• Product Strategy

• Product Design (UX and UI)

• Product Development

• Project Management

• QA Testing

• Product Analysis

• Marketing Strategy

• Branding

• Email

• SEO

• SEM/PPC Ads

• PR & Brand/Influencer Partnerships

• Social Media

• Content

• Marketing Analysis

• User Research

• User Testing

• User Interviews and Surveys

• NPS Surveys

Digital Product Strategy

Today, every business is digital. Regardless of whether you are a tech startup or just need to build a web presence, having a digital strategy that is mindful of your customer’s experience is integral to the success of your business. We can work one-on-one or involve your team to rally everyone around your goal.

Work with Heroic Aspirations to:

• Define the problem you are solving,

• Review brands and experiences you find inspiring,

• Ideate strategic solutions,

• Create an actionable product roadmap.

Marketing Strategy

There's more to marketing than a never-ending game of whack-a-mole across email, social, SEO, etc. Heroic Aspirations can help you create a managable, end-to-end marketing strategy that demonstrates how you meet your customers' needs and connect to them where they live. We can work one-on-one or involve your team to rally everyone around your goal.

Work with Heroic Aspirations to:

• Map your marketing funnel,

• Define the areas of greatest opportunity,

• Discover messaging that resonates with your customers,

• Explore marketing channels that will have the greatest impact for your brand and budget,

• Create an actionable marketing plan that you can roll out over time.

Customer Research & Testing

You are what they say you are. No matter how much you tell the world what your brand represents, the harsh reality is that you are what your customers think of you. And you won't know unless you ask. Effective research and testing can offer insights into your customers, their interactions with your brand & products, and guide changes to your marketing funnel to create a more successful business.

Work with Heroic Aspirations to:

• Conduct user testing

• Design effective surveys

• Integrate NPS into your process

• Conduct A/B and multivariate testing

• Do user research and interviews

• Do market research

Goal Setting & Metrics Analysis

You don't need "a beautiful mind" to understand your business. But, you do need to know who your customers are, how they interact with your business, and how to measure & test your process to create a strong revenue stream.

Work with Heroic Aspirations to:

• Understand Pirate Metrics,

• Define your marketing funnel and KPIs,

• Find the best tools to manage your customer flow,

• Integrate your metrics into your marketing strategy,

• Generate referrals and capture new customers.

Product Launch Prep

Sorry Kevin, build all you want -- they aren't coming. The most successful products are designed and marketed at the same time. We can work together to get to know your customers and their needs, validate ideas with your audience, create a marketing strategy and manage your timeline working up to launch. Depending on your needs, we can set you up with a launch plan and timeline, or we can work with you all the way to launch.

Digital Product Strategy

Today, every business is digital. Regardless of whether you are a tech startup or just need to build a web presence, having a digital strategy that is mindful of your customer’s experience is integral to the success of your business. We can work one-on-one or involve your team to rally everyone around your goal.

Work with Heroic Aspirations to:

• Define the problem you are solving,

• Review brands and experiences you find inspiring,

• Ideate strategic solutions,

• Create an actionable product roadmap.

Marketing Strategy

There's more to marketing than a never-ending game of whack-a-mole across email, social, SEO, etc. Heroic Aspirations can help you create a managable, end-to-end marketing strategy that demonstrates how you meet your customers' needs and connect to them where they live. We can work one-on-one or involve your team to rally everyone around your goal.

Work with Heroic Aspirations to:

• Map your marketing funnel,

• Define the areas of greatest opportunity,

• Discover messaging that resonates with your customers,

• Explore marketing channels that will have the greatest impact for your brand and budget,

• Create an actionable marketing plan that you can roll out over time.

Customer Research & Testing

You are what they say you are. No matter how much you tell the world what your brand represents, the harsh reality is that you are what your customers think of you. And you won't know unless you ask. Effective research and testing can offer insights into your customers, their interactions with your brand & products, and guide changes to your marketing funnel to create a more successful business.

Work with Heroic Aspirations to:

• Conduct user testing

• Design effective surveys

• Integrate NPS into your process

• Conduct A/B and multivariate testing

• Do user research and interviews

• Do market research

Goal Setting & Metrics Analysis

You don't need "a beautiful mind" to understand your business. But, you do need to know who your customers are, how they interact with your business, and how to measure & test your process to create a strong revenue stream.

