Your Move
Build your canvas
For two hours you've collected pieces — the five parts, the value curve, the one assumption that could kill you. Scattered across lessons, they're just notes. On one page, they become a plan you can act on Monday.
A plan that won't fit on one page is a plan you can't act on. Your canvas holds exactly three things: which of the five parts is leaking, the ERRC moves that make your offer both better and cheaper, and the single assumption you'll test this week. Everything else is commentary.
- Draw the five parts in a row — create, market, sell, deliver, keep — and circle the one that leaks. That circle is your constraint; it decides where your effort goes.
- Fill the ERRC grid: what will you Eliminate and Reduce to cut cost, and what will you Raise and Create to lift buyer value? All four boxes, not just the exciting two.
- Write the one assumption that would kill the whole plan if it's false — the value or growth belief you've never actually tested with a paying customer.
- Name the cheapest test that answers it — a preorder, a hand-served customer, a one-page offer — and the one physical action that starts it.
- Put a date on that action. An assumption with no date is a wish. A date turns the whole canvas into a commitment.
Leaking part: sales — plenty of interest, few closes. ERRC: eliminate the discount war, reduce the sprawling menu, raise the guarantee, create a done-for-you package. Killer assumption: "buyers will pay 20% more for the packaged version." Test: offer it to the next five enquiries at the new price. Action: rewrite the offer sheet — by Thursday.
Don't polish this into a monument. Your first canvas is a rough draft — its job is to be tested and rewritten, not framed. Owners who spend a week perfecting the page never run the test that would have corrected it in a day. Ugly and tested beats beautiful and untouched.
"I want to grow the business this year" is not a plan — it names no leaking part, no move, no test, no date. "Sales leaks; I'll package my top service and sell it to five enquiries at +20% by Thursday" is a plan, because tomorrow it is either done or not. A canvas forces the second kind of sentence.
Without looking back, name the three things that must appear on your canvas — and which one decides where all your effort goes next.
One page, three things: the part that's leaking, the ERRC moves that break the value-cost trade-off, and the single assumption you'll test this week with a date on it. Keep it where you'll see it. Then treat it as a draft you'll happily rewrite once the test talks back.
Fill your canvas now and save the PNG. Then do the one physical action written at its foot before the date you set — send the offer, call the three customers, pack the box. The canvas only matters the moment you act on its last line.
Your Move