“Marketing Methods to Avoid Startup Failure,” is a 50 minute talk that exposes a distinct pattern that leads to startup failure time and again, then introduces a new marketing paradigm that makes starting and effectively marketing a business doable, in sequential, actionable steps.
Business Marketing PROCESS, not MBA theory, or entrepreneurs stories (which worked for them, but likely won’t for you).
Veteran Creative Director, and Stanford marketing educator, J. Cafesin, inspired by over two decades marketing Silicon Valley seed startups to Fortune 100s, has developed a unique, three- step marketing method for sustained business growth.
“Marketing Methods to Avoid Startup Failure,” will detail how to set up a solid foundation for selling your offerings, and branding your business, with a proven method of effectively marketing a new or existing product or service, step-by-step, into a thriving business.
In this Meetup you will learn:
• The three primary reasons startups fail • The RAF Marketing Method to avoid startup failure • Productization of your product, service, or nonprofit, into a marketable offering of value • Branding of your offering and company • Launching effective digital and print marketing campaigns
Entrepreneurs, This is one of the most useful business-related book series you’ll ever read. Lean Startup Entrepreneurial Series makes starting and marketing a business doable, in 3-steps, step-by-step—Marketing PROCESS, not theory or startup stories—the practice of marketing a business to thrive: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1732543100
Actor
Robin Williams. Fashion designer, Kate Spade. Aaron Swartz, a
prodigal computer programmer, political organizer, and internet
hacktivist hung himself at 26 years old. In 2017, it’s estimated 1.4
million of U.S. attempted suicide, and over 120 a day actually
succeed in killing themselves. Suicide is the 5th leading
cause of death globally, after cancer, car crashes, and HIV.*
Clearly
living is a choice we all make every day we live.
Almost
4,000 of U.S. will consider suicide today. Have you? I have. Not once
or twice during hard times, and in passing, but many times throughout
my lifetime, from my tween years, likely till I die. Yet, virtually
daily, I make a conscious choice to stay living.
I
don’t believe in any higher power than the laws of physics. There is
no “Jealous God” (Exodus
34:14) watching, or judging our behavior
from ‘beyond’. There is no heaven or hell. I’ve never been able to
pretend we are more than the collection of cells that make up our
bodies and consciousness. I can choose to go hang myself in the
doorjamb of my office after I finish writing this blog without fear
of damnation. The only eternal soul we possess is humanity’s hope
that we matter past our limited time alive. But we don’t. Not really,
beyond our affect on the lives we touch while we are living, like our
family, and a handful of friends and colleagues. Even if you’ve done
DNA ancestry, other than their genetic contribution to your
existence, your dead lineage are names in a ledger, nothing more.
Too
dark a view for ya? It ain’t depression. It’s reality, and a scary
one knowing that regardless of what we believe, our life adds up to
what we DO with our short time of awareness.
Individually,
we really have very little effect on, well, anything beyond
our small realm. Even those who have ‘made it,’ like the opening list
of celebrities, most will be forgotten over time, and lost to later
generations. And we’ll never even know the names of most innovators,
especially women, who invented the tech we use today.
For
the religious reader, this blog probably isn’t for you. I’ve likely
lost you in the opening bit, as suicide in most sects is a ‘sin’. If
you are a true believe, it is equally likely you won’t off yourself.
The only reason to continue reading is if you want to help someone
who seems like they may.
How do
you know if someone is suicidal? You don’t, and likely won’t. Each of
the above celebs were either flat out rich, wealthy, or at the very
least financially ‘comfortable.’ So, it wasn’t poverty that drove
them to suicide. They ‘made it’ doing what they loved, instead of a
lifetime at some crappy job just to pay the rent. Yet, each made a
choice to die. Why?
Every
day I make a conscious choice to keep living, but a lot of days the
choice to stay is hard. Very hard. Some days, hope drives me with
purpose, that I can make a positive contribution to those I touch.
But other days, on days where it feels as if I reach no one, or I get
nothing done, or humanity is doomed to our own stupidity, hope
abandons me.
