OK! You’ve got a business idea. It’s based or skills, strengths and what you enjoy doing. It’s been through the gauntlet of confirming market demand. It’s ready for the limelight.

We’ll now look at how to transition from an idea to actually launching.

Let’s get started:

Planning Next Steps

1. BATON

Building a business is a complex task. There are lots of moving parts and it’s easy to become overwhelmed by it all.

For this reason I constructed the BATON framework.

It’s a useful tool for providing structure to an otherwise impossibly complex task.

BATON stands for

• Business

• Audience

• Tribe

• Offer

• Network

Any venture can be broken down into

• Business – creating a product or service people want or need

• Audience – attracting attention to your product or service

• Tribe – establishing demand for your product or service with a smaller subset of the audience

• Offer – selling your product or service to your tribe

• Network – scaling the business to increase revenue

Over the last few Parts you’ve covered the basics of Business, the first component of BATON.

The next steps are to build an Audience, build trust and demand by focusing on a smaller Tribe, make sales of your Offer and then scale via Network effects.

Use this prompt to give you BATON steps for your idea

Act as an expert business consultant. 

Use the BATON framework to suggest structured next steps for my business idea. 

BATON includes
Business – creating a product or service people want or need
Audience – attracting attention to your product or service via social media, advertising, events etc.
Tribe – establishing demand for your product or service with a smaller subset of the audience via newsletter, membership community, email marketing etc.
Offer – selling your product or service to your tribe
Network – scaling the business to increase revenue either by selling more to the same customers or selling to more customers.

I will provide you with the Business component. 

Use this framework to build the next steps following the Business component I provide., suggesting ONE suggested action plan for Audience, Tribe, Offer and Network.

Business = [copy paste business idea, description]

I ran the prompt with

AI-Driven Sustainable Urban Farming Kits

• Description: Develop a DIY urban farming kit, complete with sensors and an AI-driven app. This would allow city dwellers to grow their food sustainably. The sensors would monitor plant health, soil moisture, light levels, and more. The AI app would teach users how to care for their plants, troubleshoot issues, and optimise yields.

• Potential Revenue Streams: Sales of the kits, subscription to premium app features, selling additional accessories and add-ons (like seeds, soil enhancements), and partnerships with organic suppliers.

• Benefits: This encourages urban agriculture, reduces the carbon footprint associated with transporting food, and educates users on sustainable farming practices.

💬 Prompt Output:

ChatGPT uses the framework to suggest alternatives for each stage of BATON.

Obviously you can do many strategies at each stage. For example for Audience you could use Facebook, X, LinkedIn, Pinterest or any other social media platform. You could also rely more on a blog and SEO (search engine optimisation) so that Google sends you traffic. Or you could use direct advertising and cold outreach.

There are a multitude of options - regardless of the option though they fit within the stage by stage framework of BATON, making the whole process more structured.

2. Personal BATON recommendations

Right now my personal recommendation would be

• X for Audience

• Newsletter for Tribe

• Digital product for Offer

There are 50+ options at each stage but these three give you the best chance of success.

Obviously this depends on your niche. If you were in B2B (business to business, ie. selling to businesses not individuals) then LinkedIn might replace X for audience.

But for 90% of businesses this core setup of X, newsletter and digital products will be optimal.

This is the setup I recommend to anyone setting up their first online business if they want the best chances of success.

3. Finding a community

Entrepreneurship is a lonely road - especially the first time you do it.

In a job you naturally have a set of colleagues around you. Whether you like them or not isn’t that important! At least there are people around to share successes and tougher times.

In entrepreneurship you are isolated and everything falls on you.

It’s important to have people to share both your successes and your burdens with. Or just have people with whom you can chat about starting and running your own business.

I’d recommend finding a community ASAP. It could be local - most cities have local business groups. Check Meetup.

Or, more likely, it’ll be online. This is especially the case if you are looking for a specific type of group - ie. people working with AI to start businesses.

X is a good place to start looking for these groups. People will have set up Discord or Whatsapp groups. Just get involved meeting people and you’ll eventually find the groups.

Alternatively you can always set one up yourself. This is a lot more work but can be very rewarding, especially if it’s aligned with your personality.

The group doesn’t need to be large. In fact having a smaller more tight knit group is better sometimes as you can talk more in-depth. I tend to find small masterminds of 5-7 work for focused discussions and mutual aid.

If you do struggle to find a group that works for you always remember that Prompt Entrepreneur has a community that you’d be very welcome in. We’re building businesses with AI together and are especially focused on first-time founders.

4. Premium Prompt - Accelerators

Free Trial - Premium

We’re providing a free trial of the Premium Prompts. Premium Prompts will be available for members only once our community launches. Stay tuned.

Still struggling to get your arse into gear?

Look for an business accelerator. These come in a variety of flavours and with just as many names.

It’ll be called something like a bootcamp, cohort, sprint, incubator, intensive, crash course, masterclass, fast track etc. etc.

The basic idea though is an expert runs a tightly time limited event where you work alongside other people with similar goals to launch your project.

Generally these will be a week to a month long and provide a structured set of steps for you to carry out. You’ll be doing so alongside other students so can talk about what’s working and what isn’t working.

The time limit is what’s most powerful about this method. It’s like having homework at school - you get it done because there’s a deadline!

Without the external deadline it’s tempting just to “do it later”. And it never gets done.

As a Prompt Entrepreneur Premium subscriber guess what - it’s your lucky day. You have free access to all the Accelerators I run. Keep your eyes peeled for the dates of upcoming Accelerators.

The next one is currently penciled in for early November.

Pulling it together

You’ve now gone through the pre-production process of starting a business.

We started with you. Your strengths and skills. Your dream life and what is needed to make that happen. It was a deep internal dive.

We used that personal inventory to start to generate business ideas that will work for you. We used AI to generate lots and lots of ideas so that we could start to filter and choose our favourites.

We then looked at how we confirm which business ideas are actually worth pursuing - without a market there’s no point expending time and effort. We’re instead stacking the dice in our favour by choosing a business idea that solves problems for an existing market.

We the put that to the test with an MVP. And you definitely didn’t skip that part right? Right?

Finally we looked at next steps and how to push through the last remnants of resistance using community and an accelerator. The best business idea without action is worthless - it’s only through sustained application of action that we build a business and can achieve the goals we set out.

A reminder of what we have covered this week

Part 1: Exploring Your Interests and Skills

Part 2: Getting Clear on Your Motivations

Part 3: Finding Your Niche

Part 4: Validating and Refining Your Idea

Part 5: Planning Next Steps

See you tomorrow Prompt Entrepreneur!

Until then, keep PROMPTING!

Kyle