Page 87 - The $100 Startup_ Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love

When you don’t know where to start and have a bunch of ideas, this exercise

can help. In my case, the live workshops would have a big impact on the people
who attended them (or so I hoped) but not on anyone else. They would require a
great deal of prep time and energy and wouldn’t be very profitable. Therefore, I
put them on hold.

The decision-making matrix also helps you see the strengths and weaknesses
of your ideas. I liked the idea of small live workshops until I realized they would
require a great deal of work for little reward and impact. That was a big
weakness! On the other hand, a project like the webinar represented a middle
ground: I didn’t expect the workload to be overwhelming, and I expected it to
deliver above-average (although not amazing) results.

When we last left off with James Kirk in Chapter 1, he had moved from Seattle
to South Carolina and opened the coffee shop he had been thinking about for the
last six months. What happened next? As he settled into a slower way of life and
got to know his customers, he made a few changes. “I learned there was no way
you could have a breakfast place down here and not sell biscuits,” he said. “If
you had told me back in Seattle that my coffee shop would sell biscuits, I would
have laughed.” He also sold a great deal of iced tea almost every day of the year,
something that would be ordered only once in a while on a hot summer day in
the Pacific Northwest.

But James adapted quickly, deciding on which parts of his operation were
flexible and which couldn’t be changed. He could add biscuits to the morning
menu, for example, and could ramp up the iced tea production for those who
wanted it—but he would continue to ensure that the coffee beans were extra-
fresh and the espresso preparation was just as he had learned back in Seattle. The
next time you’re in Lexington, stop in for a biscuit and Americano. James and
his team will be waiting.