2025 LinkedIn Tips
63 Monday tips posted to LinkedIn in 2025. Newest first. Click any date to open the original post.
December 29, 2025
Happy Monday. If you are building a software product 'just one more thing' is the easiest phrase in the world. A tweak here, a new feature there. Rework that part of the interface, change up a flow.
The questions to ask yourself are many
- Is this something a customer needs (really)
- Is this vibes, you saw something, read something and want to add a shiny
- Is this your gut, drawing from your own experience and deep understanding
- Are you trying to keep up with imagined competitors moves
You can talk yourself into any of these explanations of course, but you should be honest about the outcomes you are looking for otherwise you will spent your time here instead of with your customers and their problems. You can build as much as you want, it's your time and money of course, but don't expect every new thing to knock it out of the park.
-jeffhorton
#startups #entrepreneurship #smallbusiness
December 22, 2025
Happy Monday. For many of you this may be the slowest week of your year, for others the busiest.
Whichever case I wish you the best and hope you get to spend time with your families that continue to support you in your crazy journeys and are your biggest fans.
We build these products sometimes we must, that drive to make it work is critical, but we can never forget that we also build to support those around us, to improve our lot and theirs. Thank them for their support.
-jeffhorton
#startups #entrepreneurship #smallbusiness
December 15, 2025
Happy Monday. Are you making assumptions about your customers? You had a few dozen calls and aren't connecting so you invent some logic about why? That they must be focused on doing the bad version and not your great thing because of demographics or experience or something else comforting.
As Seymour from The Simpsons says;
"Am I So Out Of Touch?"
"No, it's the children who are wrong"
You may decide to write off entire categories of customers without really examining why the conversation didn't go anywhere. Did you really solve a pain, for them, in that moment? Did you just go blazing in with your features and expect them to do the work of understanding how to apply them? Do you understand why they choose the other product at all?
This isn't to say you are the right fit for every customer you think, but if you don't really examine why not and start painting the market with a broad brush that excludes too much you may not learn the fundamentals of when it does connect and the success that comes from real understanding.
-jeffhorton
#entrepreneurship #startups #smallbusiness
December 8, 2025
Happy Monday. Do have a brand? I mean a real brand, can you ask customers about what your company stands for, what it does? How about strangers?
In the early days you may try to emulate the biggest marketers you know, Coke, Nike, Apple, but those companies are at a very different stage than you are. They have solidified a place in consumers minds over decades of delivery and quality kept.
Right now you have one core value proposition, one product you are trying to get into market. That is what you need to talk about. No, scream about. The customers you need don't have any idea who you are, your brand is meaningless right now.
This means real thinking about your marketing and how your web and outreach communicates. You aren't a brand trying to sell a dozen products to a dozen segments. You are one product that needs to stand out and tightly focused on what your customers hear about it.
-jeffhorton
#entrepreneurship #startups #smallbusiness
December 1, 2025
Happy Monday. Did you catch lightning in a frying pan? Or are you working on the 10 year 'overnight' success?
The 10 year story is far more common than you think. Very few products come into existence and take the world in mere months. More often you have years of grinding, funded or not, before everything really clicks.
Even stories about 'fastest adoption ever' hide the fact that years of work went into bringing that product to market. All the learning and building and understanding is masked by the buzz. When we tell the story in the future we may leave out the hard grind entirely.
Don't feel bad if you need to work on it day after day, listen to your customers, expect the people you thought were perfect buyers to say no, expect to wonder what the hell you are doing.
Just keep going.
-jeffhorton
#startups #entreprenurship
November 24, 2025
Happy Monday. Is my baby ugly? Would you tell me if it was? Your mom won't, your spouse won't, your friends won't.
So how do you know if you are on to something? You need to get it in front of strangers. You need to see if they will give you their email, their credit card. That is what makes your business viable.
Are you likely to get a higher bounce rate than you want? More rejection calls than you want? Absolutely. Dialing in your exact product and customer can take a bit. That's quite alright though, this is the stage you need to work through.
You built something because you saw a problem space, and even if you explored it thoroughly you probably didn't quite catch everything. Getting in front of potential customers and learning where you were wrong is how you end up building the best product for them.
So yes, my baby is ugly, until we find its fans.
-jeffhorton
#entrepreneurship #smallbusiness #startups
November 17, 2025
Happy Monday. Are you hunting for customers on the socials? Are you sure they are there?
Go where your customers are is a critical step in focusing your marketing efforts. Don't run heavy LinkedIn ads for your consumer baby product obviously but what I'm asking is deeper.
Most of us are of the age where we remember socials being completely open, anybody could browse at any time, everything was out in public.
Unfortunately that isn't the reality of how the platforms operate anymore. Facebook, Instagram, they prompt users for a login after scrolling a couple posts. X may not let you see anything.
If all your postings are on platforms closing in then maybe that shouldn't be so high on your strategy list. New and younger customers may simply not be able to get to them.
I'm sure too you have noticed that the reach of your audience isn't quite as far either. The algorithmic age means that if your viewers don't connect then it is better for the platform to show them something else instead. This is a fight that is hard for you to win.
Ultimately what I'm trying to get across is that your social strategy started a decade ago is unlikely to be achieving outcomes the way it used to and it's probably time to re-examine.
-jeffhorton
November 10, 2025
Happy Monday. Where did that customer learn about you? Was it really that ad placement, so perfectly timed and targeted?
Perhaps it was on a forum, recommended by someone that heard you on a podcast, that you were invited to because of your LinkedIn posts. This is much harder to track and they may not even remember if you ask.
It's easy to believe that running ads is a quick easy answer to be in front of possible customers but that may miss all the ground work you need to be mentally available as a product they have heard of, read about, been recommended by people they trust.
Marketing isn't just running ads and hoping for the best. Even the best targeting requires your customer to be looking around, possibly far in to searching the space for ideas about their problem. What are you doing to be available then? You can't just be the last b2b ad they see.
