While Tuesday’s session was way far to the right side of the brain, Wednesday’s interview with the founder of Fizzle.co, Corbett Barr, was a bit more on the logical, left-brained side. Just because this is the Right Brainers in Business Summit doesn’t mean we ignore the left–in the original Right Brian Business Plan book Jennifer Lee maps the different sections presented in the right brain plan to their traditional left-brain counterparts (helping those who need to prepare the traditional plan to present to banks or investors) and the upgraded options for the Summit (Booster and Premium) both included left-brain checklists of actionable items from each section.

I considered yesterday’s talk a sort of palate cleanser.

Top 3 Corbett Barr takeaways

The topic for this interview was listed as “Honest Online Business Marketing” and I think transparency is the watchword there. He made the point that people don’t fall in love with brands or corporations, they fall in love with the people and stories behind those brands. So it’s important to open up and share some of yourself, to give your right people a chance to get to know you.

He also introduced us to the concept of the MVP, in this scenario it’s the minimum viable product and is, apparently, a software term? (If so, that explains so very much about software releases.) A practical direction in the vein of work smarter, not harder, it’s the idea that you can put together a product that meets a basic standard of work with which to test the waters and get feedback.

And how do you get that feedback? But having a community that is invested in your product or services. Fostering that community will, in turn, inform where you need to go next. Like finding a need and meeting it, but in a very concrete way.

Now, applying this lesson to The Crafty Branch makes me wonder what an MVP would be in this situation—a pop-up shop, perhaps? Of course, that’s almost as much work as the entire store, so maybe that’s a bit big for a viable MVP, but I”ll keep thinking on it!