Making Something From Nothing: Tim Manning of Chief Outsiders On How To Go From Idea To Launch

Communicate your Solution in the Customer’s Language

Technology marketing often lays a trap for entrepreneurs: you are not selling technology but a solution to a known problem. Your customers relate to your product as a solution to their problems. The enabling or underlying technology (e.g., Artificial Intelligence) you use to solve their problem is less exciting and will not resonate. Stay focused on your customers’ problems and communicate in a language they understand.

As a part of our series called “Making Something From Nothing”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Tim Manning.

An international marketing executive with more than 25 years of diverse and measurable success, Tim differentiates companies and new technologies for optimum growth and maximum ROMI. With a broad knowledge of marketing strategy and tactics spanning retailtech, fintech, medtech, cybertech and other sectors, he builds programs and processes dedicated to driving measurable bottom-line results, on-time and on-budget. A specialist in positioning strategy and messaging, Tim engineers strategy with a customer focus to connect brands in a meaningful way and deliver a unified and compelling value proposition.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before diving in, our readers would love to learn more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your “childhood backstory”?

I was raised in a healthy, happy, and loving family of six, with two brothers and one sister. In our home, work ethic, respect, responsibility, and accountability were essential and formative themes in my life.

I was academically and athletically inclined, participating in team and individual sports from a very young age. In addition, I was results-driven, a self-starter, and a committed finisher, all qualities instrumental in driving a startup marketing career that has spanned three decades.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Then, can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

My favorite quote developed over decades of leadership experience is, “people do not care how much you know until they know how much you care.” Much of the insight that underlies this quote was hard-won and developed only after making numerous leadership mistakes.

Life and business are about people, and success is a function of people working together to produce a whole solution or outcome more significant than the sum of its parts. Leadership is the catalyst that provides access to such an outcome and is made more robust with a relationship based on caring. That relationship provides a foundation of trust for empowering people to believe in themselves and stretch where they do not think they can. It is one of my deepest passions and commitments: playing a small role in helping people realize their full potential.

In startups, the stakes are high. You have to move fast and accomplish a great deal in a short time. However, if people know you care, you will have a committed, loyal, and higher-performing individual or team.

Trillion Dollar Coach by Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg, and Alan Eagle describes the story of Bill Campbell, the legendary executive coach for some of Silicon Valley’s most significant companies. It is written that Bill took a sincere interest in people’s lives by literally beginning staff meetings, group or 1:1, with a discussion about people’s lives. The book made clear the correlation between his coaching and his clients’ success — a client list including Google and Apple — clear. People that know you care can become truly extraordinary.

Is there a particular book, podcast, or film that significantly impacted you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you?

The Bible for its timeless wisdom and Meditations, by Marcus Aurelius. Marcus Aurelius was a philosopher and emperor of Rome (A.D. 161–180). Meditations is a handbook for the practical application of philosophy in our daily lives, which begins with understanding what is in our control and what is not and focusing our energies on the art of living an empowered life.

Another worthy, quick read is “Do the work!” by Steven Pressfield, which studies the resistance we will inevitably face as we bravely take on new opportunities, challenges, and new ventures.

Ok super. Let us now shift to the main part of our discussion. There is no shortage of good ideas out there. Many people have good ideas all the time. However, people seem to struggle to translate a good idea into an actual business. Can you share a few ideas from your experience about how to overcome this challenge?

Outside of a go-to-market discussion that executes a given strategy, some fundamentals will accelerate business success.

Start with the Customer

My journey as a marketing leader for early-stage B2B technology companies spans three decades, and it is from that orientation that I share my perspective. An idea is only as good as its relevance to solving a known customer problem. If an idea can solve a known customer problem, it may have an opportunity to reach product-market fit — solving a known customer problem at a sufficient scale to build a successful enterprise. The original author of Product/Market Fit, Marc Andreessen, said that product/market fit is “the only thing that matters.”

