The End Hype Podcast

Come up with an idea, prototype it, make a million units, sell like crazy, and get that bread. Right?

Not accurate. Sorry.

Get comfortable with prototyping if you want to save serious money on development, manufacturing, and overall margin. Prototyping is not a process of making the best product we can and iterating until it is perfect. Prototypes are experiments we use in an overall strategic product development process to answer questions, validate assumptions, and explore opportunities.

Yeah, I get it. Making stuff sounds way more fun. The boring parts of business, like constructing and executing a good prototyping plan, is where success is hidden.

In this episode, I discuss some of the milestones and hack that comprise a better approach to prototyping.

Why spend time and time building a presence on social media?

Why not just keep working in secret?

Many types of businesses can succeed without social media as a sales channel. Traditional industries and hardcore B2B companies can grow (believe it or not) while still barely having a website. Why can’t you do that as well?

Creating content enables communication and allows feedback to start refining your message.

Like many things in business, we need to go beyond linear (transactional) thinking and move into network (relational) thinking.

If you think you are not cool enough or “ready” ...

It's not about the flex. 

It's about the come up story.

People miss the entire point.

Stage 0

Be known. If I don't know you, I can't do business with you.

Stage One

Define and refine your message, story, and brand.

Stage Two

Find, build an audience that relates to your story.

Stage Three

Attract team members and partners

Stage Four

Build community

Deploy traction...

I am unbelievably excited to bring Dawn onto the podcast. I will be doing more Founder Talks like this in the immediate future. We can learn so much from the experience of others.

Dawn fills us in on the progress and growth since graduating the RBC Mindhive incubator (now called Innovate) last year. She has won pitch events, built a team, developed a product, received investment, and planned a go-to-market strategy. Seeing the tactics and strategies put into action is so gratifying.

Listen in because this episode is filled with absolute gold.

We hear little sayings like, “the riches are in the niches”.

Why are niches good?

How do you find profitable niches for products?

And perhaps most importantly ...

What the hell is a niche?

When thought leaders say find your niche they usually mean a niche market. 

They mean find the place where your product fits. 

Niche means products, services, or interests that appeal to a small, specialized section of the population.

Here is a more human approach to understanding the power of niche markets.

In the past, even the recent past, groups of people were lumped geographically and could be sectioned with demographics such as age or gender. Groups of people were more homogeneous. Groups of people were reasonably the same. 

People had limited access to outside information and products. A town might have had a couple of stores. People’s interest and desires were very localized. Word of mouth was manual but generally how trends moved. Changes happened but...

Transform your product idea into a business reality.
This is End Hype

Here is the top conceptual mistake new entrepreneurs make about competition:

If someone exists in the market ...
If that idea is out there selling ...
They have to give up.
They have to come up with a different idea.

People believe this with such intensity that doing product validation and research causes anxiety. Stop letting bad programming guarantee you failure.

Here is the secret. Competition makes the market.

Being first to market in a new space is hard. Sure, there are possible massive upsides but educating the customer becomes your focus instead of product, growth, culture, etc.

Competition means customers. If I research a problem area and find businesses, courses, products trying to solve that problem, I know opportunity exists. I can quickly figure out what customer segment has the problem from website messaging, email newsletters, and social posts. I can model what is effective.

Even better when I find out...

What is an Innovation Challenge?

Large organizations create programs offering entrepreneurs large cash prizes for ideas solving a specific problem area.

We contributed a lot of time working with solar programs but STEM, clean water robotics, industrial IoT, unmanned systems (drones), eco-friendly luxury products, and everything else have programs. I see them in almost every industry and demographic focus.

We see them with top prizes from 10k to 1mil. Seriously.

Why would a company sponsor this? Why would someone pay inventors, entrepreneurs, and smaller businesses for ideas? It is a good deal for them. Don't big companies have all the resources they need? No.

Large organizations have execution resources (like money, infrastructure, and personnel) but lack the agility to easily uncover smaller opportunities or to deploy alternative technology and thinking. They lack the exploration capabilities especially in emerging, niche areas.

R&D at a billion dollar corporation is an...

 This is the End Hype Podcast. Callye Keen talks entrepreneurship, manufacturing, marketing, and everything to dominate the physical product business. End the hype. Make the future.

Disruption and strife reveal the shortcomings and challenges that good times mask. Looking at the long term, we will come out stronger and better from this situation. Stay positive. Look for opportunities to solve problems.

Callye gives one of the ideation exercises from the Red Blue Collective Framework. Use Level 10 to discover valuable, executable ideas in a problem space. Use the tool alone to explore or with a team to collaborate.

Want to be featured on the podcast? We are looking for entrepreneurs and professionals to share their experiences. DM us.

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 TRANSCRIPT

This is the End Hype podcast. I'm Callye Keen. I'm here to deliver the...

Transcript

In this episode, your host Callye Keen, introduces himself and the new End Hype Podcast.

Transcript

So today we're going to do a little background. Who the hell am I? Why should I be talking about this stuff? What have I done? Why you should listen. Why you should turn it off right now, never listen to me again, unsubscribe. All those good things.

So here's the deal. I've been in manufacturing my whole life. My family has been in manufacturing since the 50s. I grew up in a manufacturing facility. When I was old enough running equipment, checking parts. Then I got into product development. So I've been in product development for almost 15 years. I've developed hundreds of products. I sat shotgun with entrepreneurs and startups and big companies, government entities, and saw how they went from paper, from an idea, from just requirements to prototypes to production. We're talking about growing businesses from somebody presenting an idea in the conference room to me, to their company...