Work with Heroic Aspirations to:

• Understand Pirate Metrics,

• Define your marketing funnel and KPIs,

• Find the best tools to manage your customer flow,

• Integrate your metrics into your marketing strategy,

• Generate referrals and capture new customers.

Product Launch Prep

Sorry Kevin, build all you want -- they aren't coming. The most successful products are designed and marketed at the same time. We can work together to get to know your customers and their needs, validate ideas with your audience, create a marketing strategy and manage your timeline working up to launch. Depending on your needs, we can set you up with a launch plan and timeline, or we can work with you all the way to launch.

We offer Design Sprints through our sister site: Design Sprint Consultants!

What is a Design Sprint?

Originally created by Jake Knapp and the team at Google Ventures (now known simply as GV), a Design Sprint is a structured process designed to help teams work through problems, ideate solutions, and test them with customers… all in 5 days! By investing one week to focus as a team, you can save months of work brainstorming, planning, building, and marketing. You’ll be able to get a prototype in front of your customers fast, and see if your idea has legs. The exercises in a Sprint are explicitly designed to minimize the back-and-forth conversation and debate that are often present in a traditional group brainstorm.

During this 5 day process, a cross-functional team comes together to:

• Clarify and define the problem at hand,

• Brainstorm collaboratively and explore the breadth of possible solutions,

• Distill ideas together to 1-2 directions,

• Prototype the solution utilizing people and resources on hand,

• Test the prototype with the people who would use it to make sure you are on the right path before investing months of time and resources to launch publicly.

A variety of well-known companies and startups have used the Design Sprint process to help them execute quickly and pivot with purpose on their way to success, including: Uber, Slack, Blue Bottle Coffee, Flatiron Health, Airbnb, and more.

Who can benefit?

The Design Sprint process can prove beneficial for any team looking to solve a problem, design a new product or service offering, or test an idea to prove its impact on their business. We have conducted Sprints focused on everything from technology and product/service development to logos and marketing ideas to company and product naming.

While originally created to help small teams learn and iterate quickly, Design Sprints aren’t limited to startups and technology companies. This framework can prove invaluable for teams in any size organization. For example, we have seen great success implementing Design Sprints to help corporate teams think entrepreneurially and move fast. By gathering concrete feedback from real users, the outcome of the Sprint process can provide stakeholders with the demonstrable evidence necessary to champion their ideas within a large organization.

What can I expect?

Schedule

While the Sprint itself is scheduled over a 1-week period (preferably a continuous Monday through Friday schedule), we will work with you over roughly 3 weeks.

Week 1+: During the week or two prior to the scheduled Sprint, the Facilitator will work with you and key stakeholders to manage the preparation process and answer any questions you may have in order to set expectations for the Sprint week.

Week 2: This is a typical schedule for the Sprint week. During the week of the Sprint, the Facilitator will be involved throughout the duration of the Sprint process to moderate the Sprint exercises and activities, guiding the participants through the week’s activities and offering insight and expertise to the team.

Week 3: In the week following the Sprint, the facilitator will create a recap document that captures the Sprint process followed during the previous week (on a day-by-day basis) as well as all of the collateral and ideas generated by the participants. This will be delivered to you as reference material and may provide the foundation for future Sprint activities. We will also be available for one or two follow-up calls to discuss next steps and help your team prepare to move forward based on the learnings from our Sprint.

Alternative & Iterative Sprint Formats

While a “standard” Design Sprint process follows the 5-day schedule outlined above, we do have experience conducting shorter Design Sprints as either stand-alone workshops or as a continuation of an initial 5-day process. We’re happy to work with you to solve your needs. Some options include:

• 3-Day, Solutions-Oriented Design Sprint: During this shortened Sprint process, we focus our energies on understanding the core problem and outlining potential solutions. By the end of this 3-day process, clients will be in a position to champion solutions internally for user testing or development.

• 1-Day, Immersion Session: This one-day work session is designed to align core stakeholders around a clear articulation of the problem at hand, leaving little room for debate or disagreement around the core customer segments and/or opportunities that the team should focus on in order to move forward.

• Iterative Design Sprints: At the end of a 5-day Sprint, user testing should offer a clear indication of the efficacy of the prototyped solution. Often, responses from user testing will align to other solutions proposed during the Sprint (but not explored) and/or spur ideas for iterative changes. A truncated Sprint process can be utilized to iterate or expand upon these solutions for further testing, providing clearer feedback and direction around how to best move forward.

Why hire us for a Design Sprint?

We can help make your sprint a success.

