Full Transcript
Hi Everyone, welcome to the You’re Daily Cup of Joe Podcast, with your host Joe Bautista. In this podcast, my goal is to give you quick lessons that you can reflect on in your journal so you can grow yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually and have a better career, better relationships, and better personal finances while you enjoy your morning cup of coffee.
I’m also the author of the book “More You Know, More You Grow: How to Get Better Every Day”. In this book, I wrote down over 30 tips to help you grow in those four cornerstones. I’m also the founder of Grow With Joe, where I combine self-development coaching and financial planning for Latino Professionals.
In today’s episode, we are going to talk about what is a minimal viable project. This a term in the business world where it is recommended not to finish a project complete with all the bells and whistles, but to release a version of a project that people can start using and start giving feedback.
Doing this will save us a lot of time and money. I’ve worked on projects that I thought were going to work out and didn’t. The good thing for me is that it just took me a month for most of them, and I’m glad it didn’t take me one year.
A year is a long time to work on something, only to find out that no one wants that thing. This happens in business all the time. People buy the business cards, buy the new equipment and software, and maybe get a stand or office, and spending all this time and money, only to find out that people don’t want your stuff.
To become successful in a business, you ask a bunch of people first if they are willing to buy your product and service, then collect the money upfront. Then you work on your product or service. Then if you can’t do the thing, then give people back their money. If it works out, then great because now you have customers.
Then you can start using the profits from that to make improvements. And you want to make sure that you’re profitable as well. If you’re charging $50 and it’s costing your $45 in material and your time, then this probably not a good use of your time. If you charge $50 and it costs you $10 in your time and money, then that is a good start.
I would say when you’re first starting out, shoot for three to one. For every dollar in cost, you should strive for three dollars back. This way you have healthy margins. Now, this might take a while, but it’s a number you should strive for. This way you have money to invest back in the company and to pay yourself.
When I worked at my last financial planning job, I was not working for what I was worth and it caused me a lot of stress, both financially and personally. I would say give something a couple of months, and if it’s not working, pivot into something safer for the time being. Doing get into tens of thousands of debt like me trying to make a business work. Practice where it’s cheap.
This is where the minimal viable project comes in. You allowed to take a chance on something, and if it doesn’t work out, it doesn’t set you back years. Only a month or two. I don’t get why people get into tens of thousands of college debt. I get it because the world is telling us that we need an education and college provides that path, but there are other ways like taking community college to reduce costs at first. If it takes you ten years to pay back your student loans, then for every dollar you borrow to go to school, you have to pay back $1.90 in student loans. So if you’re borrowing a $30k in student loans, then you’re going to pay $57k in student loans. Not a good deal for most students.
So this minimal viable project concept applies to a lot of different things, even relationships. If you’re trying to find a partner, then don’t spend thousands of dollars on dates, go on coffee dates first and then see which ones deserve the grand dinner. The average dates in DC in like a $125 to $150, and you can get in the hole real quick trying to court different people.
Getting into the hole can make people bitter and cause them to give up, so don’t do this to yourself and life will be brighter.
And that’s it for today’s episode, to summarize it, do minimal viable projects. This will save you a lot of money and time. Then you try your idea, you can quickly figure out what’s working, what needs improvement, and what needs to get scraped. This can apply to your relationships, work, hobbies, and a bunch of other things. This is going to take some trial and error to find the right balance between features and commitment required, but then once your strike the right balance, then you will get the outcome you desire much faster without a lot of waste. One of the rules of life is not to waste it and minimal viable projects help you follow this rule.
If you would like to get the journal questions for today’s episode, you can sign-up for my monthly journaling subscription newsletter, where you get daily journal questions Monday through Friday, and as a bonus, you will also get my time management course and my personal development cheat sheet. You can get all this for $13/mo, which is less than the cost of an audible subscription and it’s less work to gain more wisdom. You can get this offer at growwithjoe.me/journal
Thanks for listening today! To get a free copy of my Audiobook “More You Know, More You Grow: How to get better every day” just go to my website growwithjoe.me/book and you can download it right there.
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Thanks for joining me today and remember if you go with Joe, you can grow with Joe, cause Joe knows Dough.
