The Business Design Studio
A One month, online, small cohort, business design WORKSHOP for new entrepreneurs
Launch your business with confidence and support.
Learn the skills you need to succeed.
Key Details
10 learning modules shared over four weeks
Two 120 minutes online cohort meetings per week
Exercises and questions to guide and advance your thinking
Support and feedback that will challenge you to go further and dig deeper
24/7 discussion board and private Slack Channel for personal feedback, troubleshooting.
Imagine having the business you’ve wanted…
When you do work that matters – work that you are passionate about – every meeting is important and it feels like you are getting paid to play. If you can create real value for the people you serve, you will make things better for everyone – your customers, your community, and you.
The Business Design Studio will give you a clear plan and help you reduce risk.
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 they are cheap, correctible, and useful.
Design, test, learn, and change as you validate your idea, understand and create your value proposition, and earn customers.
“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.”
Is the Business Design Studio for You?
You have a creative business idea, but lack concrete steps to execute your plan
You’re a domain expert with innovative insights on improving and selling a product or service
You need to adapt your existing business to the changes wrought by the global health and economic disruptions
You keep asking the question, “who’s going to hire me now?” and your answer is, “I am!”
What’s the Curriculum?
The Business Design studio is structured to get you to ask the right questions in the right order – so you can minimize risk and maximize your chances of success.
The questions covered include:
What’s my vision?
Who’s it for?
What’s it for?
What must it do?
How will I create value?
What is my offering?
How will I test it?
How do I earn my customers?
How do I make it great?
How do I get to launch.
What’s the format?
Learning Prompts and Projects: The Business Design Studio is built around learning prompts and projects in which you design your business.
Work with a Cohort: There are two live cohort meetings each week. Meeting times will be determined once the cohort is assembled.
Peer Review: After you submit each project, you peer review the work of your cohort while your cohort peer reviews your project.
Reflect and Integrate: After receiving your peer review, you write a ‘reflection summary’ that considers all of the feedback, discussion and how your perspective and learning has changed, since first seeing the Learning Prompt.
How is the Business Design Studio different?
This is not a self study video course or a class to just teach you business or 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.
At the end of the work, you will have a very good idea of the product you want to launch and a plan on how you will get there.
Beta Pricing
Because this workshop is new, I’m offering a limited “beta version” for a smaller audience at a reduced fee. The Studio costs $199 while it is in beta. Future sessions will be priced significantly higher.
Enrollment in the beta is limited to 15 people.
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. If you need to withdraw from the workshop before you complete it, we're happy to defer you to a future session at no cost. Just ask. To be fair to all, I don't offer refunds for non-participation.
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 hit upon 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 am making this shift because I believe:
We need people who have ideas about how to change the world to start businesses that do.
Small business are the lifeblood of our economy, the engine for innovation, and help keep things at human scale.
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.
Ideas without action are just daydreams.
The time to start a business is now.