-jeffhorton
#entrepreneurship #startups #smallbusiness
November 3, 2025
Happy Monday. Whats next? They watched your demo and then you finished with the generic 'any questions?'. Do you just leave it there or do you have a strategy for how to proceed.
Leaving time in your demo to discuss what happens now is a critical step to make sure that your sales process keeps moving. They just listened to you and are now swimming in information so you don't just want to leave them.
Do you have a next step for this call? Do you have a script to help you? This is your process, make the suggestions.
-jeffhorton
#startups #entrepreneurship #smallbusiness
October 29, 2025
Come on out and see us this November.
October 20, 2025
Happy Monday. Hey, do you want to hear about my great product, it has less bounce! More knobs! Isn't it pretty in the colors and fonts I chose?
No? Why not?
Oh, well yes I do agree that none of those items are about you. I guess they are all about me and what I made.
How about we discuss how you handle the problem I think this fixes, if you actually have enough reasons that what you do isn't working and we could figure out if my version of a fix would actually improve things for you.
Hopefully I already asked you because I thought it might and you aren't just a random person I started pitching. What a waste of time that would be for both of us.
#startups #entrepreneurship #startup #smallbusiness
October 13, 2025
Happy Monday. By now you have probably heard of the vitamin vs pain killer analogy. The idea that your product is about enhancement vs urgent pain. That one side is aspirational and the other immediate needs.
Another example I have used is risk enablement vs risk prevention.
In risk enablement you are creating tools and techniques to help people push further, try more, attempt something bigger than they could have before. Something that felt too hard or high risk now feels like something they could try, and recover from, with your tool. Examples might start at better modelling, from financial forecasting all the way to full 3d physics predictions. They may end at something like reusable rockets to create space for multiple lower cost attempts.
On the other side, risk prevention you are building product to lower risks, mitigate problems earlier, avoid the known and unknown costs. These are the things that might stop your customer from trying at all or needing to build in so many safeguards that it becomes too expensive to consider. This could be unknown data for your insurer, costs to environment and people that are hard to predict and even personal life choices and financial concerns.
This is just one other lens to help you think about what you are building and how it might be useful in market. Good luck.
-jeffhorton
#startups #entrepreneurship #smallbusiness #risk
October 8, 2025
Hey Central Alberta friends, are you looking for help expanding. Take a look at the TAP program.
October 6, 2025
Happy Monday.
Hey, your product is great but it needs...
If you just had feature X we would sign up...
How do you manage these asks? Do you immediately come up with part of an idea and implement it? Is it on your roadmap of things already imagined, or a one off just for that buyer that clutters the product forever?
Feature requests can be hard to think about. If that customer is ICP then what they need is what the market needs, right? Surely closing this sale is more important than any risk of confusing the product.
Some questions that might help you think this through.
- Does that customer really see no value without that feature? Then maybe you aren't the right product for them.
- If its already (even a little bit) on your roadmap, are they willing to pay a development fee to have it today?
- Has anyone else asked for something very similar? Is there a direction in these requests, a bigger idea.
- Can you verify with any other customers that this would help them, can you find any evidence it really matters?
- Are they willing to signup/pay today and start working with you or might it be a throw away comment to your sales outreach?
This is a problem that never goes away and your product and customer focus is the only thing that keeps it from getting out of hand.
-jeffhorton
#smallbusiness #startups #entrepreneurship
October 4, 2025
Are you going for it? Come tell us!
Come on out and tell us your pitches, your asks, the programs you'd like to find and help each other out in your learning and growth journey.
Again I've seen a lot of you once or twice but you have rarely met each other. I'd like to see a bunch of you come out so you can meet, encourage and help each other navigate this startup, customer discovery, building life together. Also as RDP and CARIN start up again this fall let me know what types of events, lunches, learns you want me to encourage them to do. They want to help but need to hear from us.
Wed Oct 8 6-9pm, Boston Pizza AB. 3215 Gaetz Avenue Red Deer, AB, T4N 3Y1. Probably in the back.
** Not sponsored, you are responsible for your own food & drink.
*** Startup/Builder community survey. Help me show the provincial orgs you are here and how they can help us.
https://lnkd.in/gkZqn4PD ***
https://lnkd.in/gNSVt3Jx
https://lnkd.in/dRFQSp3A
https://lnkd.in/gvPwbHAn
September 29, 2025
Happy Monday. Do you scare away some customers, do they take one look at your web site and bounce?
Is that a bad thing? If your product speaks to a certain kind of customer, one that truly connects with you and won't churn in a few months then perhaps not. Having people realize it isn't for them means you don't need to run your expensive sales processes and you don't need to chase marketing materials for audiences that aren't worth it.
It's easy to believe your product could be for everyone but it probably isn't and you could have a better business once you realize that. Your branding, your pricing, your messaging should speak very clearly to the kind of customers that are best for your business. The ones that have no doubt you are the correct fix for their problem. These are the customers to grow with, not the poor fits that need dozens of new features to make it work.
Getting any sale at all can feel important, and maybe in the early days it is, but once it feels easy with a type of customer, double down because you have just found the relationship that wins.
-jeffhorton
#smallbusiness #startups #entrepreneurship
September 22, 2025
Happy Monday.
1.2HP, DUAL SURROUND INTEGRATED SAFETY NET, OPTIMIZED AIR/WATER CONTACT, BUILT IN 3D SCANNING.
What? Is this how you sound when you describe your product to a customer? Do you list off fancy buzzword style features that don't seem to mean anything. Does your audience need to read between the lines in an attempt to understand what you are saying?
That feature list above, that is a human. That is you.
When you need to hire you would never put out a spec like that to find the perfect candidate. You think about the work to be done and what needs you are trying to accomplish. That is what your buyers are doing too and you need to make sure that your language reflects how they think of their problem, not how your features make you best. As the old saying goes, I'm not buying a drill, I'm buying a hole.
