This is a part of a series of posts written by entrepreneurs of the Spring 2020 Business Accelerator cohort for EforAll Cape Cod.
by Rebecca Sarhardi of Nailed by Becca S.
EforAll is a program that helps entrepreneurs start, grow, and learn how to run or even begin a business. I joined the program because I want to learn how to run a business and how to grow my in-home mobile manicuring. Each cohort is made up of many different businesses and people all with one goal, make their dreams come true! Each member receives three mentors to help guide you on your journey. There are 12 weeks of intensive classes where we cover important topics that pertain to running or starting your business. The first day of class I learned it’s not all about logos, websites, and clients. Success stems from much deeper in business.
A class that was beneficial to me was Surveying. The day we learned what a survey is and why we survey we had a guest speaker named Aaron Wittkamper. When the class started we went around the room as we always do and introduced ourselves and our business. Aaron then took over the class and asked if anyone has ever made a survey? He followed up with “ Why would we survey people?” We came up with great answers, the two that stuck out to me most is “ The data will show which direction to take my business.” And “It will prove that I have a good business.” We proceeded with a great presentation learning about how surveying is beneficial and how to use the value proposition canvas to construct our surveys. A great tip Aaron gave was to test the Value prop funnel. Now I’m not going to give away all the tips and tricks of Aaron’s wisdom but this really made sense to me. It shows where to start and how to have success with our survey, a great thought that was put out about surveys is you have to get past asking “mommy” because “mommy” always thinks your amazing and all your ideas are gold and tells you how perfect you are. We have to ask complete strangers and we can’t ask them is my business a good idea? There are ways to structure your questions to get the answers you need and that will help you. Again I’m not going to give away all the class secrets.
If you are in the idea stage of a business, in business and not sure if your running it correctly (like myself) or just need a refresher on your college business classes E for All is a great community to belong to. You will make new friends and business allies to help you steer your ship and have the success you’ve always dreamed of no matter what your “why” is.
E for All is not only a business accelerator, there are other events that you can check out on there website or Facebook page if your interested in becoming a member of a much needed community on Cape Cod. I would highly recommend this program to my entrepreneur friends!
I can’t wait to see how far my business goes, as well as see how I can help another individual with their dreams in the future!
by Ronda Polleys of Beulah’s Bakery
I felt that this topic was a key element for my business as it helped me learn about testing my assumptions for my business idea or product and giving me creative ways to break things down in different sections. It helped me understand more about my business and what I am selling, figuring out my customer base and how I am going to market to them. I thought Aron Wittkamper did a great job in explaining this subject in detail and had some good examples on breaking down the elements of the circle, square and rectangle in the value proposition canvas. There was good discussion between the members of the cohort and good questions to keep the dialogue going throughout class.
The circle is any pain my customer base feels. The square is the benefits of my product and the features that set me apart from the competition. The rectangle is my product’s solution to the customer’s pain.
Learning about testing my assumptions and the Value Proposition canvas helped me get direction on who I need to be marketing to as my customer base and creating additional segments if needed. I liked the circle, square and rectangle illustrations. They made it easy to understand, to create discussion of what might work with my ideas, or changes I need to make.
I liked the interaction and breakout sections on working through ideas on the surveys we needed to work on and help work through questions we might have and give feedback from other members of the cohort.
I liked the elements of this course as it helped breakdown the circle, square and rectangle and what each part meant and how they all tie together. We need each of those elements to create the best value proposition for our business. The survey helps bring all of this together and validate what we are doing is accurate or make adjustments quickly to stay on track.
