ESYB2 101 - The 4 Steps To The Epiphany by Steve Blank
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[00:00:00] In this video, I want to introduce you to another entrepreneurship book that has really helped my own entrepreneurial career, and it's one of the classics, The Four Steps to the Epiphany by Steve Blank. So let me tell you a little bit about this book. So Steve Blank has had in his career 3 billion exits.

So he created companies that were worth billions, and he sold them or went public in the stock market. So he's a really successful guy, and now he's a Stanford Business School professor. His core idea was One main principle, which essentially can be summed up by get out of the building. Now it's become a rallying cry for instead of thinking about your idea in some garage or some office, get out of the building, go and talk to your potential customers and your current customers.

Whenever you're thinking of starting a business or whenever you're thinking of creating some new version of your product, don't just theoretically assume that. It's going to be great and that's exactly how [00:01:00] your customers will want it. That's theory and it's assumption and it's very faulty. We feel like it's correct.

We feel convinced that it's correct. But in reality, it's very faulty. And getting answers from potential clients and current clients actually takes that theoretical assumption and makes it practical. And so we have the most dependable answers possible. So when we go and ask our potential clients, so what happens is we don't create products that aren't going to be bought or features that are going to be not used.

Everything we'll create is precisely things that will be used and useful and purchased. So when you talk to people, you have to ask them about their problem points, how they currently solve their problem points, what would help, and. ask about your idea and how your idea would fit there. For example, would your approach help the way you're thinking about it?

Or would some variation of your [00:02:00] approach help? Would they pay for that? And if they would pay for that, you can even get a verbal agreement that it's okay. But the most important thing. is that you get this real world feedback from real potential people and not base your next few months of work on theoretical assumptions that can be wrong because imagine if you do base your next few months of work on theoretical assumptions that are wrong, you're going to have a lot of waste, a lot of time wasted, a lot of money wasted.

And what Steve did is he was working In eighties, nineties, at that time, this was revolutionary. And when his competitors were just thinking up stuff theoretically in their offices, Steve would literally go and get to know the customers as well as he could. And so he would always create great products and services that would really.

Help his customers and the customers will buy more and that's exactly how he grew his companies based primarily on this main principle. [00:03:00] And he was the one who championed this. So this is now industry standard and should not ever start anything or create features or anything like that without going through this process.

And that's what this book essentially explains and that's the big idea behind this book. So now you know. You always have to go and talk to potential customers or current customers before building anything. And today you, you have very easy access also to various intrapreneur communities, online expert communities, online on Facebook.

There's a ton of groups. So you have even more resources than this book would suggest.

