Hamilton Mill workshop offers free tools to help build customer-focused businesses

Hamilton Mill hosts a free two-day workshop, Building Better Business Models, led by UK-based entrepreneur Tom Strodtbeck on April 14-15. The program will offer tools to help new businesses to start out with a strong footing while providing existing organizations methods to identify services and products most valuable to their customers.
 
Strodtbeck, who grew up in Hamilton and attended Ohio University, worked with the National Business Incubation Association on business development and training before relocating to Liverpool in 2009. Using his experience working with entrepreneurs and startups, Strodtbeck developed a customer-centric business model, synthesizing the work of Steve Blank, Alexander Osterwalder and Eric Reis into a responsive and nimble business tool.
Tom Strodtbeck 
“The basic idea is that products and services, whether you’re a new company or an established one, should be led by customer information and data rather than your own knowledge base and passions,” Strodtbeck says. “The customers, if you approach them correctly, will tell you everything you need to know for your product or service.”
 
Developing a business, service or product takes a significant allocation of money and time, yet the traditional business plan focuses on assumptions made by the business about customer preferences and desires. Strodtbeck shifts the emphasis to uncovering what the potential customer actually wants.
 
“These ideas have been out there since Blank’s 2002 book Four Steps to the Epiphany,” Strodtbeck says. “The framework made sense, but what entrepreneurs struggled with was the approach — what questions to ask customers, how to ask them, what to expect and how to get over the fear that people aren’t going to like your idea.”
 
During the workshops, participants will learn how to use the Business Model Canvas developed by Osterwalder, an agile and useful planning tool that maps out the ways businesses try to create value for their customers.
 
“The Business Model Canvas is the tool to get the guesses about your product or service on the table,” Strodtbeck says. “Then you can start going to customers and find out if your guesses are actually true.”
 
Involving the customer earlier in the development of a product or service limits the amount of risk taken on by a business or organization. The idea of pre-testing concepts directly with the consumer is central to the Lean Startup movement championed by Reis. A customer-led development cycle allows organizations to reduce their exposure to failure while focusing on creating viable products.
 
“With Lean Startup methods, you build just enough of a product to let people use it and tell you what they like, don’t like and what they want to do with it,” Strodtbeck says. “Then you build features into the product that reflect customer feedback. So you build, measure feedback, learn and then start the process over again until you get to the product that you want.”
 
Strodtbeck emphasizes that the Building Better Business Models workshop will be interactive and hands on, providing resources to any company or organization looking to create new value, including nonprofits.
 
Hamilton Mill’s free workshop is scheduled for 8:45 a.m.-4 p.m. April 14-15 at the Fitton Center in Hamilton. Space is limited and pre-registration is required.