Startups and small businesses often face a unique situation. Resources are usually limited, and everything the company does needs to yield results from day one. Yet, it is also easy to lose focus by chasing every opportunity that comes around. Startups and small businesses are also often in need of senior and experienced advisors but generally lack the resources to engage one for a longer period of time, and in the process have to settle for cheaper and less experienced folks.
But startups and small businesses also have unique assets that work in their favor. The passion of the founder/owner, a more nimble way to work and a no-fear attitude towards calculated risks.
At First-The-Trousers, we love to work with startups and small businesses, from helping a challenger energy drink brand find its voice in the global and highly competitive energy drink arena (hello RedBull and Monster), to advising a producer of nanosatellites focus on the right commercial strategy, to helping a small entrepreneur increase conversion rates at point of sale or to simply sit down with an entrepreneur to provide some coaching and feedback on a strategy or upcoming initiative.
And in order to allow startups and small businesses to hire us without breaking the bank (and frankly for us to no miss out on the excitement to work with smaller organizations), we’ve developed very specific tools geared towards startups, small businesses, and entrepreneurs. Those include:
“The Positioning-Roulette workshop”, a tool which will help you come up with a compelling brand position platform within a matter of weeks (rather than months). This tool is ideal for smaller organizations that need to find their position and voice and align a variety of stakeholders (i.e investors, etc.).
“Positioning-Roulette Virtual”, similar to the workshop, but this tool leverages technology to help you craft your brand positioning platform and brand story in a matter of days (not weeks). This tool is ideal for small businesses with even more limited resources (and maybe fewer stakeholders).
You can learn more about our Positioning-Roulette methodology here.
“Consulting by the hour”, because all you need sometimes is someone experienced to bounce ideas off, someone that can help you decide whether you’re on the right track or someone that can shed a new light on your situation and point you into the right direction and resources. It’s as simple as booking an hour here.
Positioning-Roulette flashcards. The real cost-conscious entrepreneur can also buy our best-selling Positioning-Roulette flashcards, a deck of cards capturing the 26 universal triggers to effective brand positioning which is based on the analysis of over 1200 case studies of effective brand building. Each card describes one of the 26 territories and includes a series of questions to guide your own thinking process when trying to position your brand. Some entrepreneurs have used the deck to position their brand and have then followed-up with me for feedback. In the US, the cards can be purchased on Amazon. If you live outside the US you can purchase the cards here.
Make sure to also check our interviews series (“Interview w/ Entrepreneurs in the main menu section on the home page) where we regularly interview entrepreneurs that inspire us and want to learn from.