, Psychology, Startups, Strategy
< Back to The Campfire Whether you’re a startup or you’ve been around for years, talking to your customers is a critical practice. It provides a level of insight into your business that you can’t get through surveys and analytics alone. I recently worked on a...
by Clay Ostrom | Jul 18, 2018 | Jobs To Be Done, Marketing, Psychology, Startups, Strategy
< Back to The Campfire The 10X Rule for innovation sets a bar that’s simple to understand but very difficult to achieve. The rule roughly states that in order for customers to switch from a current behavior, they need a new option that’s 10X better. The value of...
by Clay Ostrom | May 16, 2018 | Marketing, Psychology, Startups, Strategy
< Back to The Campfire As business owners, we all make assumptions about how our customers think and feel. But when those assumptions are wrong, customers will struggle to see the value of our offering. To validate our assumptions, we do things like: Talk to...
by Clay Ostrom | Feb 13, 2018 | Branding, Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Psychology, Startups, Strategy
< Back to The Campfire Why it’s critical to understand who your business is competing against. Over the past year, I’ve had the opportunity to provide mentorship to college students at USC through the school’s entrepreneurship program. As I work with these students...
by Clay Ostrom | Jan 23, 2018 | Culture, Entrepreneurship, Mentorship, Startups
< Back to The Campfire One of the biggest challenges of being an entrepreneur is maximizing the use of your time. As a founder you never get a nice, contained list of responsibilities to focus on. Instead you get one massive list titled: “Do everything to keep the...
by Clay Ostrom | Nov 8, 2017 | Entrepreneurship, Startups, Strategy
< Back to The Campfire Ask ten different business owners how they define the strategy for their business and you’ll likely get ten very different answers. Not just in terms of content, but in structure as well. The concept of “strategy” is so broad, it’s not...