Give
it up. Walk away. Stop trying so hard. You’re getting nowhere. If
there is nothing beyond death, and what I do doesn’t really matter in
the scheme of things, then why not just check out, be done.
At times, my life feels as if it defaults to the mean of hardship,
and I obsess about exiting the scene, fading to black.
How do
you stop the voices of fear, either before they ramp, or even after
they do, when you look up from your laptop to notice you aren’t
breathing? I think of checking out, conjure my exit strategy. I
imagine I’m taking pills, or maybe going into the garage, turning on
my car and rolling down the windows.
What
stops me?
I
picture coming on to the oxycontin, or choking on carbon monoxide,
then throwing up, then blacking out. Then nothing. Ever again. No
awareness, no consciousness once the neurons stop firing. No taking
it back. No second chance. No waking up. Feel nothing, ever again. Or
I try and feel what it feels like to feel nothing, but
obviously, this is an oxymoron. Living and feeling are synonymous, as
are death and nonexistence.
When
I’ve lost all belief in myself, my work, my world, I’m left with only
one reason that keeps me here. Regardless of how lost I feel, how
insignificant, how hopeless, I hold on to the one truth I know is
real.
Every
day I make a conscious choice to stay living—to FEEL.
Living
is all about FEELING—glad, sad, mad, good, bad, proud, humbled,
jealous, accomplished. And the list goes on… I get to feel them
all, and many more throughout my lifetime, expressed in a thousand
ways. Enjoying chocolate mint ice cream while watching TV. In awe of
natural wonders. Heartbroken with loss. Swooning in love. From the
physical to the surreal, we all get to feel—experience being alive.
Strip
away the religious sales pitch that rewards us for charitable
behavior, in exchange for an eternity in paradise. Ignore the social
pressure that tell us our value lies our physicality, or our job
title, or the acquisition of wealth. Let
go of the pretense we are going to make a substantive
difference to anyone beyond our small circle of connections. And the
point of living becomes to feel
the moments of our life.
Death—feeling
nothing ever again—will come, regardless if I hasten it. The
permanence of suicide becomes daunting when I consider I’d never get
to taste anything again. I’d never see, smell, or feel rain on my
skin, or someone hold my hand. If I take my own life, I kill even the
possibility of change, and finding ways to enjoy more moments of my
brief existence.
I
teeter on the edge of suicide when all reason and purpose has
abandoned me. But you can help me during these times, or others who
stand at precipice of ending their life. When I’m consumed by doubt,
black and sticky, pulling me under, please don’t tell me to “Hang
in there, it’ll get better.” It feels like bullshit in those
moments of darkness. With empathy, simply remind me to FEEL.
Have an idea for a product or service, but have little money, and no clue how to create a business? Perhaps, you are currently marketing an offering that isn’t selling much, and you’d like to get more attention from your marketing efforts? – Lean Startup Marketing teaches the RAF Marketing Method of turning ideas into offerings of value, for profit. This three-step process gives you practical, doable steps to build a sustainable business, and get the greatest response on your marketing efforts, at launch, and beyond. – Bestselling author, and Stanford marketing instructor, J. Cafesin, takes you on the journey of your professional career—creating your own business—from idea through launch, at little to no cost. – LSM Workshop 1: PRODUCTIZATION, is the process of getting intimate with your idea, or developing product. Neglect to productize your offering, and at best, your marketing efforts will get little traction. At worse, ignoring Productization leads to startup failure. Productization must happen before BRANDING (Workbook 2). Implementing the steps of Productization, in order, allows you to produce tightly targeted marketing campaigns that motivate viewers to click, try, or buy your offering. – • MBA to marketing novice, Workshop 1: PRODUCTIZATION provides all the marketing you’ll ever need to know to become proficient at marketing…anything. – • Create Productization Lists filled with content to use in your branding, marketing and ad campaigns throughout the life-cycle of your business. – • Identify Target Markets and Users who will likely buy your new offering. – • Construct an Elevator Pitch to succinctly chat up your new venture. – • Perform Competitive Analysis, and find differentiators that make your offering unique. – • Choose an effective Profit Model to make money on your offering. – • Project Horizontal and Vertical markets for current and future offerings. – LSM is not marketing theory. Each workbook, filled with slides, challenges and assignments, is a step-by-step guide you’ll refer to again and again, to assure you are on the proper path to building a thriving business. The LSM series provides specific, low-budget, actionable steps for marketing your offerings, to sell directly, or launch your first offering as a profitable startup. It’s time to become your own CEO, and create a career you love.