-jeffhorton
#startups #entrepreneurship #smallbusiness #alberta #canada
September 15, 2025
Happy Monday. What is your brand the go-to for? Stripe is payments, Github is software building, LinkedIn is networking.
Of course you know you are more than just one simple idea, you may offer many related and important services but in the world, what is that one best thing that you want to be top of mind for.
Think of a car dealer. Most have service departments, quick lube, some even have rentals, but do you want your customer to think of you for your oil bay, or your huge lot of quality merchandise?
Being specific isn't about ignoring a possible buyer, it is about making sure that you are the first thought for someone ready to buy today.
-jeffhorton
#startups #entrepreneurship #smallbusiness
September 10, 2025
Hope to see you at the meetup tonight. 6pm @ Boston Pizza @ 32nd
As a conversation question, who is your ideal customer? Do you know?
September 8, 2025
Happy Monday. When you are making sales calls do you info dump all over your prospect? The instant you get a connect you start listing the features you think make everything awesome?
Obviously you didn't just cold call them knowing nothing right? Your research led you to believe they are in the right category, are aware of the problem space your product solves for, that they are the person or great access to the person that feels that pain.
So your first call isn't about dumping, it is about making sure that they have the problem and that they really feel it. Is it something that matters today in their organization.
If they don't feel it then you aren't going to push them into it. You will burn your time on a lead that isn't ready, they will be frustrated that you can't take a hint. This isn't a qualified and ready ICP.
Wasting your time trying to convert leads that you didn't target well and/or don't find the pain a problem means you spend hours chasing, spend more time making materials and trying to tune messages for an unfocused audience. It's far better to be clear and closing then burning down a call list that doesn't matter.
-jeffhorton
#reddeer #startups #smallbusiness #entrepreneurship #startupcanada
September 3, 2025
Another Red Deer Start Here Meetup.
Come on out and tell us your pitches, your asks, the programs you'd like to find and help each other out in your learning and growth journey.
Again I've seen a lot of you once or twice but you have rarely met each other. I'd like to see a bunch of you come out so you can meet, encourage and help each other navigate this startup, customer discovery, building life together. Also as RDP starts up again this fall let me know what types of events, lunches, learns you want me to encourage them to do. They want to help but need to hear from us.
Wed Sept 10 6-9pm, Boston Pizza AB. 3215 Gaetz Avenue Red Deer, AB, T4N 3Y1. Probably in the back.
** Not sponsored, you are responsible for your own food & drink.
*** Startup/Builder community survey. Help me show the provincial orgs you are here and how they can help us. https://lnkd.in/gkZqn4PD ***
https://lnkd.in/gNSVt3Jx
September 1, 2025
Happy Monday. As entrepreneurs you may think of labour as your biggest expense, as parents you may think of it as the unpaid, never ending hours to get your child into the world. You may recognize it as economic making, the work of care giving or volunteering. Depending on the lenses of your job and culture you may also value some of these much higher than others.
Right now we are bombarded with the promise of the next magical technology machine that will free us of the need to pay for labour. That "this time" will deliver the promise of doing less work and having more leisure time.
The question for you and your business is how do you value this technology and what does it mean for the value you offer.
Are you trying to replace your labour cost? Is your business offering something that could be replaced easily with a few programs? Then what is your moat? If you believe this line of thought then your business could be replaceable in a weekend by someone more technologically savvy.
Are you hoping to avoid the messy costs and time of experts? Customer feedback loops? Product discovery? Then you must realize that today's AI is an averaging product, that the reason the images and text stand out is because they are so generic. Is this what you want for your brand? To appear indistinguishable from everyone else?
What if you simply want to increase your profits? Surely the customer won't mind if you charge the same price for half the hours. Until you remember that the next guy will just charge the new half price. Until your customer too decides that they will replace your generic advice and products in their own AI attempt.
The cost of labour isn't just about masses of generic workers in your business, it is also the connection with your customers, the insights into needs and growth opportunities. In your own life you have relationships and brands you have followed, not for their generated image post of the week but because of your own valuation of them. How far would they need to push into removing staff and becoming generic before you left? That is the real value of your business.
-jeffhorton
#reddeer #alberta #startups #entrepreneurship #founders #smallbusiness #startupcanada #startalberta #edmonton #calgary
August 26, 2025
Alberta Innovation Network - Get to Know Day - August 28, 2025
August 25, 2025
Happy Monday. We talk about ideal customer a lot in startup land, that person that connects 100% with your product. Sometimes it is hard to imagine being so narrow, that feeling that you are ignoring everyone else. Lets talk about some other examples to help you think about it.
Imagine your local mall, do you feel comfortable there? How about your kids or your parents. Do certain stores have posters or colors or music that would draw you in or encourage you to pass. These shops are tuning to attract the right kind of customer. Inviting your parents in means they won't understand the product, the kinds of features/items they would ask for would be more expensive to add and trying to sell to your kids, you and parents at once means the store would be so generic that none of you would be interested.
What about when you were shopping for your last house or apartment? Did that neighborhood seem right to you? Were there multiple building types and people? Did it have options for your life stage? Your kids? Like the mall shops, it too was designed to draw you in or get you to pass by. If you can't see yourself there, if you can't get the job of life done from that place then it has no value to you.
But what about Amazon and Netflix you ask, they target everybody and do alright. Ok, are you building something that is an endless pit of choices? That you are going to tune your catalog market by market and spend lots of dollars trying to optimize recommenders to keep people around? Probably not. Even with the world as their market they still think massively about connecting with small groups of customers that fit into a given profile.
Understanding your primary customer and what they need isn't about limiting your customer, it is about making sure that your styling, your marketing, your feeling, actually connects with someone.
-jeffhorton
#reddeer #alberta #startupcanada #startups #entrepreneurship #smallbusiness #founders
August 18, 2025
Happy Monday. Have you thought about your assumptions recently? Those features that you were sure mattered, the ones you were sure didn't?
