This baby step builds a business

I recently broke out how to start a business.

But hang on, there’s more.

I didn’t mention there is a baby step you can take to help you toe in.

When I wrote the playbook for how to start a company, it boiled down the real actions you can apply today to start your business. I liked this newsletter because it was meaty, tangible steps that are necessary to actually build a business.

But if that was still intimidating, there’s one more way to get started.

And it starts with whatever you feel comfortable with. 

How I did it

When I thought of the idea of GoWild, I was swimming in creative.

I mean “creative” the noun, not the adjective.

I was a Creative Director at a digital ad agency, and I spent my day reviewing creative products—ad copy, marketing collateral, website designs, and so on. I didn’t spend my day like I do now, thinking about unit economics or logistics. I thought about storytelling.

I would be a much stronger Creative Director today because I have a much deeper understanding of running a business and conversions, but back then, I was generally a one-track mind.

So when I conceived GoWild in August 2016, I started doing what I knew best—I tackled some creative work to feel it out.

Creative didn’t mean going straight into a design file. As a marketer, I knew I needed some general market research on demographics, competition, etc. I did that work for a few weeks, then once I felt like I had some rough idea of what I wanted to do, I started going through creative steps to help me think through my idea.

To be clear—I didn’t have any of the elements of what I shared in my “How to Start a Business.” I hadn’t even begun to build out the business plan. 

I just needed to feel some progress. Here is how I spent the first month, based on what I new best:

Market research

I didn’t do the first wave of research at the agency. Our creative team was usually handed creative briefs and research that was pretty in-depth about our target audience. This market research was a critical jumping off point for creative work. Without knowing who you’re speaking to, it’s hard to build creative that will find purchase in that first step.

With this new idea, I didn’t have a marketing team—it was all me. So I started thinking about the kind of information I liked having as a Creative Director when we started our work, and I reverse engineered my own research document. 

Here’s a real snapshot of some of my first notes:

HUNTING
13.7 million: individuals 16 years old and older went hunting
21: average number of days spent hunting, with 85 percent of people going after big game, like elk, deer, and turkey
$34 billion: spent on trips, equipment, licenses, and other items to support hunting activities
$2,484: average expenditure per hunter
9 percent: increase in hunters from 2006 to 2011
30 percent: increase in money spent on hunting from 2006 to 2011

FISHING

33.1 million: individuals 16 years old and older who went fishing 
17: average number of days spent fishing
$41.8 billion: spent on trips, equipment, licenses, and other items to support fishing activities 
$1,261: average expenditure per angler 
11 percent: increase in the number of anglers from 2006 to 2011
11 percent: decrease in spending from 2006 to 2011

They’re ugly, but this was critical for the future of our app for a few reasons. It was high level, but it was my first progress. Most importantly it helped me understand this was a multi-billion dollar market and worth pursuing. I also understood that our platform was going to address hunters AND anglers. 

At that time, I hadn’t found any one who was addressing both audiences, and I felt it was a miss. My bet was we could have a more evergreen platform if we catered to both, since the seasons would offset (spring fishing could keep engagement through spring until turkey season). My other bet was we’d see a lot of overlap between hunters and anglers. Today, GoWild has recognized that 75% of our hunters also fish. I’ve made plenty of bad bets, but this one was correct.

Name 

I have named quite a few companies in my career, largely through working at the agency (this one was one of my favorites). The naming process was comfortable to me, and in order to bring this idea into reality it felt important to me to give this thing a name. 

Names started popping into my head as I was doing more research. I scratched them down into the top of the same research document. On September 6, I had 5 names. I picked up naming work 12 days later, and by that second night, I had come up with GoWild. It was a front runner immediately, and was moved down into my “favorites” group as you’ll see below.

Here are the real, raw list of names:

Knowing that I wanted to include anglers and hunters helped me steer away from hunting-oriented names like “Rut & Strut” and “Trophy Room” (also, those names are cliches, and terrible). Looking back, “Grunty” would be a cool product name, but I recognized it was too focused on not only hunting, but deer hunting. “Fieldy” had tech vibes, but also felt too soft and cute for the audience I was focused on. 

GoWild was the perfect name, and still is. It didn’t focus on any specific outdoor activity, and it embodied a feeling of wilderness. It was short, and also played well as a call to action. 

It was time to apply it. 

Prototype 

Once I had a name, I started thinking through the product. I found a Photoshop template for app screens, and I started playing with it. If I were to tackle a similar project today, I wouldn’t have gone here first or even 15th. But at that time, my creative-focused brain wanted to see what it could look like. I needed to know what it could become in order to take the next step. 

This helped me start to think through some of the functionality that would make it into our business plan. I also ideated on functionality that did come to life and is still even live today (such as the fire icon for an upvote—this was note in Version 1.0, but launched a year or so later). 

Donovan Sears was my first target for Cofounder, because I knew I needed a UX guy to help build this company. He was the best I knew and still holds that title. In September 2016, we sat outside spilling black beans and rice on a table at a Chipotle as I flipped through these screens. He and I would work closely together thinking through features—and eventually we started thinking through those features as a business model. Above is a sample of our first designs that came out of that ideation.

Finding what works for you

If you’re not ready to dive into my step-by-step process for building your business, take a baby step. If you’re a creative mind like me, start there. If you’re in finance, play with a rough business model to play with your unit economics. If you’re an engineer, start building an ugly prototype with some basic functionality.

Sometimes you just need to chew on an idea to figure out how it tastes. Diving into the S.C.O.R.E. model mentioned in my step-by-step formula is intimidating. The most important part of founding a company is just taking that first step. 

If you found this post helpful, please share it on LinkedIn or Twitter and give me a tag so I can thank you (my LinkedIn and my Twitter).

I recently joined Category Thinkers to discuss how our company has approached Category Design. To listen to that episode, click here.

Who I’m listening to: Nicholas Jamerson

What I’m reading: “Jerry Lee Lewis: His Own Story” by Ricky Bragg

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