Lean
Startup BRANDING (LSB) Workbook 2, is the first marketing book to
unify the marketing/branding process. LSB brings together target
marketing methods with graphic design techniques, to produce smart
marketing strategies and striking campaigns that uniquely brand your
products, services, and company.
Bestselling
author, and Stanford Marketing instructor, J. Cafesin, introduces an
entirely new Branding paradigm.
LSB takes you step-by-step through the branding and marketing of your
new venture. Create corporate and product identity packages. Examine
the fundamental principles of effective design, and learn to produce
multichannel print and digital marketing campaigns that get greater
response.
You
must continually produce campaigns to create a thriving business.
Through text, slides, challenges and projects, LSB Workbook 2
empowers entrepreneurs to CEOs with the knowledge to create and
produce professional-quality digital and print marketing, that
generate the greatest conversion (clicks; try; buy; subscribe).
● Learn
to create a complete Corporate Identity. Establish product and/or
company names, then create striking logos that can scale from social
media feeds to the side of your building. Establish your startup’s
voice with taglines that tout your company’s unique value.
● Study
graphic design techniques, such as layout, eye-tracking, responsive
grid systems, typography, and how to execute attention-grabbing
branding and advertising campaigns.
● Discover
the components in imagery that create visual impact, and the myriad
of sources to get spectacular visual content, at little to no cost.
● Examine
print and digital reproduction. Begin a visual library of
high-quality images and video clips to use in your marketing efforts
for both print and online campaigns.
● Review
SEO (search engine optimization) techniques and best practices.
● Explore
online technology, and how to increase engagement with your digital
marketing efforts.
● Course
projects include developing a complete identity for your offerings
and startup, as well as an array of effective print and digital
marketing campaigns to introduce your new offerings, and promote your
business.
At the completion of LSB Workbook 2: BRANDING, you will have gained the ability to design and inexpensively produced tightly targeted, professional-quality marketing campaigns to turn your startup into a thriving, sustainable business.
After his scout meeting, our 11 yr old son announced he was never going to advance to Eagle Scout, as we’d all hoped, when he ‘bridged’ from ‘Webelo’ Cub Scout to become a full-fledge Boy Scout.
“Attaining the Eagle rank is often the end goal of a scout and his parents. It looks good on a resume and shows commitment to a program over an extended span of time.”
These are the opening lines on an Eagle Scout information page for the Boy Scouts of America (BSA), and one of the reasons we encouraged our son to stay in their program.
But the rank of Eagle Scout was not attainable for our son, his troop leader had told him last Friday night. Even if he got all his merit badges, and fulfilled all the other Boy Scout requirements through middle and high school, he was not qualified to become an Eagle Scout.
To achieve Eagle Scouts, or any other rank, Boy Scouts must live the Scout Oath, which requires belief in God.
My husband and I introduced our 5 year old son to scouting. Fourteen Christians and one Jew, and our kid was the only member of his Webelo troop being raised without religion. Most of our neighbors, and our kid’s classmates, attend the local church. My husband and I are Atheists. Our kids are not privy to the benefits of participating in this tight-knit religious network. Scouting seemed like a positive way for our son to meet other boys his age in our area.
We didn’t consider the Boy Scouts an exclusively religious organization. We’d heard stories, of course, and knew of the pending lawsuit in the supreme court filed by a father for discrimination against his son who claimed to be an atheist. It motivated me to ask the women at the Cub Scout table during school registration if their troop was religious, and if so, how. Both women assured me their den had several different faiths among its members, and their policy was to keep religion at home, not practice it in scouting.
They were true to their word during the first five years our son belonged to their troop, participating in most events from hikes to community drives to popcorn sales, and earning quite a few merit badges along the way. Religion, even prayer, was never practiced or promoted. He bridged from Cub Scout at the end of fifth grade, and became a full Boy Scout with the aim of eventually becoming an Eagle Scout in high school.