Have you looked for any evidence lately or are you thinking that the customers you have represent the perfect set and they just don't quite get it yet? Those unused features could be costing you time and energy to build and operate. The features you are sure nobody wants could be the unlock for the next stage of growth.
It isn't always clear where that line is, where your gut is right and the customer doesn't know they need it themselves. Exploring the customer problems up and downstream from your solution can help expand everyone's thinking and you may be the one that can expand to win it. But what about the other side, that great feature that only a couple customers use. Is it really not popular, is it neat but doesn't actually solve anything. Or perhaps the segment of customers that need it doesn't care about the rest of your solution. Again exploring is the key. That small feature could have value by itself, find ways to test for that and again you may unlock a whole new business.
-jeffhorton
#startups #entrepreneurship #smallbusiness #alberta #startupcanada
August 11, 2025
Happy Monday. Did you talk yourself out of it, that problem you noticed in the world, the idea you had to fix it. Did it seem too big, too hard, or perhaps you thought someone else must be working to solve it.
Seeing the problems people have and creating solutions is the super power of the entrepreneur, but that internal drive, the self motivation to keep digging, understanding, designing, building, selling, is hard work.
This isn't to say your intuition might be wrong, but sticking it out and working through it long enough to find out is the real work of making a go at it. 10 years to overnight success is no joke, many people invest years of work into having a product and company that others notice.
Forget the Silicon Valley 3 months to riches stories, that isn't the majority of business success (or usually even the real story) that is worth taking inspiration from. In fact like any social media experience once you try you realize how much is just sharing the exciting launches, announcements, eye catching and well staged stuff. The day to day grind of doing is the work that you need to love.
It's easy to talk yourself out of things, to let those around you convince you that you can't do it, or to feel bad when progress seems slow. You were excited once, remember why and stick it out.
-jeffhorton
#entrepreneurship #startups #smallbusiness #startalberta #startupcanada
August 9, 2025
Ok, time for a new Red Deer Start Here meetup. Not combined with tech this month.
I've seen a lot of you once or twice but you have rarely met each other. I'd like to see a bunch of you come out so you can meet, encourage and help each other navigate this startup, customer discovery, building life together. Also as RDP starts up again this fall let me know what types of events, lunches, learns you want me to encourage them to do. They
want to help but need to hear from us.
Wed Aug 13 6-9pm, Boston Pizza AB. 3215 Gaetz Avenue Red Deer, AB, T4N 3Y1. Probably in the back.
** Not sponsored, you are responsible for your own food & drink.
*** Startup/Builder community survey. Help me show the provincial orgs you are here and how they can help us. https://lnkd.in/gkZqn4PD ***
https://lnkd.in/gNSVt3Jx
https://lnkd.in/dRFQSp3A
https://lnkd.in/gvPwbHAn
August 4, 2025
Happy Monday. Do you need to build for a billion people? What about a million? What about 1,000? For one?
Different businesses have different scales. Sure targeting the world sounds great, and maybe you will get there anyway, but that is a specific kind of business, goals, operational techniques. It also changes your focus. A billion Uber rides, sure, the same number of handmade ethical shoes? Probably not.
It also means how you find the money to grow can have very different strings attached. High speed huge growth takes a lot of money, and that money has rules and opinions on how it gets paid back (liquidation preference), how you operate the company and what happens when things go wrong.
Smaller orgs that grow with customers can try spend money as needed, or pick up some debt (at much better rates than investor cash) to keep operating.
Sometimes the smaller games are called 'lifestyle' businesses, the idea that it exists to support the founder, growing staff and resources as needed. That doesn't mean super small, you can still be at hundreds of people, but you aren't the hyper-growth, investable/returning project that the pitch & grow crowd wants to see.
As long as you know what you are going after, what makes you happy as a founder and what connects you the customers, you can make whatever choice you want. You do you so that your business ventures are enjoyable.
-jeffhorton
#startups #smallbusiness #entrepreneurship #founders
July 28, 2025
Happy Monday. Does your business need to have morals? I'm not talking about ethical sourcing, choosing a community acceptable way to get coffee beans. I mean making choices that probably hurt economically but you can't imagine your product without some clear right and wrong beliefs.
This isn't a hard line, life and business can't be, but there is a range from elbows up not sourcing American product all the way to unionized producers and on to sustainable community offerings. The ethical choice is where on the line you ought to stop to make your customer happy with your choice. The moral choice is where you stop because you should, because it is how you believe your product belongs in the world and the relationships it has. But this is a business, and ethical choices that make business sense may not feel moral and vice-versa. This is a position you as founder need to aim at and continuously to achieve if it matters to you.
The BCorp movement works to encourage and promote organizations making choices that aren't purely economic. "Certified B Corporations are businesses that meet the highest standards of verified social and environmental performance, public transparency, and legal accountability to balance profit and purpose.". There is a handy Canadian directory if you want to check it out https://bcorpdirectory.ca/
-jeffhorton
#entrepreneurship #startups #smallbusiness
July 21, 2025
Happy Monday. Where do ideas come from? If you are paying attention, from anywhere.
This last Friday my mother in law fell and on return from the hospital we realized a wheelchair would be great. 8pm, Friday night. In my town (110k) the mobility stores were closed until Monday, the rental store, closed until Monday. The pharmacies don't seem to carry that stuff anymore. Amazon, at least two days. Finally I found one at Canadian Tire.
Can you imagine how frustrated my wife and her parents are? Really, no options for 2 days? I'm glad we worked it out but maybe there is a real problem there to solve.
Or is there? Perhaps the market has already shown that the weekend doesn't have enough business to support being open, perhaps our use isn't their primary customer use case. That is where thinking and discovery comes in.
You may come across a dozen ideas a week like this, but which ones are worth investigating, which are real problems, which actually have a market to support solving it in a fantastic way? Understanding the real opportunity before you decide to open a new wheelchair store can save you a lot of time, and money.
