Founder Fundamentals Workshop Series
Are you a founder, entrepreneur or small business owner looking to grow your business in 2020? The Founder Fundamentals workshop series will help you level up your skills, assess problem spaces, evaluate trade-offs, execute more effectively, and ultimately grow your sales
We are super excited to announce that we have partnered with the Queen College Tech Incubator to provide a series of five workshops starting in March and running through till August 2020.
The five workshops are:
1. Use customer discovery for growth, March 05, 2020. 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm
2. Product Discovery, Build products people want to use and buy
April 02, 2020. 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm
3. How to build practical negotiation skills, May 07, 2020. 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm
4. Sales for entrepreneurs, June 04, 2020. 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm
5. Effective Public Speaking, August 06, 2020. 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm
Use customer discovery for growth
March 05, 2020. 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm
Workshop description
The “old” way of doing business consisted of creating a business plan, developing a solution and then launching.
But what happens once you have launched?
What if it isn’t a product that people want. The “new” way to do business is to begin customer discovery work, run experiments, take those learnings and iterate.
You need to get outside of the building and go and talk to potential customers.
Start off by formulating a hypothesis around the problem space and use customer discovery
data collected to evaluate your hypothesis.
In this workshop, you will learn to appreciate your ideal customers and empathize with their pain points, what success looks like to them, and the journey they take to buy.
By the end of the session you will learn:
✅ How to ask questions that do not lead the customer to your bias
✅ Identify your ideal customer and their problems
✅ Determine if your solution creates value for the ideal customer
✅ To think about scaling
Sign up for Use customer discovery for growth workshop
Product Discovery. Build products people want to use and buy
April 02, 2020. 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm
Workshop description
As founders, you see problems every day and you know you can solve these problems.
Do you tend to jump into building a solution which can cost upwards in the thousands of dollars? Instead, focus on problem validation to reduce the risk of building something that nobody wants. Before you move into the solution space.
In this session, you will be presented with an ambiguous hypothetical problem and by the end of the session, you will have a better understanding of how to approach it, prioritize what to solve, and generate thoughtful solutions.
In addition, we talk about how to analyze constraints and explore potential metrics to measure success.
By the end of the session you will learn:
✅ How to identify and prioritize opportunities
✅ To identify, frame and evaluate trade-offs
✅ Focus on creating value and Impact
✅ Identify who to build for and what are their needs
Sign up for the Product Discovery workshop
How to build Practical Negotiation skills
May 07, 2020. 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm.
Workshop description
Most people tend to run rather than negotiate, and try to avoid negotiating at all costs. However, what people don’t realize is that we all negotiate regularly in both a personal and professional setting.
For example, persuading your significant other to spend Saturday afternoon watching the football game, asking for an extra $X as part of your job offer, increasing your client work rates, and so on.
Change your mindset and start to think of a negotiation as a discussion, and by the end of this workshop, you will walk away with actionable tools that you can start using immediately to negotiate confidently and effectively.
By the end of the session you will learn:
✅ What makes a negotiation “good” or “successful”
✅ The habits of effective negotiators
✅ The role of good communications in a negotiation
✅ Practice negotiating in an interactive simulated (mock) negotiation
Sign up for how to build practical negotiations skills workshop
Sales for entrepreneurs
June 04, 2020. 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm
Workshop description
Does this sound familiar?
You’ve worked hard and you know you have this amazing product or service, however, you are struggling to find customers willing to pay.
You are unable to grow your business at the pace you had hoped for. Sales is tough, you have to work really hard to get people excited and want to buy. The good news is that by making a few changes in how you think and organize your sales process, sales can be fun and rewarding (but still difficult).
In this workshop, we talk about identifying your target customers and their specific pain points. We show you how to map your offering to those pain points and create a process that clearly articulates how you can solve the customer’s pain point to increase your sales. Finally, we talk about creating a sales process designed for growth.
By the end of the session you will learn:
✅ An actionable repeatable step by step process to sales.
✅ The habits of effective salespeople
✅ How to stop “over pitching” and learn to start conversations
✅ Learn about cold emails
Sign up for sales for entrepreneurs workshop
Effective public speaking
August 06, 2020. 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm
Workshop description
Similar to negotiating people generally tend to run rather than to speak publically.
However, the fact is that as founders, entrepreneurs, and small business owners you *need* to speak publicly. This could mean speaking at a networking event or at a conference with hundreds of people.
Or something in between such as presentations, group discussions, business meetings. During this workshop, we provide a safe and positive learning experience to empower you to develop your communication skills resulting in personal growth and confidence in business or personal settings.
This workshop will be active and you will be asked to come to the front and deliver a two-minute speech.
By the end of the session you will learn:
✅ How to tell an awesome authentic story
✅ To communicate your point across
✅ Manage any pre-speaking nerves
✅ Be less robotic and more genuine
Sign up for effective public speaking workshop