Your Story is Your Business
At The Heroine’s Journey, instead of coming up with a plan for how every part of a business could work, we design an ongoing sequence of small, rapid story prototypes to learn if and how the business will work. Learn an storytelling way to remove risk from creating new business models by testing your assumptions early to build stronger, more innovative solutions and get to product-market fit faster.
In this course, you’ll combine traditional business strategy with the methods and mindsets of storytelling, and prototype three parts of a business—your clients story, value story proposition and offer, revenue model, and selling your story. You’ll unite the analytical with the creative, prototype to get tangible early, and focus on people to uncover new opportunities and unlock more value from existing offers.
To get the most out of this course, come prepared with a customer need and an idea for a new business, product, or service.
Course Outcomes
- Remove risk from creating new business stories and get to product-market fit faster.
- Build stronger, more innovative solutions that solve real needs for your customers.
- Uncover new business opportunities and unlock more value from existing offers.
- Determine which offer, revenue model, and sales channel will work for your business.
- Draft a business story to move your concept forward.
What You’ll Learn
Week 1: Introduction
3 VIDEO LESSONS
- Telling a Business Story—New ways to think
- The Business Story —Visualizing the components of your business
- Prototyping Your Business—Answer big questions with small experiments
1 ASSIGNMENT
- Identify Your Business—What’s the new business or business line that you want to work on? It could be something from your current role at your company, or an idea that you are hoping to start from scratch.
3 DISCUSSIONS
- What’s a business that you really love? What makes it so special?
- Got a favorite business framework that you like to use? Share with the group.
- What are some of the best prototypes you’ve seen, participated in, or heard about? What made them so special or memorable?
PROJECT CHALLENGE:
- To get the most out of this course, come prepared with a customer need and an idea for a new business, product, or service. It could be something from your current role or an idea you are hoping to start from scratch. You’ll develop this business idea as you move through the course.
Week 2: Creating Value
2 VIDEO LESSONS
- The Value Proposition—Designing the essence of your business
- What People Want—Story Prototyping an offer that stands out
2 ASSIGNMENTS
- Creating Value, Part 1—Build a story prototype of your value proposition and test with your customers.
- Creating Value, Part 2—Build a story prototype of your offer and test with your customers.
2 DISCUSSIONS
- What’s a company with a strong value proposition that you really love?
- Have you ever encountered a product or service from a company that varied wildly from their value proposition? How did it make you feel?
Week 3: Capturing Value
2 VIDEO LESSONS
- Capturing Value—What revenue model is right for your business?
- Building Revenue—Getting creative with revenue model and price
1 ASSIGNMENT
- Capturing Value—Build a prototype of your revenue model and price and collect evidence to help you further refine how and how much your customers will pay.
2 DISCUSSIONS
- What’s one example of a product or service where price is being used to signal something about it’s quality or availability? Is it working (are people buying it)?
- What deep functional or emotional needs do you think people pay the most for? What’s an example of a business that understands this well?
Week 4: Delivering Value
2 VIDEO LESSONS
- Designing the Last Mile—Delivering value through the channel
- Getting to ‘Yes’—New ways to think about your channel
1 ASSIGNMENT
- Delivering Value—Sketch a storyboard prototype that captures key moments around your channel, and collect evidence about which ideas most resonate with people.
2 DISCUSSIONS
- Think back to a time when you took real pleasure in the experience of buying a product or service. What made the experience delightful?
- What do you think about when deciding whether or not to make a purchase? What tips you over the edge to ‘yes?’
Week 5: Conclusion
1 VIDEO LESSON
- Parting Thoughts—Stay generative, focus on people
1 ASSIGNMENT
- Update the narrative of your business and your Business Blueprint
1 DISCUSSION
- What’s the one thing you’ll take away from this course? Maybe it’s a quote or piece of advice or framework. How will you use it to design your business? Or, how have you started to use it already?
About Peter de Kuster
Peter de Kuster is the founder of The Heroine’s Journey & Hero’s Journey project, a storytelling firm which helps creative professionals to create careers and lives based on whatever story is most integral to their lifes and careers (values, traits, skills and experiences). Peter’s approach combines in-depth storytelling and marketing expertise, and for over 20 years clients have found it effective with a wide range of creative business issues.
Peter is writer of the series The Heroine’s Journey and Hero’s Journey books, he has an MBA in Marketing, MBA in Financial Economics and graduated at university in Sociology and Communication Sciences.
The Heroine's Journey 