-jeffhorton
#reddeer #startups #entrepreneurship #smallbusiness #startalberta #startupcanada
July 20, 2025
Hope to see you out for our next meetup. July 23 6pm @ Boston Pizza.
https://lnkd.in/g7bNREQM
July 14, 2025
Happy Monday. Are you deeply, passionately thinking about your product and problem space. It consumes all your thoughts, waking hours and dreams?
Do you need to be?
Of course you need to think about your space and what you are doing to provide the best value you can to your customers. But also, you are a business person, and a human.
You can see an opportunity and go make it happen, you can be the next pet rock without being all consumed by geology, the next self storage to final achieve your childhood ambitions of putting everyone's stuff in boxes so they can forget about it.
People have businesses for lots of reasons. There is no 'true' path for this adventure and you don't need to worry about finding it. You can play this game however you want, as long as you and your customer are happy.
-jeffhorton
#reddeer #startups #startalberta #startupcanada #smallbusiness #entrepreneurship
July 7, 2025
Happy Monday. How big does your idea need to be? Are you working on solving a problem for hundreds, thousands, billions? Or perhaps just one. Are you looking to support yourself, or a company of 50 or 500?
All of these are valid choices. You don't need to fixate on the most scalable, the biggest market, especially not at the start. No matter what your possible end game you still need to make sure it works for somebody, a real person with real problems.
Sure 'invest-able' businesses need crazy growth to justify funding, but that is a game about the money, not necessarily about the customers and your personal reasons to help solve a problem. If you want to build and exit that is one path, if you want to support yourself and your community that is valid too.
-jeffhorton
#reddeer #startalberta #startupcanada #startups #entrepreneurship #smallbusiness
June 30, 2025
Happy Monday. As we celebrate Canada this week have you considered celebrating yourself. You too had an idea of a different future and went to work building it and convincing others it was a better way.
It can be easy to get wrapped up in the day to day of your business that you don't remember how far you have come and what drove you to start. Sure everything isn't perfect and you can think too hard about relationships gone bad, partners you could have worked better with, but that doesn't change the progress you made.
So this week, cheers to Canada and cheers to you founder. We have all come so far.
-jeffhorton
#canada #reddeer #alberta #startalberta #startupcanada #startups #smallbusiness #entrepreneurship
June 23, 2025
Time for the June Meetup. Combined Red Deer Tech & Code and Red Deer Start Here. Want to try pitching your idea at people? Looking for devs, partners, others on the journey? Why not come out and see us.
June 25 6-9pm, Boston Pizza AB. 3215 Gaetz Avenue Red Deer, AB, T4N 3Y1. Probably in the back.
** Not sponsored, you are responsible for your own food & drink.
*** Startup/Builder community survey. Help me show the provincial orgs you are here and how they can help us. https://lnkd.in/gkZqn4PD ***
June 23, 2025
Happy Monday. I read recently of the "Burned Pizza" paradigm (D.Robinson/Heap). It goes that when you are building and testing a new feature/product and you ship burned pizza the users will probably reject it.
Do you take the lesson you should immediately pivot away from pizza? Or did you ship something that was on the right track but delivered very wrong? When you ask about it the users will probably still say good things. Nobody wants to offend.
Being clear about what your buyers want is one of the hardest things you have to do. Do you really understand their problem, can you get them to pay to build it? Are you building directly for their need or are you caught up in your own excitement.
-jeffhorton
#reddeer #alberta #startups #entrepreneurship #smallbusiness #startupcanada
June 16, 2025
Happy Monday. What are the risks of buying from you? What about the risks of choosing your product? Nothing is risk free and you know that from your own buying habits.
Risks and the objections you hear aren't necessarily the same thing.
Objections about price, quality, integrations, those are things you can fix and can be worked through with the customer.
Risks are more basic, and you may never hear them directly, but your champion might, or they get mentioned in a meeting and doubt creeps in.
Can you answer the fears and doubts of the bosses or the buying committee? Think of your own fears.
- What happens if this fails?
- How do "I" show this worked out
- Am I willing to stake my reputation on this decision
- What if it becomes a mess and takes forever to get going
- Is this just another sales folk saying anything for a deal
Those are all separate from the core values and work your product does. Have you created material, sales processes, implementation processes that address these things? Do you have special messaging for others in the organization that will push back from these same fears?
Managing the whole process from investigation, through discovery, sale and implementation is how you find and keep happy customers.
-jeffhorton
#reddeer #alberta #startalberta #startupcanada #startups #smallbusiness #entrepreneurship
June 9, 2025
Happy Monday. When we talk about the stories we tell, about our company and our product, and how it makes the buyer a hero are we always clear on how tight those messages are?
Maybe you are thinking of starting a company, are you aiming to be a huge department store on day one? The Canadian Tire of SaaS? What kind of stories will you tell then, your dream of selling everything to everyone and a hero that wanders the isles in the hopes of finding something that might help?
Those can be great ambitions but you made it very hard to message anyone, supporters or customers. Nobody is sure why to recommend you or why to buy when you end up a nebulous blob. Being specific extends your reach when you can own being the go to place for a problem. No one says you can't expand but you need to own at least one message before you can start promoting another.
-jeffhorton
#reddeer #alberta #startalberta #startupcanada #platformcalgary #edmontonunlimited #startups #smallbusiness #entrepreneurship
June 2, 2025
Happy Monday. Who is the hero in your business. Is it you, the thing you sell, or the customer that needed something done? My vote is for the customer. They are the ones in a problem arc, they are the ones that have a hurdle to overcome. Hopefully you are the guide or magic tool that helps them achieve their goals.
Of course it is easy to see your product as the champion, in your story it could be, but in many categories they aren't buying your story and instead working through their own. If this is where you fit in what are you doing to help them?
Are you the wise guide helping them see blind spots, and sharing experiences that help them get on their way?
How about the magic tool that scales automatically and makes friction disappear?
