Ignoring compliments should be easy, but it’s not. We crave validation and, as such, are often tricked into registering compliments as reliable data instead of vacuous fibs.

Rule of thumb: Compliments are the fool’s gold of customer learning: shiny, distracting, and worthless.

There’s more reliable information in a “meh” than a “Wow!”

Product risk—Can I build it? Can I grow it? Customer/ market risk—Do they want it? Will they pay me? Are there lots of them?

The currencies of conversation

Vision / Framing / Weakness / Pedestal / Ask

Rule of thumb: Good customer segments are a who-where pair. If you don’t know where to go to find your customers, keep slicing your segment into smaller pieces until you do.