Step-By-Step™

Journey and Treks

The Journey we take you on is broken down step by step. Each day you complete a mission the moves you one step towards building your own business and bringing your idea to life.

The Journey is broken into 9 Expeditions. Completing an expedition means you've reached a place on your journey where you can take a moment to reflect on where you've got to, admire the view and get ready for the next leg of your journey.

15 TREKS TO FOLLOW AT YOUR OWN PACE

Treks  help you through every step of your journey as a teen entrepreneur. Sign up for FREE and start exploring the Treks and see what’s in your Kit Bag (hint: It contains 33 tools and techniques to help you).

Our Step-by-Step™ Treks are perfect for you. Self-guided (just follow the instructions) and done at your own speed (fast or slow, we don’t mind!), you’ll learn the techniques that adult Entrepreneurs use in the real world.

FREE SIGN-UP FOR ALL TEENS!

When we set out on our own journey, our vision was to help teens get access to skills they don’t learn at school, and most importantly – TO MAKE IT FREE!

We continue that vision to this day. So, if you are a teenager, then you can sign up for free and get access to ALL the Treks and your Kit Bag.

Sign up now to get immediate access. If you want to join the big journey, then please get in touch with us at hello@startupsherpas.org

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THE JOURNEY IS PERFECT FOR COMMUNITY SHERPAS

When you enrol onto the journey, you have a start date when things will kick off, and every day you will be given your daily mission to follow. It’s like being on a guided journey with us as your Sherpa by your side telling you what needs doing.

Along with this, we encourage participants to also be part of a Community Sherpa group. This is just a group (2 or more) of teens on the journey, plus a Community Sherpa – an adult who can catch up with the group every couple of weeks to see how things are going and to provide some additional support.

ONE JOURNEY - NINE EXPEDITIONS

Our journey is split into 9 Expeditions. Each Expedition is made up of 14 daily missions. Each mission takes 30 minutes to complete.

GETTING COSY WITH YOUR IDEA

The idea that’s in your head is clear and rational and makes perfect sense.

Writing it down and starting to communicate it – now that’s a different story! We get you started on this Expedition with getting your idea out of your head, down onto paper (in lots of different forms), and also gets you sharing and shaping it.

What you learn: Ways of describing your idea. Techniques to shape and look at your idea from different perspectives (yes, that includes the customer!). Confidence in talking with customers.

Mission 1Prepare
Miission 2BBQ Pitch
Mission 3Cuppa Tea
Mission 4Thank you letter from the future
Mission 5Ask someone on the programme to give you feedback
Mission 6Ask someone you know outside the programme to give you feedback
Mission 7Interrogation techniques
Mission 8Become a filmstar! Do your video pitch
Mission 9Listen to 2 people (Don’t pitch your idea, just listen)
Mission 10Pitch a kid! – Pitching an idea to a younger kid.
Mission 11Write your Press Release
Mission 12Send your press release out to your friends for feedback
Mission 13Rewrite your BBQ Pitch
Mission 14Quit! Or Double Down!

GETTING COSY WITH YOUR CUSTOMER

However big or small your idea is, if it’s a charity or a business idea, customers are the key to your success.

Ideas are things that solve problems. Problems are things that people have. These people are your customers, and it’s really important to understand them deeply.

This Expedition guides you through techniques to better understand your customers, understand the problems and aspirations they have (that your idea helps with!), and then gets you to learn ways of speaking with them.

What you learn: Ways of understanding and analysing your customers. Empathising with others. Learning techniques for customer interviews.

Mission 1
Find 5 articles your ideal customer has read in the last week
Mission 2What does their to-do list look like
Mission 3What are your customers hopes and fears?
Mission 4Journal of a bad day
Mission 5What’s in their wallet?
Mission 6Absorb everything you’ve seen
Mission 7Crete your customer canvas
Mission 8The Mom Test – watch the video
Mission 9Find out where your customers hang out
Mission 10Write down 5 customer names (of real customers!)
Mission 11Write down 3 questions for your customers
Mission 12Map out the people who matter to your customers
Mission 13set up time to speak with real customers!
Mission 14Quit! Or Double Down!

DO YOUR CUSTOMERS CARE?

This Expeditions gets you out and about (in person or virtually) with your customers.

You’ll be putting the techniques of ‘Customer Development’ into practice. All this means is that you are interested in finding out about your customers and their problems.

This Expedition is about listening for clues, and then doing something with those clues to continue to shape your idea!

What you learn: How to speak with customers – with confidence! How to capture clues. How to use clues to shape your idea.