The insight, therefore, is to validate the product idea/innovation from the ‘outside-in’ rather than ‘inside-out’. Outside-in involves starting with the customer problem and working backward towards a solution. Keep the customer in focus, talk to them, and validate your product and value proposition; they will grow your business for you.

It is paramount that you not become a solution looking for a problem. Even though your solution may solve numerous problems you think your customer has, start with a problem they know. Solve that first, and you may earn the right to solve other problems you know they have.

Communicate your Solution in the Customer’s Language

Technology marketing often lays a trap for entrepreneurs: you are not selling technology but a solution to a known problem. Your customers relate to your product as a solution to their problems. The enabling or underlying technology (e.g., Artificial Intelligence) you use to solve their problem is less exciting and will not resonate. Stay focused on your customers’ problems and communicate in a language they understand.

Often when people think of a new idea, they dismiss it saying someone else must have thought of it before. How would you recommend that someone go about researching whether or not their idea has already been created?

Fight Self-Doubt

First, fight against the self-doubt that will be inevitable when you have an innovative idea; and then take a systematic approach to validate your idea or solution. That approach begins with defining who your ideal customer would be for the solution, answering whether the solution has a sufficiently broad appeal — in other words, are there enough customers that fit your ideal customer profile (ICP) to build a company of size? Then research the problem you are solving and identify competitors that may have a similar or identical solution.

Study your competitors.

Who are they, what are they saying, and how are you different? If you do not define them, your customers will for you, and you might not like the outcome. Geoffrey Moore, the author of Crossing the Chasm, said it best: “creating the competition, more than anything else, represents a watershed moment in positioning.”

Unique Value Proposition.

If there are competitors or not, you must begin to define your unique value proposition, in other words, how you uniquely solve the customer’s problem unique from your competition in a secure and meaningful way to your customers. For example, artificial intelligence (AI) is not a unique value proposition, but how you use it inside your solution to bringing unique value is meaningful. In defining your unique value proposition, look to the business benefits your customers would need from your solution as a place to start.

For the benefit of our readers, can you outline the steps one has to go through from when they think of the idea until it finally lands in a customer’s hands? In particular, we would love to hear about how to file a patent, source a good manufacturer, and find a retailer to distribute it.

Contextual to the B2B tech space…

In other aspects of this article, I have touched on different elements of what is, in effect, your go-to-market approach. However, the most important investment you can make in your business may lie in answering five questions. In today’s noisy, competitive marketplace, deciding your market strategy, positioning, and messaging may be the most crucial decision you make as a business leader — and one which holds the most significant leverage for your long-term growth.

Resist the race to revenue long enough to answer these five business strategy questions, and ensure you have a long-term differentiated value proposition that customers care about.

1. Why do you exist? Reference Simon Sinek video. People do not buy what you do. Instead, they buy why you do it.
2. Who is your ideal customer? Understand what problems they need to solve and what benefits they care about.
3. What is your solution? Name it and have it be memorable and meaningful to your customer.
4. Who are your competitors, and how are you different? Then, make sure you can defend it and that it is sustainable.
5. What is your solution (technology) category and your unique position within the category? Adopt a known category and uniquely define your position in it, or define a new category.

With these questions answered, define your go-to-market strategy (GTM), which is how you reach customers and influence them to buy your product or service. GTM strategies can be complicated if it becomes a tactical discussion too early — because there are various tactics, it can be overwhelming. Instead, start with where your customers consume information about your solution and how and where they buy. These fundamental questions can help focus your GTM efforts and marketing spending and, more importantly, orient your GTM strategy with how your target customer buys. Paid media may not be your best investment, and yet it is a default strategy for many early-stage companies. Temper your GTM strategy with a customer orientation, explore opportunities to go where your competitors are not, and think creatively.

What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me When I First Started Leading My Company” and why? (Please share a story or example for each.)

