How incorporating business tools helped Johnny sell design services for six figures
Johnny is a co-founder and innovation Coach at Stale Chips, a US-based company that provides customized workshops and coaching to co-create and validate solutions for businesses. When Johnny isn't working, you might find him searching for his dream duplex to buy in St.Petersburg, Florida, playing soccer, paddle boarding, or enjoying the company of his munchkin cat.
By Johnny Saye, d.MBA alum, with contributions by Clare Goldblatt
I've dabbled in many industries in my career, from professional soccer to journalism. Over my long and varied career, I discovered that the only thing I know how to do is talk to people–which is why I ended up running workshops for the last six years. I got my Master's in Innovation and ended up running and conducting workshops for an agency in Spain. We created experiential workshops where we'd create elaborate simulations from the customers' perspectives. I took this experience to heart and then went on to work for IBM in Spain. My job as a coach and facilitator involved creating design-anchored workshops that would convey fun, interactive experiences, identify roadblocks and challenges of the business, and develop products and concepts.
“I noticed that while these workshops were fun and brought people together, they would sometimes generate false positives as an outcome.”
This isn't unusual, as many companies spend a lot of time and money testing ideas that don't have viable business potential. I wanted to ensure that the workshops we lead at Stale Chips, the workshop company I co-founded, wouldn't lead to false positives but validate business ideas before investing more resources into the idea.
"I thought I knew the beginning phase of design well. But then, when I look back at all the products we built, they were beautiful and technically user-centered but always a step away from reality. So they frequently failed."
I happened to start the d.MBA at the same time I was founding Stale Chips. Here, I learned the tools I could incorporate into my workshops that would correctly validate business ideas instead of leading to false positives. I needed a system to measure the potential value of an idea without deciding how it would function. Let’s take the example of creating the world’s best collar for pet rocks. You could make an incredible product, but it will only sell to a market of 3 people. Your user feedback says you crushed it, but your balance sheet will say you made a mistake.
“So, I started incorporating objective business design exercises into the design workshops I was running with clients.”
Phase 1 of these workshops is where we'd assess the overall opportunity, so we'd look into the competitive arena, value chain, and potential market sizing as tools.
The competitive arena is a great, compact tool; as most of the time, clients are completely unaware of who they are competing against, along with being unaware of trends and tendencies, which in turn reveal that the client's value proposition is often not as unique as they once thought.
Above is an example of a competitive arena. It helps teams define who their company competes with when it comes to satisfying users’ needs.
The value chain is another useful business tool we've incorporated into our workshops, as most clients never validated the actual prices of the buyers and sellers or identified risks. Most businesses involve a complex network of suppliers to make any product possible, so it's imperative to visualize this process, assess the price, and identify potential roadblocks.
This is an example of a value chain. It helps teams understand how products and services get made. An example is made for a company that sells bikes.
Phase 1 also involves prototyping with numbers and evaluating the potential market size.
“These exercises all work together to make the business case objective and solid before developing the idea further.”
Phase 2 of the workshop then goes back to the design workshop framework I've leveraged for many years. We'll prototype the idea, release it to the public, measure its success, build a social media campaign, and make revisions based on our learnings.
I essentially act as a guide through both the business and design research, and this workshop is a great format that allows us to get done in one day what would have usually taken weeks to accomplish.
“Integrating business tools meant we could better signal the value of our projects and hence raise prices.”
This new workshop format has been very successful for our clients as it prevents them from spending a considerable amount of resources on an idea that will generate zero return on their investment. In fact, the integration of the business tools has been so successful that it’s kickstarted 13 projects with various clients, which helps Stale Chips stand out amongst competitors and sell our projects for higher fees due to the value they generate.