-jeffhorton
#reddeer #alberta #startups #entrepreneurship #smallbusiness #startupalberta #startupcanada
May 26, 2025
Happy Monday. What stories do you tell about your self, your company and your products? Are all of these just things in the world? Of course not. You have your own arc, the company you created has its own reason for being and the products you create must achieve something for your customers.
No the stories don't need to be fantastical epics, but they can help you and the market understand the "why" and the values you are bringing.
Maybe you did just wake up one morning and decide to give it a go, but I suspect you had experiences and understanding that meant you couldn't ignore something anymore.
The company you are building, you want it to have a brand worth respecting, those attitudes and choices can matter to your customer and you should be proud of what it is and its place in the world.
The products and services must delight, the customer must be happy that you have solved their problem with all the magic you brought to the table. Tell those stories to help everyone else see that you can help them too.f
-jeffhorton
#reddeer #alberta #startups #entrepreneurship #smallbusiness #startupcalgary #platformcalgary #edmontonunlimited
May 19, 2025
Happy Monday. Everybody gets excited about a new home page redesign. This time for sure it will be eye catching and seo ready and convert at 100% obviously. Before you undertake this big project let's work through a few questions.
Are you just bored of it? That doesn't mean it isn't working. You may see it every day and it doesn't feel as fresh but that doesn't mean it isn't doing the job. This mistake is easy to make in any marketing material, be clear if the change is boredom or because it isn't converting for you.
If there is good reason to change then we can work on what it needs to say. Before you get everyone throwing out big broad generic language that doesn't say anything we need to know how the customer describes it.
Do you have customer, and ideal customer words, from interviews and conversations that answer these questions? Not from your executive buyer icp, but from the people that understand the problem and will be the champions at your customer. They are the first line you need to connect with and feel like you can solve their pain.
- What does the product do?
- How does it work?
- What does it look like?
- When would i use it?
- How does it help me get a job done?
When people are coming to your site this is what they are trying to answer. Not flowery language that doesn't connect but the actual practical value of your product.
Connecting well with leads is the primary purpose of your site and once you do that you can offer them the other kinds of content they need to get a deal done. The targeted case studies, the executive framed leadership, the detail oriented implementation guides.
-jeffhorton
#reddeer #alberta #startups #entrepreneurs #startupcanada #startalberta #platformcalgary #edmontonunlimited
May 12, 2025
Happy Monday. How much stuff are you building that isn't for your customers? That isn't right for the stage you are at?
Especially in tech startups, but also in many other early businesses it is very easy to get focused on the wrong part of the problem. In tech you may start building architectures and infrastructures that you think you will need once you have millions of users. In the meantime you forgot to talk to your users (if you have any at all) about what the product actually does and needs to do for them. The business you are constructing today may not be the one that runs next year and the choices you made about scale mean you never connected with users and either ran out of money or become frustrated.
In small business you can have this problem too. Do you need to start with a huge process and specialized tools before you even know if that is the part that will take off? Did you spend your runway automating something that only runs at 1/100th of capacity. If you pivot or change your product make-up does that stuff now sit idle as a sunk cost you hope to use again someday?
The early days are only about the customer, only about getting value to them. Businesses twist and turn in ways you never expect and while having a 5 year vision is great, pre-building it may not work out.
-jeffhorton
#reddeer #startupcanada #startalberta #platformcalgary #edmontonunlimited #alberta #startups #entrepreneurship
May 5, 2025
Happy Monday. What is a user? Is it a download, a signup, someone on a free trial account? Those can be interesting metrics but it doesn't make them valuable users to build your business on.
The real users that contribute to your growth stick around, they engage with your product repeatedly. These are the people you need to connect with to continue to understand who is really using your product and why.
If you spend too much time excited about your obviously awesome, but still vanity metrics you may spend a lot of time, and probably ad money, trying to get everyone in and missing who your true fans are. Unless you need those big numbers to impress your funders (who hopefully keep funding based on them), you need to make sure you get to the business part of operating.
-jeffhorton
#reddeer #startups #entrepreneurship #startalberta #smallbusiness
April 29, 2025
This Saturday we would love to see you come on out. Even if you just stop by to say hi and meet some of us.
#reddeer #centralalberta #lacombe #innisfail #blackfalds #sylvanlake
April 28, 2025
Happy Monday. What does your demo process look like? Do you just start it up and show off the features you remember?
Understanding the value your customer is looking for means you can tune your demo to focus on what they are trying to accomplish. Making sure you connect with your champion and any other specific tasks the others on the call would need to accomplish. It isn't about showing off every feature and option, that takes a long time and is often very boring.
Remember to leave time to ask if there was anything they were hoping or expecting to see, that could be an important job that you missed during discovery. You also need to make sure that your presentation includes the next steps, the few items that could happen over the next few weeks. Scoping calls, alignment meetings, reviews. You want to leave in a place where everyone knows what they might do next to get this deal underway.
-jeffhorton
#startups #entrepreneurship #smallbusiness #startupcanada #startalberta
April 21, 2025
Happy Monday. A recent story suggested "80% of anything you buy that’s Gucci is made in China, that over 60% of what you buy from Prada is made in China. The only difference is they ship it to Europe and stitch on a ‘Made in France’ or ‘Made in Italy’ label” and that with tariffs many more people are learning this fact for the first time.
There are a few lessons here for the founder.
1) Cost, price, value are not the same thing. Your customers aren't just paying for a bit of markup, they are paying for the entire brand experience you create.
2) If your brand exists on a premium level and you break that premium promise it could have long repercussions. Will these brands lose their credibility?
3) And the last, maybe the customer doesn't care "how the sausage is made" and even if they did that isn't what they are buying. That is an important thing to key in on and understand about your customer, that is your real value to them.
-jeffhorton
#reddeer #alberta #startups #entrepreneurship #smallbusiness #startupcanada #startalberta #founders
April 17, 2025
Hey folks, a bunch of folks at RDP are working on getting more startup community going. Why not come out an join us for a couple hours for some networking, ideations, maybe find a partner or helpful program.
