Guerilla Research – Master Your Market in 30 Days

At Young University, we have crazy beliefs.  We believe, that in the Digital Age, you can learn everything you need to know in 30 days.  We’ve developed a process (read: Organized a list) detailing how you can become an expert in any field in 30 days or less.  We call this our L.I.S.T. Process.

The L.I.S.T. Process is a simple, systematic way to find out as much information as you can about your market.  We teach this module during the Research phase of the business development process, and its goal is to give the E* an enormous amount of data to pull from when making decisions during the Planning Phase.  The L.I.S.T. Process contains the following sections: Libraries, Internet, Surveys/Interviews, and Trends.

Libraries

While this may seem nostalgic with the release of portable readers like the Kindle, and the reach of sites like Amazon.com, libraries still hold a valuable place in developing a business idea.  Two reason keep libraries ahead of the Internet on the research hierarchy.  First, it’s free.  Being an institution focused on bootstrapping, we follow free knowledge like a stalker.  Second, it takes more energy to write and publish a book, than it does to post a blog.  You can usually rely on the fact that the information you find in a book has at least been initially researched and has some data to back up its findings, not always, but most of the time.

“But everyone knows about the library”

You need to have a specific focus when you go through each level of the L.I.S.T. Process.  The library’s function is to give you a strong foundation of knowledge to help you with the following three steps.  Know the pioneers of your industry, have a general idea of who the major players are.  You should be capturing author’s names, and publishing company’s info from these books (try to find book published within the last 5 years, unless older is really necessary).  All of this data will be useful in the next few steps.

Internet

Ah, our old friend, the internet.  While larger and most convenient than most libraries, it requires more of effort to sift through data than the former.  Remember, this phase is only to gather data, no assumptions should be made from anything yet.  The reasons the internet is key here, if you didn’t already know, is because of its refresh rate.  The internet changes constantly and it is the best place to find up to date information on your industry.  You should focus on finding blogs related to your industry, social networking profiles of blog authors, and your library book authors, contact information for everyone in your industry, online publications and industry groups to join and gather more contacts, and on and on.  Remember, your goal is to have as much data as possible when you move on.  After this point, you can pretty much hold an intelligent conversation on your industry without sounding like an idiot, and you should have all of the general knowledge that can be reasonably found.  Now,  you move on the next step.

Surveys/Interviews

We cover Surveys in depth in our Customer Modules, so I’ll be brief here.  The purpose of a survey is to gather the secret thoughts of your customer.  Find out what they don’t blatantly post online, or write in a book.  Interviews work the same way, but they can be more powerful.  In your gathering, you should have run across some names of contacts in your industry, this is the time for you to contact these people and request some time to pick their brains.  Some will say yes, and some will say no.  It should make no difference to you, just get as many as possible.

Interview Double Whammy

Interviews are an amazing thing, and they serve you two purposes.  First, they allow you to network with some of the superstars of your industry instantly giving some credibility to what you are doing by association.  It allows you to build a relationship and create an advisory panel of the most qualified advisors that you can find.  And if you position it correctly, it should be completely free.

The second purpose of an interview is genius.  Understand that these experts probably went to school for your industry, they have had successes, and probably some failures as well, but the key is that they have HAD them, and you have yet to.  You can completely avoid the pitfalls of hundreds of small businesses by just listening to people who have done what you’re going to do.  You can gain the knowledge of an MBA without the fluff, or paying 50K for the lesson.  I would recommend recording all of your interviews, and keeping them close, because you’ll need them as you start your business.

Trends

Think about the Digital Age for a second.  We have completely turned society over to technology, and technology doubles in capability every 18 months, that’s a fact.  Do you think it’s possible that some technologies are good ideas today, that may not be tomorrow?  Well if you answered yes, which you should have, you understand the power of understanding trends.  Think about typewriter manufacturers.  They had it made until the mid 80’s, and then their complete industry died.  Those who say the PC boom coming probably shifted to making keyboards and mice, while those who didn’t…well, you know.

Groups

Understanding trends is all about joining the right groups and having conversations.  Remember those groups and trade associations that you found online?  Well join them!  Do you think it’s possible that someone in California is doing things differently than the same business in Kansas?  Of course!  That’s the point!  You want to stay on the innovative curve of your industry, taking advantage of everything that you can to add value to your customers.  You can also create powerful partnerships by connecting with other industry professionals that may give you an opportunity to expand your business faster than you could on your own.

The L.I.S.T. Process is a systematic way to gather all of the data that you will need to make the really important decisions about your company in your business plan or S.O.S. Manual as we call it here.  Becoming a master of your market gives you a wealth of options for promotion and a fantastic amount of value to add to your customer base, whether you are a simple coffee shop, or a complex manufacturing corporation.  Even if your business is already open, you can add to your knowledge base by having new employees go through the process, or even going through yourself to gain new contacts and build new relationships

What do you think about the L.I.S.T. Process?  Can it really make you an expert in 30 days?  What are your experiences with it?  Let us know what you would add or take away from the process.