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Hey there - it's Brian 👋

Today we’re talking about how you create Micro-MVP tests to figure out which customer pain customers are most eager to solve (by buying from you).

I’m excited for this one.

So many of you have emailed, DMed, and called asking for this issue. So I’ve designed this issue to answer your questions.

We’ll go in more depth than usual to make sure you get your Micro-MVP started today.

Read to the end and I made you a 3-min video tutorial explaining the process.

Let’s dive right in & make your business an outlier: 👇

📖 Backstory: It took me too long to build my MVP. Until I started writing on Twitter

It’s 2021, I’m building an app to help business owners sell their business.

But before building the app I want to make an MVP to see if business owners actually want my product.

At this time, I’m still a management consultant so I’m working nights / weekends on the MVP to give me the confidence I need to leave Deloitte.

I make a comfortable living and I’m scared that I’ll be out of a job if my EdTech/FinTech fails.

So I pull together a quick (barely functioning) MVP in Figma.

But it takes too long.

I have calls with other founders to get advice: “How can I test FASTER?”

3 weeks and 27 pour over coffees later I had an MVP I was ready to show business owners.

But that was a LONG 3 weeks. 18-hour days.

Is there a way to test FASTER?

Today, I finally have that answer (in an unexpected way).

So I ran tests on Twitter

Now it’s March, 2022. I schedule 9 tweets as my homework for Twitter writing class.

Back then, I only had 7 followers.

I’m sitting on the Zoom. Dickie Bush tells us how you keep writing to find your niche.

But I see each tweet as a test:
• Testing my writing style
• Testing if people want what I’m writing
• Testing if the right people want what I’m writing

Since I have such few followers (and looking to build a business), I’m looking at each tweet differently. I’m not looking for a total number of new followers, but instead, looking for patterns and differences in engagement.

So I realize:
If content is just communicating an idea, can’t you just tweet about your business, watch customer reactions, and adjust until you know customers want it?

BOOM. The Micro-MVP is born.

I merge the Micro-MVP testing with my consulting experience and build out the Outlier Framework: Design + Test + Grow.

I’ve been sharing this framework online and built up 78,000 followers and advised 15+ businesses to use these quick customer tests to guide their growth.

So what is a Micro-MVP: How to test if customers want your business

A Micro-MVP is a series of quick tests on social platforms to figure out if customers want your business.

You can run Micro-MVPs to find out:
• Which customer needs your business the most
• Which words to say so customers “get” why they need your business
• What customers value in a solution
• Which pain hurts the most (for you to solve)

Today, we’ll focus on the last one: Pain.

Because the more painful the problem, the more eager your customers are to relieve it (and pay you to fix it)!

There’s 3 steps to breaking your customer’s pain into testable parts

1. Choose which pain you want to test

2. Choose the angle you want to test it from

3. Choose the format you deliver the test in

I’ll share a real example:
Last week, I ran through this exercise with a client who owns a diet school.

Her unique angle is that she’s focused on sustainable diets: Be healthy for life, not just a few months.

So I’ll go through these steps using her diet school as an example.

1. Choose which pain you want to test

Make a list of the different pains your target customer has.

If you don’t know the pains you can quickly find them using online groups where customers like to complain about their problems.

Don’t know their pains? Here’s a few places online you can search to find their pains:

Use online groups where people complain about their problems:
• Facebook
• Reddit
• Quora

Let’s show how to find pains on Facebook as an example:

Go to the Facebook website, then click Groups (on desktop it’s on the left side panel, looks like this):

Then, type in keywords for your customer type.

For the diet school, I typed in “weight loss” and found endless relevant groups.

Type in words that are more aligned to your business instead.

Choose the most active groups so you get a lot of complaints to sort through. I love that there’s 7+ posts a day so it tells me these groups are active:

I clicked on the second group, hit CTRL+F and typed in “help” and BOOM! It shot me to a post from January with 1,300 comments. That’s more than enough to find painful topics for our customer type.

When you run your search try phrases such as:
• “How come I”
• “Why is it”
• “help with”

Check out these 2 complaints I found below:

These comments are awesome, because my client is focused on sustainable diet. Meaning she is uniquely positioned to help people who struggle to sustain a diet fad.

You should end up with a Google sheet of 5 - 7 pains. But for this example we’ll focus on this one we just found:

“I struggle to consistently eat healthy”

2. Choose the angle you want to test the pain from

Now, we learned struggling to consistently eat healthy is a pain. But we need to find out what the most painful part is!

The most painful part is what your business will solve AND how you explain your business to customers (in content, emails, landing page etc).

So we’ll test different angles of that same pain to see which gets the most engagement from customers.

Angles:
1) Which part of the pain hurts the most?
2) Which emotions are most associated with the pain?
3) What are the worst outcomes if we don’t fix it?

Okay let’s explain each angle:

1. Which part of the pain hurts the most?
Find the words and phrases the customer uses to describe the pain. Understand the end-to-end process of the pain better than they do.

Questions to consider:
• What triggers the pain?
• Where are they when it happens?
• Who are they with when the pain happens?
• What other problems do they have with the experience?

We’ll run tests to see if you’ve found the words that makes the customer feel you understand them.

2. How the pain feels
Find the most powerful emotions associated with the pain.

Questions to consider:
• What stories do they use to describe how they feel?
• What emotions do they feel (positive, negative, neutral)?

Remember: People make buying decisions emotionally, then back them up logically.

3. Outcomes of the pain
What are the terrible outcomes that happen because this pain exists?

Questions to consider:
• Social outcomes?
• Health outcomes?
• Financial outcomes?

Pain research is finding bad outcomes. We’ll cover the dream outcomes when we discuss the Micro-MVP process for the solution.

3. Format the message

Now, we need to put the test into a post (LinkedIn, Insta, Twitter etc).

A few things you can post:
• A stat about why the pain will only get worse
• Stories about people who’ve felt the pain
• Quotes about why the pain is miserable
• Resources to help them deal with the pain
• Questions to make customers think about the pain.

Check out 12 ways to format your message in the visual below.

Quick recap (with a real example + video explainer)

Here’s your process:
1. Find your pain
2. Choose your angle
3. Format the pain (into a post)

Say you found 3 possible pains.

Test each of the 3 pains through different angles (emotions / outcomes etc).

Post each test using different formats (quotes, stories, resources etc.)

I know we covered a lot so to help this sink in, I made you this 3-min video explaining the examples from my client’s diet school.

That should give you 40+ tests.

Later, we’ll talk about how to review the results, which platforms to use, and how to use the results to decide what to do.

In a future issues we’ll cover:
• How to analyze the results
• How to make a testing calendar
• Choose platforms to test
• Use the results to decide how to move forward

Vote at the end on your favorite topic!

Now let’s get you making your first micro-MVP: 👇

🏆 Quick win: Post your first micro-MVP

Let’s get your first micro-MVP posted.

Think of a pain you want to test.

Run your first test using the easiest format: Quotes.

Go to ChatGPT. Paste in this prompt:

Give me 15 quotes about why [ADD YOUR PAIN HERE]. Cite the author.

Choose 5 quotes that show different angles to the pain.

Post them to LinkedIn, Twitter, or Instagram.

Tip: if you’re more visual, scroll back up to my Jay Abraham quote and steal that formatting!

And that’s it!

Post a few micro-MVPs and next week we’ll talk about how to read the results (even if you don’t have many followers).

Feel free to tag me on Twitter or LinkedIn, and let me know you’re testing your micro-MVP.

I’ll add a comment to help give your test get more reach!

See you next Thursday 👋

Brian
Twitter
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