• “Success is about the people, not the idea.”
• “Build a great company, and the valuation will look after itself.”
• “Solve the problem customers know before you solve the customer you think they have.”
• “The difference between great marketing and everything else is execution.”
• “Execute your marketing plans at 80% consistently, every day, rather than striving for perfection (100%), and you will outperform your competition.”

Let’s imagine that readers reading this interview have an idea for a product they would like to invent. What are the first few steps that you would recommend that they take?

Following all that has been discussed previously in this article, you need to get to market, test, learn and refine. If you have developed a solution with the customer’s problem in mind, there is a notion of a minimal viable product (MVP) that is very powerful for early-stage companies. According to Eric Ries, author of The Lean Startup, “the MVP is that version of the product that enables a complete turn of the build-measure-learn loop, with a minimum amount of effort, and the least amount of development time. Why is such an approach so important? Because speed to market and learning is critical. The faster you can get to market, the faster you can collect information about solution fit, customer interest, and willingness to pay; and the faster your learning cycle times become. Often, too much time is spent perfecting an idea or solution in a vacuum. The risks of such an approach can be catastrophic. You may miss the market window, run out of precious early-stage capital, over-engineer the solution, miss the problem you need to solve, or all of the above.

There are many invention development consultants. Would you recommend that a person with a new idea hire such a consultant, or should they try to strike out independently?

Generally, I would not recommend hiring a consultant to advise you on new inventions. Candidly, I was not aware such consultants existed. An exception can be made if there are complicated industrial design considerations. Launching a new business is mainly formulaic, in which case I would refer you back to answering the five questions referenced earlier in this article. The other human element to this discussion is your passion for solving a known problem. That passion that had you conceive your solution idea — that may even be based on an experience in your life — will create enormous energy and staying power as you surmount the numerous growth-related issues in building a business. If the idea is not yours, you may not have the passion crucial to your credibility as a founder and for connecting emotionally with your target customers.

Some of the greatest startup success stories began with the founder’s passion for solving a problem they had personal experience with. Think Facebook and a problem Mark Zuckerberg saw: “you could not find and connect with the people you cared about.” There are countless such examples.

Back to defining your why, as recommended earlier in this article. Why are you doing what you are doing? Moreover, it should not be a paycheck.

What are your thoughts about bootstrapping vs looking for venture capital? What is the best way to decide if you should do either one?

I recommend that you bootstrap to an MVP, with friends and family, crowdfunding, etc., and then evaluate the opportunity and or need for institutional capital. The point is to get to market as fast as possible with as little capital consumed as possible, test the problem and solution, learn, and evaluate product-market fit to the extent possible. Beyond that phase, bootstrapping to growth becomes challenging because of time and competition. If you have found a hole (a problem for which you have a unique solution), the problem with bootstrapping is time and competition. One is a function of the other — with more time, as you prove a solution and market, there is more competition, and your opportunity for innovation may be neutralized or disappear entirely. Therefore, innovation requires that you move quickly.

Ok. We are nearly done. Here are our final questions. How have you used your success to make the world a better place?

My passion for leadership and helping people led me — later in my career — to serve in several roles as a startup consultant, advisor, and coach, all to help founders, entrepreneurs and people think bigger, play bigger, conquer fear, and make a difference.

You are an inspiration to a great many people. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.

The movement would be simple. Inspire people to invest in people, and empower and acknowledge others. It does not require capital or technology, only time and intentionality. That movement begins today with your next conversation, whether you are an individual contributor (IC), CEO, or something in between. Change occurs one person at a time, and your voice makes a difference. So model what you expect from others, begin today, and watch the magic.

We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world or the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might see this if we tag them.

Elon Musk. Mr. Musk continues to be a bold, brave innovator and entrepreneur who fights social pressure and conventional thinking to deliver disruptive technology that is changing the world. I am interested in understanding how he summons the courage and creativity to push through.

Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.