Full Program Details
The Business Design Studio is a two-month, online, small cohort, business design workshop for new entrepreneurs who are motivated to start a business.
Students in the Business Design Studio gain processes and practices that make starting and growing a business, a series of discrete, actionable, and doable steps.
Learn massive amounts about your customers before you build anything.
Use that learning to create value by designing products and services that customers actually want, need, and will pay for.
Shift the failures from the end where it is expensive and life threatening to your business, to the beginning where it is cheap and correctible.
Design, test, learn, and change as you validate your idea, understand and create your value proposition, and earn customers.
Earn your customers
Conduct research that will help you see the people you hope to serve.
Understand their motivations and pain.
Craft products and services that enables your customers to achieve their goals and ease their pain.
Learn from Others
Find others who have already solved some aspect of the problem you are solving.
Extract from their solutions the kernel of an idea that you can apply to yours
Create a series of iterations that transforms and combines those extracted ideas into a new solution.
Test your new solution to see if it solves the problem.
Repeat, repeat, repeat.
Use Failure
Work in discreet stages, orchestrated to ensure that failures occur early – while they are cheap and correctable, and push past your initial gut response solution.
State your assertions, create tests, measure your results, and apply the learning back into the design of your value proposition, products and services, and business.
Get Out of Your Head
Solicit, listen, and use feedback.
State your assertions and test your ideas.
Measure the results and use the learning.
Make a plan. Take a step. And then another.
Combat the resistance by proclaiming a clear vision and deciding what you are not going to do.
Breaking your project into small actionable and achievable steps.
Creating habits that help you work every day to move forward.
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How is this program different?
This is not a self study video course or a class to teach you product design skills.
Instead, you will will work with a cohort of peers; give and get feedback; and walk through a structured process as you do the market research, prototype, test, and validate your idea, value proposition, and products and service offerings; make a plan, launch, measure, and continually change until you get it right.
Who is the Business Design Studio For
People who have an idea for a business, but have been holding back because they didn’t know how to get from here to there.
People who have an expertise in some domain, who have an insight about how to make things better, and who are motivated to start businesses.
Small business owners who have been impacted by the economic fallout from the global pandemic, and who are trying to figure out how to adapt to the new constraints.
People who have worked hard, are now income insecure as a result of economic downturn, and are open to answering “who’s going to hire me now?” with “I am.”
What does the Business Design Studio include?
10 video lessons, including prompts shared over the first 21 days
Two 120m online cohort meetings per week
Questions to guide and advance your thinking
Support and feedback that will challenge you to go further and dig deeper
24/7 discussion board for personal feedback for the full 60 days of the workshop
Private Slack for Q&A, troubleshooting, etc.
Access on mobile and desktop
Pricing
The Studio costs $4,650
100% Show Your Work Money Back Guarantee: Past student have raved about my workshops. Still, just in case you’re not sure, I offer a 100% guarantee for the Studio. If you find that it hasn't met your expectations, simply send me a note after you've participated through all the lessons in the workshop and I’ll refund your entire tuition. I’ve found that when students contribute do the work, they get back far more than they put into it.
Timing Details
I haven’t released the dates for the next session. If you're interested in joining, be sure to sign up for the Tell Me More list. I send you an email to let you know when the next session is about to begin.
Coming Soon
I’ll KEEP YOU POSTED BY EMAIL
Sign up by email to be notified when I announce new dates
What are others saying?
“We knew we had to build something, but it wasn’t until we worked with Don that we knew what we needed to build.
His clearly defined process meant that we always knew what the next step was, why it was important, and most importantly how to execute it. We now have extremely useful and user-friendly applications that helped us take our business to the next level.”
“This workshop changed the way I work forever!”
““Absolutely fantastic material, professionally delivered.””
“I would wholeheartedly recommend this workshop to any one trying to create the best possible user experience. ”
“The Design Studio was awesome; we’ve already changed our entire workflow in the two weeks since we returned!”
Still have questions?
Will I have a business at the end of the program?
While it has never been easier to start a business, it won’t be easy.
Most businesses fail because they create great solutions to the wrong problems. Most people don't know exactly what they want or need. As a result, it is almost impossible to upon hit the right solution the first time and a lot of time, money, and effort is spent undoing ingenious solutions to the wrong problem. In the Business Design Studio you will work in discreet stages, orchestrated to ensure that failures occur early – while they are cheap and correctable, and push past your initial gut response solution.
It’s likely you won’t have a thriving business after just 10 weeks. But you will have a vision for where you want to go and a process, tool kit, and a plan for how to deal with the setbacks that will inevitably occur until you succeed.
Who is teaching this program anyway?
Hi, I’m Don.
I have spent the past 15 years designing products and services, teaching product design, and helping businesses create value. I have worked with business of all sizes, from tiny family owned businesses to global businesses in the Fortune 250.
It’s likely that my career path is different from most others you will meet.
In addition to my work as a developer, designer, and product manager, I am a licensed Clinical Psychologist and former photojournalist. This Studio sits at the intersection of each of my prior experiences.
Given what is happening in our economy, I have decided to shift my focus to help early stage entrepreneurs design and start successful businesses. I believe:
We are at the start of a new age of entrepreneurship where people who have ideas about how to change the world will start businesses that do.
Small business are the lifeblood of our economy, the engine for innovation, and help keep things at human scale. We need many more small businesses.
Innovation comes from the edges, where someone doing the work recognizes a better way.
Change will happen when each of us stands up and acts.
Small business are the lifeblood of our economy, the engine for innovation, and help keep things at human scale.
Ideas without action are just daydreams.
The time to start a business is now.
Coming Soon
I’ll KEEP YOU POSTED BY EMAIL
Sign up by email to be notified when I announce new dates