Flow Canvas creator Christoff Oosthuysen offered two important tips at the lunch-time Upstart talk at the University of Cape Town — play your best game and simplify your plan!
In the talk he explained that you can make your business model easy to understand if you answer “the five questions to all answers”. These are: What you do? Who you do it with? When and where you are doing it? How you are doing it? And why you are doing it?
The “what” question helps you to identify the unique value you are offering.
The “who” question helps you to focus on the people you are meant to serve and ignore those who will waste your time.
The “when/where” question is about turning your value into transactions at a specific time and place.
The “how” questions shows you the need for efficient and effective teamwork.
And the “why” question offers you direction in the difference you wish to make through your bigger intention.
The five questions form the building blocks of the Flow Canvas 1-Page Plan, which was covered in more detail in a webinar a few days after the talk. After the webinar students were offered coupons to get free access to the Flow Canvas Quick Planner.
In the talk Christoff emphasised that the way to success is by playing your own best game. Sprinters run the short races because they are built to be fast over a distance — they do not enter the marathon. Those races are won by the lean guys.
In the same way you must find what you are good at and position your strengths on your 1-page plan so that you can see where you are likely to excel and where you will have to be careful. It also helps in identifying which team members you should add.
The same five building blocks used in the Flow Canvas, form the basis of a profiling system called Five Energy Dynamics. When you do the Vitality Test, you get a report explaining which of these five questions are dominant in you.
In this way you can simplify your business plan on one page and identify the best way suitable for you to make it a reality.
The online test is available for free through this link; www.flowcanvas.com/energy and the online Quick Planner is available at www.FlowCanvas.com.