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 | May 9, 2018 | Customers, Jobs To Be Done, Positioning, Psychology, Startups
< Back to The Campfire There’s a well known idea that you can classify any business into one of two camps: Vitamin or Painkiller. Vitamins provide long term benefits. They’re an investment that will help you make progress on larger goals. Unfortunately, the delay...
by Clay Ostrom | Apr 24, 2018 | Entrepreneurship, Startups, Strategy
< Back to The Campfire How much does timing affect your chance of success in a market? What outside forces might impact the longevity of your business?A few weeks ago, I was on my morning commute to the gym. There was another car about 50 yards ahead of me and I...