Mission 1
Speak with an ideal customer
Mission 2Twist your idea
Mission 3Talk with another customer
Mission 4Zooming in and out with your idea
Mission 5Talk with another customer
Mission 6What don’t you want to hear?
Mission 7Talk with another customer
Mission 8Pruning your idea
Mission 9Talk with another customer
Mission 10You guessed it, one final conversation!
Mission 11The final furlong 
Mission 12Last Chance Saloon 
Mission 13Time to pause and look back
Mission 14Time to pause and look forward

CREATING YOUR WORKING BRAND

You’ve got a load of stuff created already (your idea written in lots of ways, feedback from customers etc), and now it’s a case of pulling that together into something you can use.

A ‘Brand’ is something that’s really important, since it creates all of the items you need to start to really make your idea look more like a business!

You’ll be creating your brand name, your logo, picking colours and fonts, and also you’ll be creating some ‘Value Propositions’ – which are basically the words you would use in an advert for your business idea.

What you learn: Creative techniques.

Mission 1
Choose a name, make a logo
Mission 2Choose your brand archetype
Mission 3Assess your logo
Mission 4Choose your colour palette
Mission 5Fontastic choices!
Mission 6Promises promises promises…
Mission 7Tag line tactics
Mission 8Hero images 
Mission 9Words matter, what’s your tone of voice?
Mission 10Your BBQ pitch meets your brand voice
Mission 11Creating a brief for your brand
Mission 12Public response, great feedback
Mission 13Choose your name!
Mission 14Reflection time

MONEY MONEY MONEY (THE BUSINESS BITS)

By this point, you should have enough proof that there are customers that have the right kind of problem (i.e. the one your idea solves), and that they would care enough to take you up on your offer.

This Expedition takes you through the business-y bits. It gets you thinking about money, the business model (a fancy way of thinking through all the bits you need to make your business work).

What you learn: Build your Business Model. Create your financial plans.

Mission 1
Your monthly finances
Mission 2Complete your lifestyle P&L
Mission 3Introducing the Business Model Canvas
Mission 4Start creating your own Business Model Canvas
Mission 5More Business Model Canvas stuff – Customers
Mission 6More Business Model Canvas stuff – What you need to do
Mission 7Check out how others make money
Mission 8More Business Model Canvas stuff – How you’ll make money
Mission 9More Business Model Canvas stuff – What things will cost
Mission 10Tell yourself your Business Model Canvas story
Mission 11Understanding your business financials
Mission 12Create your own business financial model
Mission 13How many customers will you need?
Mission 14Time to reflect and adapt

MAKING IT REAL

The only way to truly know if your idea is a good one is to make it real!

What you learn: Marketing techniques.

Mission 1
Setting up shop!
Mission 2Some inspiration – selling something that doesn’t exist (yet!)
Mission 3The Eliminator!
Mission 4Some more inspiration
Mission 5Build your MVP
Mission 6Build your MVP
Mission 7Keep building!
Mission 8Build, build, build!
Mission 9Landing page time!
Mission 10Dry run your concierge process
Mission 11Selling…
Mission 12More selling…
Mission 13Planning for the future
Mission 14Quit now – because things are about to get real!

SELL SELL SELL!

The final Expedition of the Big Journey!

To make your business idea a real success, you need to now go and sell everything for real. You’ll be creating emails and social media posts that will shout about your business and bring people to the website that you created.

The data you get from this Expedition will be used to shape your business model so that you are really clear on how you can keep this going and keep customers rolling in.

What you learn: Marketing techniques.

Mission 1
Find your inner sales person
Mission 2Write your sales script
Mission 3Objection M’Lord! How to get around negative comments
Mission 4A Startup by any other name…
Mission 5Write your first marketing email
Mission 6Tweaking your email
Mission 7Getting a response…
Mission 8Check that your speaking to customers that matter
Mission 9How much effort will it take to keep doing this?
Mission 10Update your sales logic
Mission 11Creating your landing page
Mission 12Landing page variants
Mission 13Putting your landing pages live!
Mission 14Your last day of the journey

WE DO THINGS A LITTLE DIFFERENTLY

From the very fist mission you will see that we like to have fun while we get stuff done!  While we often throw you straight into doing things without explaining them first, there is always method to our madness.  Actually (and we hate to admit it) we really love all the details of how to do innovation well and bring your ideas to life following a method that is tried and tested. 

Get ready to be challenged.  Both with the missions and with our super special quitting parties! We actually ask you to quit at the end of every expedition.  We don’t just ask you to quit, we ask you to quit and to celebrate quitting. That’s because so many people who start their businesses realise far too late that they should have quit and done something else.  We know quitting is a critical skill that we want to pass on to you!