Most Valuable Player

Growing up I played a few different sports, so the term MVP was quickly learned and added to my vocabulary.

Whether I was in basketball, volleyball, or water polo, there would be always be some sort of award ceremony at the end of the school year where a title such as MVP was awarded.

Most Valuable Player.

It’s a title and award that athletes dream of getting, and a complete honor when they receive it.

I on the other hand got “most improved player” in high school volleyball, and didn’t have the same feelings.

Quite the opposite in fact.

(Another story for another time.)

But! How about when it comes to the business world?

MVP has a completely different meaning and in no way means what it does in sports.

Earlier this year I found myself interviewing a guest, realizing I had no idea what the MVP they kept mentioning was.

My mind kept going back to sports, but this guest was talking about how important their MVP was in getting the business started.

Fast forward to just a few weeks ago where I’m applying for jobs, interviewing for jobs, getting rejected from jobs on repeat.

I run across a video from Y Combinator titled How to Build an MVP.

Minimum Viable Product.

It was incredibly insightful and gave me a whole new perspective to the business world, specifically when it came to startups.

It’s a way that you can test out new ideas and validate them before investing more time and money into them.

Many business ideas and businesses altogether fail.

That’s a given.

But, many fail after countless hours and large amounts of money have been spent.

In building an MVP, you’re able to quickly build and release your idea, get feedback from users and customers, and ultimately decide if you should continue the idea, pivot, or stop the idea.

If things go positively, then you’ll be building it from your users’ feedback—knowing exactly what to build and creating something that is valuable to them and their needs.

The opposite of this being spending 2-3 years building a service/product that your target customers don’t want or need.

This was a great concept for me to grasp, as I’ve done a lot of different creative and business projects over the years that I thought would do great.

However, they typically fell flat—especially with the ones here at FP.

So! With ConnectCall, I’m creating something quick and releasing it into the wild to see what happens.

I would hope it takes off and does well, but my mindset is realistic in knowing it very well might not.

And that’s okay.

If it doesn’t take off, then I’m right where I was before—only I’ve learned and accomplished so much more than if I remained stagnant.

Some of these takeaways being: 

• Learning to build an app in Adalo and understanding the basics of how apps are built

• Using Zapier for the first time to integrate and automate third party services

• Connecting Beehiiv to the app

• Launching an app in the App Store (still to come)

• Getting my creation on users’ phones (still to come)

But! What can YOU takeaway from all this in your business pursuits?

If you’re building a new service or product, I highly suggest you:

Decide on a tight timeline to build/create it, release it immediately, and then go from there.

Be willing to scrap the idea and try again, on repeat, if needed.

Maybe you’re not building an app or a service that has to be “built out”?

You can do pre-sales or crowd funding to similarly follow the MVP path.

If you’re getting lots of pre-sales, or significant funding from your audience, then you can take that as validation of the idea, and move forward with the first version of it.

Be aware though that you’ll still want to have calls and communication with these first customers to make sure you meet their expectations in what you create for them.

To wrap up, I think the most important things to keep in mind are that:

• your expectations can and will usually vary from your intended customers

• your idea not working is just a part of the journey and not unexpected

• you want to know right away if your idea is one that you should pursue or walk away from

• you should have fun while you’re in this mode

For myself, whether or not ConnectCall works or lasts, it has been a bright light in a dark time.

So I’ll be grateful to it for that regardless of the outcome!

If you’d like to join the waitlist to help test it out, you can do so here.

I should be on track for launching it in this coming week.

Have a great weekend!

Michael