How To Simplify Business Reflection

Every entrepreneur starts a business to profitably meet a need in the market and create opportunities to earn income. We see a need and have the funds or a pathway to funds, jump in and go to market. The challenge is that many budding or early-stage entrepreneurs do not have a clear plan or road map to follow. Our recent Youth Entrepreneurship Training program in partnership with the Aga Khan Foundation Network, supporting 400 young budding or early-stage entrepreneurs from the Kenyan coast brought this reality to the fore.

The young entrepreneurs faced challenges in sales, marketing and sustainability that led some to start and scale back and others to begin and close down. Thankfully the program offered a tool to help them assess and reflect on their business more straightforwardly and efficiently: The Lean Business Canvas.

The lean Business canvas is an entrepreneurship planning tool to help entrepreneurs see their business as a whole or in parts and assess for planning and growth. Ash Maurya adapted the well-known business model canvas created by Alexander Osterwalder to create the lean business canvas.?

What makes the lean canvas so applicable?

Whereas many business leaders struggle to keep their business plans alive because the writing process is long and often tedious, the lean canvas captures the needed details simply in a way that is easy to remain on track. This clarity is critical to budding entrepreneurs as they can work to build their businesses together based on planning, as it is a principle for business success. The lean canvas helps the business leader to do several things:

1. Move their ideas from their minds into a readable format that will help them share the same with others.?
2. See everything on one page and keep it in plain sight like on their wall, phone or computer.?
3. Building a solid foundation of thinking about the business will facilitate the writing of a business plan as the business grows?
4. Rapidly evaluate multiple aspects of their business as it is adaptable to the whole enterprise, one process, an upcoming event or even just a department or a product.

The canvas has nine components that challenge entrepreneurs to write three top reasons or best answers for every section. It takes a measure of thinking as the entrepreneur must identify the best ideas or outputs. Often the entrepreneur will need to list several answers before deciding on the top three.

The key nine components are:

1. Problem: what problem needs solving? Look at your market and conclusively determine what three problems you solve.?
2. Solution: What solution or solutions can you provide to the identified problems???
3. Key metrics: what are your key activities that can measure or have the impact counted??
4. Unique value proposition: in one clear statement that catches the attention of your audience, what do you that is different from others and worth buying??
5. Unfair advantage: this may sound hard; it simply answers the question, what do you do or know that isn’t easy to copy, imitate or buy from someone else??
6. Customer segment: who needs the solution you have and is willing and able to afford it??
7. Channels: how do your reach your captive audience? How do you deliver your product or service to them??
8. Cost structure: What is the total cost of delivery to the customer? Price includes customer acquisition, distribution, team, etc.?
9. Revenue streams: this is not just how much money you make, the recurrent model of income, the lifetime value of the product, the margins, investments etc.

These nine elements are simple but are invaluable because they take quite a bit of thinking to?clarify each segment enough to list it clearly on one page.?

What next?

Take twenty to thirty minutes to think and work through the canvas, followed by rapid and deliberate testing. Test, test, and test again. Why test? It helps the business leader connect better with the audience and make the needed changes and iterations for impact. With this kind of lean thinking, the business leader will build a business without unnecessary waste and loss.??

?The graduates of our last cohort expressed gratitude for this part of their training. Learning about the lean business canvas gave them the clarity they needed. These comments proved the value of the canvas to budding and emerging entrepreneurs is due to its simplicity and agility for adaptation in multiple sectors of the business.??

?We believe that a simple thought process is critical so every entrepreneur can keep their desired progress front and centre as they grow. Do you have a canvas you use to track your business? If so, let us know which one you use and how it has worked. ?