by Clay Ostrom | Feb 19, 2019 | Entrepreneurship, Psychology, Startups
< Back to The Campfire You’re at your desk. You’re deep into a problem. You’ve stared at it for hours. You’ve hacked away most of the obvious nonsense. You’ve got it down to the core.And now you’re stuck. You need to figure out:That right combination of words for...
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 | 10X Teardown, Elements of Value, 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...