April 14, 2025
Happy Monday. Do you even know when churn happens? When a regular customer stops using your service? Churn is expected but making sure you understand the why's can really matter.
Were they the right customer
Experience doesn't match the deal you sold them
They failed to launch well with you
Never adopted the sticky features
Didn't ever learn all they could do with you
Some of these are failure to hyper target your ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) and just hoping that anyone signing up will figure it out. Others are about the resources and training you provide, did you hope they would 'discover' everything on their own?
What about other things you buy? You change vendors all the time when their product mix doesn't satisfy, when the experience suffers through neglect or cost cutting. Thinking about all these levers and how you measure them helps keep the converted coming back while providing a strong base for them to tell others why you are great.
-jeffhorton
#startups #entrepreneurship #smallbusiness #alberta #startupcanada
April 7, 2025
Happy Monday. Elections are a great reminder of the power in owning your email list. Of course you are still using public social media to help generate buzz, catch the wave of the day and help with discovery.
Your true fans though can be found in their email. There you can communicate with an audience that feels attachment to you, in more direct words and ideas than you can use on public media.
The list helps with reinforcement of culture, reminders of actions to help them or you, and keeps you closer to top of mind when decisions do happen.
-jeffhorton
#startups #reddeer #entrepreneurship #marketing #startupcanada #startalberta #smallbusiness
March 31, 2025
Happy Monday. When I talk about sales most people respond with 'eww, I could never' and evoke the image of the scammer used car sales folk. If that is your first thought I'd ask you to dig deeper. Surely you have purchased other things, at home or at work with sales help?
Good sales work isn't tricking people and pushing them into something they don't want. It is a valuable conversation to help discover what problem everyone is trying to solve and if the product is actually the right way to fix it.
If the conversation is way off and everybody feels forced then there are a couple lessons to be had.
As the seller, how did this customer get targeted? How did you even get here? Are they expecting something you don't actually do? What did your marketing tell them?
As the buyer, did you start by understanding your needs? Or are you presenting a blank slate of anything goes that the sales process is trying to match? Sure there are pushy folks but how did you get into this conversation with this vendor? Maybe it wasn't a good call to start with.
-jeffhorton
#reddeer #entrepreneurship #smallbusiness #startups #startupcanada #platformcalgary #edmontonunlimited
March 24, 2025
Happy Monday. What are the next steps? It isn't just sell and go. For most customers you want to communicate what comes next before they buy and have very clear assistance on accomplishing those steps after.
Just because your product appears to solve their problem doesn't mean that it is easy to understand how to integrate it into their lives and workplaces. That unknown effort can be a huge sticking point even if not verbalized. The change raises so many questions that sometimes no one even knows how to ask.
Make sure your team is doing the heavy work of handling those concerns before your customer even knows they have them. It can make your sales
easier, and create more engaged users after the sale.
-jeffhorton
#reddeer #startups #edmontonunlimited #platformcalgary #startalberta #entrepreneurship #smallbusiness
March 17, 2025
Happy Monday. How tight is your focus? Sure 18-34 is a handy selection but was your life the same at 18 as it was at 34? How about the driving factors in purchasing products? There are a couple ways to work on this.
1) Tighten up your messaging and ad buys, maybe sub groups like 18-24 and 28-34 are closer, their demographic motivations more similar. Sure everybody needs a toaster but that 4 slice was a lot handier after I had kids.
2) Think instead about values, is there something emotional, social, experience, that your buyer cares about. A way of interacting with the world they use to make choices. Frequently environmentalism comes up but also their own reputation, esteem and others.
The more you get into your customers mind the easier it becomes to find and communicate with them.
-jeffhorton
#reddeer #startup #alberta #platformcalgary #edmontonunlimited #startalberta #smallbusiness #entrepreneurship
March 10, 2025
Happy Monday. Is there a difference between what your customer says and what they do?
To quote from Teresa Torres (who I strongly encourage you to go read) -
"During a workshop, I asked a woman what factors she considered when buying a new pair of jeans. She didn’t hesitate to answer. She said, “Fit is my number-one factor.” I then asked her to tell me about the last time she bought a pair of jeans. She said, “I bought them on Amazon.” I asked, “How did you know they would fit?” She replied, “I didn’t, but they were a brand I liked, and they were on sale.”
What’s the difference between her two responses? Her first response tells me how she thinks she buys a pair of jeans. Her second response tells me how she actually bought a pair of jeans. This is a crucial difference. She thinks she buys a pair of jeans based on fit, but brand loyalty, the convenience of online shopping, and price (or getting a good deal) were more important when it came time to make a purchase."
Getting to the real stories and actual user behavior will help you from building down the wrong path where the customer doesn't show up.
-jeffhorton
#reddeer #startalberta #startupcanada #platformcalgary #edmontonunlimited #startups #entrepreneurship
March 5, 2025
Will we see you for the March 12 Meetup? I hope so!
March 3, 2025
Happy Monday. Telling stories is an important part of your business identity and relationship with your customers. There are a lot of great tips about how to communicate but instead of summarizing one, today I'd like to link you to this. The StoryBrand, a great way to think about and connect with your audience.
https://lnkd.in/gWEhzrNc
-jeffhorton
#reddeer #alberta #startalberta #startupcanada #platformcalgary #edmontonunlimited #startup #entrepreneurship #smallbusiness
February 24, 2025
Happy Monday. Buy Canadian & By Canadian ideas are getting a lot of traction these days and that is great. Were you a company that hid your Canadian roots though? I've met companies over the years that seemed embarrassed to say where they were from. If not at a country level then certainly a city level. "we don't want people to know we are in Edmonton because they don't know where it is so we must get a mailing address in a larger city"
I'm amazed by this. Simply for the fact that you can't name, or easily guess where they are, the cities of many of your vendors. Sure it came from Vietnam|China|Mexico but where is that town? You don't really care do you, as long as they can ship to your destination.