After his new troop’s first official gathering a few months back, our son informed me the Boy Scout troop he’d bridged to said prayers at the end of their meetings. I asked him how he felt about that. He confessed he’d already branded himself a non-believer, when the scout master asked him to lead the prayer at the end of that first meeting. He’d refused, stating he wasn’t sure there was a God, and he thought praying was a waste of time because he was certain there wasn’t anything listening. Though he’d been publicly labeled “misinformed” by the scout master at that meeting, and endured jeers and taunts from several of the boys, every Webelo he’d been with the last five years had bridged to this new troop. Our son didn’t want to look for a new non-religious troop, with a bunch of kids he didn’t know. He just wouldn’t recite what he didn’t believe, he’d told me.
That wasn’t good enough for advancement, according to his new scout master, who asked him again last Friday night to say a closing prayer. No matter how lax about religion our son’s lower division troop, rank of Boy Scouts and higher stuck to the rules of the BSA, he told our Boy Scout. A religious association, and faith in God is required for rank advancement. Commitment to community service, practicing Scouting’s core values of honesty, compassion, as well as continually exhibiting diligence as a contributing team member, were irrelevant. Belief in a god was more important than social service. Atheism is a sin, the scout master assured our son at the end of last Friday’s meeting.
I could lie that I believe, my son suggested, if I have to…
Think that’s a good idea? I asked, glad to be driving, which made it easier to keep emotional distance and sound casual.
Maybe. I just don’t get why I have to pretend I believe in God. The Boy Scout handbook says we’re supposed to “respect and defend the rights of others to practice their own beliefs.” But they’re not.
Ah, from the mouths of babes…
He’s right, of course. Click on the ‘Litigation’ link on the official BSA website, and bring up the “Duty to God” page. Part of the Scout Oath proclaims the scout will ‘do his duty to God [and country].’ Every level of advancement requires a promise or show of faith in God. Boy Scouts are instructed to respect the beliefs of others, but only those that believe in the Christian/Judaeo God.
Nowhere in the BSA literature we received and perused before or after our son joined the Boy Scouts did they say they were a faith-based organization that required their members to be believers to receive equal rights and priviledges as those granted to religious members. Had they disclosed this with all transparency, as do churches and other religious organizations pushing their beliefs, I doubt my husband and I would have channeled our son to participate.
We impose no religion on our kids. We discuss it often— the concept of one god verses many; various cultures and their belief systems from beginning to modern man, using everything from the Tao to biblical references. Our kids get additional religious education through their friends and faith-based celebrations with family. My husband and I hope to expose our children to many possibilities, and let them discover their own spirituality.
Parents who provide religious training for their kids early on, and, it would appear, register them in Boy Scouts, are looking to validate their beliefs by indoctrinating their kids with the religion on which they were raised. And most of these parents have never stopped to consider whether the rhetoric their parents sold them is truth. They are blind believers, and turn their children into the same.
“The Boy Scouts of America (BSA) takes a strong position, excluding atheists and agnostics,” according to Wikipedia.
Perhaps the BSA is a front for the church, and works to convert unsuspecting non-believers working to advance in their organization. Hook the kids without religiosity when they’re young–in Cub Scouts. Get them to work hard for advancement, then deny them further advancement unless they convert to Christianity. Whatever BSAs agenda, and our son now sees they clearly have one, the meeting with his troop leader last Friday night soured him to continuing in scouting. It’s a shame, really, because the Boy Scouts have so many positives to offer. Weirdly enough, they tout the same morality I preach to my kids, like being courteous, and honest, loving and compassionate. The only difference between us is I don’t believe a god gave us this wisdom. I give credit to humanity, over eons, watching what works, and doesn’t.
There is no god that’ll save us from hate, prejudice, nationalism, exclusionary sects like the BSA who lure kids in, like the Pied Piper, under the guise of community involvement, then change the rules mid-play. Regardless of our differences, religiously, culturally, politically, PEOPLE, me and you, must use our collective wisdom to unite for humanity’s continued evolution.
