I recently finished The Lean Startup by Eric Ries, a book focused on guiding entrepreneurs to continuously innovate their business in order to achieve success.  Admittedly, I started and stopped the book multiple times over the last year because I thought the title implied it all: how to run your business if you don’t have any money.  I had worked in finance for 10 years, and I wanted to give the very best to my startup; being ‘lean’ didn't sound like the best.  Boy, was I wrong.  The lessons I learned in The Lean Startup are not only essential for a startup, they’re essential to any business concerned with fostering innovation and achieving success.

Purchase The Lean Startup here!

If I’m being completely honest, though, my business is lean.  I'm self-funded and all of my technology is inexpensive or open-source (free software made available to anyone who would like to use it).  I'm the only person working full-time on my business and my focus often has to shift when I have an acting audition or comedy routine to practice.  So how have I been able to operate and grow my startup into something more than an idea?  Below are three lessons I learned from The Lean Startup that have helped my business evolve and grow into something truly valuable.

1) Don't wait until it's perfect

The Lean Startup recommends that all businesses begin with a 'Minimal Viable Product' or MVP.  An MVP is not your grand business vision - it's a quick and cheap model that gives you the ability to test how consumers interact with your idea.  'The goal of a startup is to figure out the right thing to build - the thing customers want and will pay for - as quickly as possible.'  The book postulates that great products are a result of a continuous cycle of customer insight along with fast iteration.  The number of times you loop this cycle, the more beneficial your product or service will be to your customers.

This concept completely shifted my attitude towards failure.  Think of it this way: you have to continually fail at serving your customer until you learn exactly how to improve your product or service and no longer fail.  With this idea in mind, it’s important you don’t expend all of your time, energy, or budget on a first version of your product.  Rather, try to reserve enough time, energy, or money to reinvent some aspect of your business every week as a result of customer feedback.

You might be worried that people will criticize you if your product isn’t perfect.  You can't let this preoccupation handcuff your plans.  People will absolutely criticize you in the beginning, and they will most likely criticize you at any stage if you’re challenging some status quo.  If you wait to launch your business until your product or service is perfect, you're delaying the inevitable feedback from consumers on how your product could improve.  What is ‘perfect’ anyway if it's not 100% in service to your customer?

2) Think small

Coming from a background in operations, I'm used to thinking big.  I think big about systems, procedures, volume, and demand.  In operations, we create processes and systems to handle a large capacity long before that capacity occurs so that there's no disruption in business delivery.  We design procedures and software integration to run like a machine in order to produce as fast as possible.

Running a start-up requires the exact opposite approach.  With a start-up, you don't even know if you're building the right thing that serves your business mission.  By creating elaborate procedures with inflexible systems, you could actually delay hearing the ugly truth from your consumers for months - no one wants what you’ve built.

So how do you create something someone wants?  Think small.  It might seem counterintuitive, but find 10 people who are your target customer and only focus on serving them.  Understand how your product fits into their life.  Understand if your product provides them your value hypothesis: ‘a testable statement that can be validated or refuted’ by a prospective customer.  Don't worry about selling to millions of people if your product doesn’t serve 10 sample customers in your own backyard.  Then, when these 10 people tell you why your product doesn't meet their needs - tinker, iterate, and try again.  Do this as many times as it takes until those 10 people love your product or service and want to share it with their friends, a concept known as your growth hypothesis.  The Lean Startup (and the Scientific Method) says, 'If you cannot fail, you cannot learn.'

What is ‘perfect’ if it's not 100% in service to your customer?

3) Find out 'why'

To truly understand why your product or service is failing, The Lean Startup suggests that you ask yourself or your team 'why' five times, as seen in the example below:

Result - Take time to create a monthly social media schedule and plan in advance when to share the community mentor group opportunity.

Asking 'why' five times forces me to be honest about the real reason something isn't working.  If I only asked 'why' two or three times, I might believe the problem lies with someone else.  But after asking ‘why’ five times, I see where I hold personal responsibility and need to make a change.  Ultimately, asking 'why' about the weakest part of my business allows me to hold myself accountable for the changes needed to improve.

From reading The Lean Startup, I learned that not only can you build your business with limited resources, but that you should build your business with limited resources.  Doing so gives you the opportunity to hear from your customers if you’re on track; soliciting early-term feedback reveals whether you should keep going or make a critical change before you’re too far down the assembly line.

If you have an entrepreneurial idea, start today.  Release your product or service (even if it's not where you want it to be) and ask for feedback on whether you’re on the right track with your value hypothesis.  Then, iterate, iterate, iterate.  Love to solve new problems; all business growth is a result of solving daily problems as you learn how you can improve.  Have the integrity to ask 'why' and hold yourself accountable to solve those challenges.  If you do this, I guarantee that with or without a budget, staff, or support, you will grow your business into something your customer actually needs.