Leaning in to your city, region, country is not a risky idea. It helps locals find you first when they want, and as noted, most of your customers aren't likely to pay attention when you do a great job. Be proud of where you build, that community is part of your success.
-jeffhorton
#reddeer #calgary #edmonton #buycanadian #canada #startupcanada #startalberta
February 17, 2025
Happy Monday. How are your dating skills? No I'm not trying to set you up but remind you that your marketing and sales is like dating.
You need to build a profile to attract interest, with as much work as you would to find a match. Great photos, what you bring to the table, how life with you would be so much better.
What about the rest of your footprint, you know anybody interested will go sleuthing. Does the rest of your online presence match the promise? Are there other success stories, social proof?
How about dating? Do you have your stories ready, can you understand your potential partner at a deep level to help make sure it is a great match?
There is a lot of deep work that needs to happen before you move in together and you should put the same energy into making sure you have the right customers.
-jeffhorton
#reddeer #smallbusiness #startups #entrepreneurship #startalberta #startupcanada
February 10, 2025
Happy Monday. Everyone loses big accounts, or types of customers that made up a huge % of profit. When a big profitable part of your business goes away you may realize that you were using it to subsidize things that didn't make sense, but you had the cash handy. Suddenly those projects don't feel so strategically aligned, and maybe they never were.
The question in your business always comes back to knowing your core customer and purpose. Did your scaling and new projects come from a place of value for your buyers or exploration or the idea that the money never ends.
Value for buyers always matters, if the value is there then your pipeline can fill up again.
Exploration can be a good idea, but is it on target, do you know the goals to apply it to your business?
Money always ends, this will happen again, is your business built for scaling, up as well as down as demand/processes/plans change needs, or have you setup systems that only expand in one way.
-jeffhorton
#reddeer #startups #entrepreneurship #startupcanada #startalberta #calgary #edmonton
February 3, 2025
Happy Monday. Tariffs are top of mind for a lot of companies, and consumers, right now. I've worked at places where 60%+ of our product is ordered by Americans and shipped from Canada. Today that is a problem.
This is another form of supply chain risk, which includes a number of problems
- tariffs & taxation (in or out)
- shipping costs/delays/losses (in or out)
- political/physical conflict
- supplier out of business
- middleman/warehouse out of business
- natural disaster
- local disaster/fire/flood
Right now many of you are frantic to find alternatives to some or all of these problems and I don't envy your panic. Hopefully you can make it through and get your business to a better operating place where you can weather not just this storm, but many of the others above.
Good luck.
-jeffhorton
#reddeer #alberta #startup #entrepreneurship #smallbusiness #startupcanada #startalberta #tariff #canada
January 27, 2025
Happy Monday. What else are you reading and watching? Of course you already have your eye on the trends and activities in your industry, and your specialized staff is doing the same through their lenses. But as the founder what else are you doing to grow? It's hard to add 'more' to your day but taking out some time to stretch your thinking is probably why you had insights in the first place. You weren't just in a job but had other lenses and exposures that made your founding idea click.
It can be as easy as a blog or a video channel that keeps you thinking of the world in different ways. It could be skill content, public speaking, hobby-type, or places where you don't feel so confident.
I hope you have other stuff that keeps you inspired and excited to help you keep your business leading. Have anything interesting you have found? It may help others, share below if you like.
-jeffhorton
#reddeer #startups #entrepreneurship #founder #startalberta #startupcanada
January 20, 2025
Happy Monday. Do you play well with others? Well not you, but your product. Have you created something that is easy and willing to integrate into other processes and with other products?
Many companies end up facing a choice where they think about locking down their product and integrations, limiting customer choice to their own ecosystem of products.
There are many products like this already in your life, from phones to gaming, tools and software. Where the primary choice is using their attachments and methods. Is it about quality or is it about forcing you into a higher priced part.
For your product, like many others, you can choose to go a different way. For example your SaaS could allow imports and exports, work with tools like Zapier & webhooks to integrate your value deeply into your customer processes. If you are open to it a whole world of builders and creators could expand the space around your product, invent new uses and new markets.
What do you think, do you believe in playing well?
-jeffhorton
#reddeer #startalberta #startupcanada #entrepreneurship #smallbusiness #startups
January 13, 2025
Happy Monday. How do you choose which social media to be on? Did you just use all in case a customer was there? Did you pick one because you know it had a ready audience? Perhaps you went on social to avoid the work of creating your own site and direct relationship with your buyers.
What happens when that site changes. What if your product, or your customer, is deemed inappropriate? Do you want to be there, do you want your brand to be there next to posts that may be considered harmful?
Recent Facebook and X(twitter) changes in moderation and guidance that many posts that used to be considered harmful are now acceptable are leading many people to examine leaving those platforms. Do you have a way for them to stay in contact with you without FB/X/IG or do you intend to stay on and see what happens?
For more information this post has additional details on the changes and questions users are asking.
https://lnkd.in/diFy-bWb
-jeffhorton
#reddeer #startup #startalberta #entrepreneurship #startupcanada #smallbusiness
January 6, 2025
Happy Monday. Did you raise prices for 2025? I used to work at a place where the CEO would raise prices 10% every year, no hesitation, no questions asked. The expectation being that our costs would rise too, but we didn't know exactly which parts. The 10% ended up too high some years and too low in others to keep a perfect margin but it worked out over time.
You may not want to pass along increases to your customer, but your suppliers will and your staff feels the pinch and needs raises too. If the low-low-low price was your best advantage, perhaps this is the year to invest in streamlining and process automation. Could be time to get very clear about what the value of your product is and how your price relates to that. You may be overvaluing some work, undervaluing others and missing something your customers would happily pay for too.
-jeffhorton
#reddeer #startupcanada #startalberta #entrepreneurship #smallbusiness
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