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In this lesson, I'm going to teach you how to plan out your idea using a lean canvas.

This is important because it's a way of pulling all of your high level thinking

and ideas into one readable document.

This document needs to be clear and make sense to anyone

who reads it, not just you.

If you don't plan your idea thoroughly, you might miss something crucial, and by

going through this process, you can focus on things that you may not have realized

would be important, that definitely are and may cost you later on if missed.

It's just a great framework to keep you focused on things that really matter.

The way that I plan out an idea at this stage is to fill out

what's called a lean canvas.

This concept was developed by Ash Moria and is an adaptation

of the Business Model Canvas.

You can find links to it in the resources section below, and I'll run you through

a couple on the screen now as well.

So first up, let's take Skinny Me Tea as an example.

So the market problems might be that you want a fast, safe, and

effective weight loss solution.

The solution could be a health regulation approved 14 day detox

program with proven results.

Some metrics that we might want to measure could be the number of people who

visit the website versus reach checkout versus convert into buying customers.

A unique value proposition for skinny meat Tea could be that it's a detox program

with tea and it's time constrained, so you might wanna do a 14 or a 28 day program.

It's not just an ongoing thing that you need to commit to

for the foreseeable future.

It's a very achievable program.

The unfair advantage could be our proprietary recipes.

The channels we'd operate across could be social media, paid

marketing, and email marketing.

Our customer segments could include female millennials.

There are office workers or brides to be, or new moms that are maybe struggling

with a little bit of extra weight gain.

You can use your customer personas here.

In terms of the cost structure, we have two main product variants.

The 14 day program is around $35, and the 28 day program is around $65.

Our revenue streams are e-commerce and down the track, we might even wanna go

into wholesale or affiliate programs.

So you can see that we're just running through this really quickly.

It's just about getting pen to paper and getting some ideas out of your mind.

So to really drive things home, let's look at another example from the straw

idea that we've been developing so far in this module, and create our

lean canvas for that product idea.

So under problem, 500 million straws are used and thrown

away daily in the US alone.

Another problem could be that plastic straws are not recyclable and that these

straws sit in landfill for years, wash up on the shore, or pollute our waterways.

So there's three different problems.

Some existing alternatives on the market right now.

Uh, some companies are exploring straws that made outta paper that haven't

really caught on a few chains, like Starbucks are exploring straw list lids.

Some local bars are even trying to ban straws all together.

So rather than using two in every cocktail that are only used for stirring anyway.

So from a solution perspective, it's reducing the impact of single-use

plastic in the environment.

We have our metal reusable straw concept and it's eco-friendly

as it's not made of plastic.

Obviously.

The metrics again, could be the number of people who visit the

website versus reach checkout versus convert into paying customers, or in

this particular case of the reusable straw, maybe it's the size of bulk

purchase orders from local restaurants, bars, and franchises, for example.

Moving on to our unique value proposition.

Now your customer needs to understand what makes your product unique and

different from every other reusable straw and brand on the market.

Remember, we talked about this a few lessons ago, and I want

you to record these ideas here in your Lean Canvas worksheet.

So a unique value proposition is a single, clear, compelling message that states

why you're different and worth buying.

A common misconception in e-commerce is that you need a crazy new proprietary or

patented idea in order to be successful.

This simply isn't true.

You don't need to reinvent the wheel, as I mentioned above.

You just need to change a single dimension and solve the same problem in a fresh way.

Those dimensions could be design, function, price, or time, for example.

For the purpose of this exercise, let's list out some of the ways in

which we could potentially change one dimension for the straw idea like we

did in the previous lesson on making a product different and better.

So what we ended up with here was a reusable metal straw that came in two

different colorways, rose gold and chrome.

It's made of metals, so it's helping reduce plastic from single use straws.

Folds down into a clean carry case and is priced fairly accessibly

in terms of an unfair advantage.

Our unfair advantage could be the way in which a straw folds

down or retracts into its case.

It could even be the case itself, which could be really durable and have a

five-year warranty on it, for example.

Or we could return to the concept of our self-cleaning antibacterial case here.

Remember, we're just brainstorming.

You can always change your mind later on in this stuff.

It's just important to start getting our ideas out of our minds and onto paper.

This worksheet's actually technically designed for apps and software, but

I find it a really useful exercise for my business and idea mapping.

So if you can't come up with an unfair advantage, don't worry about this as it's

often a lot harder in eCom than tech.

So in terms of channels, we'll get more into this during the marketing module,

but just start doing some thinking about where your target audience might hang out,

whether that's on Instagram, Facebook, or Pinterest, for example, with this

particular idea, it's so problem focused.

We might find blog, blog posts useful to highlight these particular issues or even

other topics in the food and drink niche.

So recipes, for example.

Or on Pinterest.

Pinterest already has a ton of pins around both the food and drink niche

as a whole, or tips of substituting everyday disposable items with reusable

items, so we could lean on that.

Instagram has a popular hashtag around zero waste, which is a movement within

itself, so you might wanna tap into that.

In terms of customer segments, you might remember from our lesson on

finding your target audience or customer personas, the persona that we created

for Todd, the true environmentalist, and Susie, the virtue signaler.

So now it's your turn.

I want you to go through this exercise with your favorite product idea in

mind and fill out a lean canvas.

If you can only fill out half to begin with, that's completely understandable.

You can ask friends or people in the start and scale Facebook group for help.

Remember, progress today is better than perfection next week.

The founder community is here to help you succeed, so please feel

free to leverage each other's brains.

Simply print out a lean canvas and start filling it out for your next product

idea, and I'll see you in the next lesson.

I really hope you guys are enjoying the course so far.