Even after you've read the Sprint book, pored over the checklists, and watched dozens of videos, carrying a Design Sprint from concept to execution is a daunting task. Planning a Sprint is a time-consuming process requiring experience and coordination. Once you've planned, leading a Sprint team through daily exercises and coming out the other end with actionable learnings is equally challenging. You'll have to read your audience, think on the fly, and guide your team through an arduous process that changes every time you do it.

An experienced and impartial Design Sprint Facilitator can make the difference between burning a week of your team's valuable time and using that time wisely to achieve tangible results. We have the knowledge and experience to know when to encourage a team to dig deeper and when to table a discussion for later consideration. We also have a deep background in design, technology, and marketing — expertise that can prove invaluable during the Sprint process as teams debate how to best bring solutions to life.

You can learn more about our experience running Design Sprints & Immersion Days and hear from Design Sprint clients on the Design Sprint Consultants site.

Convinced? Ready to run a Sprint with your team (or at least learn more about how we can help)?

Reach out to schedule a conversation and learn how we can help you conduct a successful Design Sprint with your team.

We now run Google Ventures style Design Sprints through our sister company, Design Sprint Consultants.

What is a Whiteboard Strategy Session?

Whether you're working through a big, hairy problem or planning out the next phase of your business, there's something magical that can happen in front of a whiteboard. Visualizing complex problems can help you identify patterns, come up with fresh ideas, and literally see things more clearly. And when you (and your team) are deep in the weeds, bringing in someone from the outside can give you a fresh perspective and clarify what is truly important.

A Whiteboard Strategy Session is your time to focus on the big picture. It's a time to make sure that the steps you are taking with your business are aligned with your goals. It's a time to thoroughly examine the pieces of your business that aren't working as well as you would like. It's a time to plan ahead, set goals and map out your path to get there.

What can I expect?

When you schedule a Whiteboard Strategy Session with us, you'll be asked to fill out a brief survey asking you to describe the problem or goal you would like to cover during our time together. Then, based on your answers, we will send you a couple of small tasks to complete before we meet so we can best spend our time together. The pre-work can include gathering inspiration or examples of what you would like to achieve, current work work in progress, or past results and customer feedback. Depending on the scope, and your availability, we may also schedule a 15min pre-session call to review your goals and background information.

On the day of our session, we can come to you or arrange a space with a whiteboard in Los Angeles. (Not in LA? Reach out to us to talk about options for a remote session, or to have us come to you!) Your session can be one-on-one or include key team members to facilitate a rich discussion.

During the session, we will go through a series of exercises to clarify the problem or goal, review your current strategies or inspiration, and ideate solutions. We might map out activities to meet a goal, plan marketing for a product launch, review changes to your website or app, or focus on a challenge or area of your business you would like to improve. Use this session to get outside advice and guidance, have a sounding board and thought partner, and/or facilitate discussion among team members.

After the session, we will follow up with an overview of what we discussed with photos of the whiteboard, links to pertinent resources, and (when applicable) recommended next steps. You should expect to have increased clarity on the problem or goal and a sense of direction to take you through the next steps.

Who can benefit?

Any business can benefit from an occasional Whiteboard Strategy Session -- B2B or B2C, product or service-based, single person or a larger team. We particularly love working with early stage businesses, single-person practices and small teams, and relish the challenge of finding solutions when every dollar and every resource counts. Still not sure if you could benefit? Reach out to us! We're happy to discuss.

What kinds of projects work for a Whiteboard Strategy Session?

When you're describing your project, do the words complex, long-term, big-picture, plan, or strategy come to mind? Then it's probably perfect for a Whiteboard Strategy Session!

Are you just starting to sort through a problem, or plan activities and want to make sure you are covering all the angles? Having Heroic Aspirations lead a Whiteboard Strategy Session can help you and your team map out and sort through issues and ideas.

Have you been working on your project for a while and feel stuck? A Whiteboard Strategy Session is a great way to get outside advice and move past mental blocks.

Our core competencies include Marketing, Digital Product Management, and Customer Experience. We have worked in companies ranging from startup to Fortune 100, non-profits and family owned businesses. Are you working on marketing, customer service, and getting the word out about your business? Are you creating or making improvements to your website or app? 

What kinds of projects DO work well for a Whiteboard Strategy session?

• Reviewing goals for your business in the next year and prioritizing activities to get there.

• Planning and mapping marketing activities to engage a target audience.

• Reviewing customer feedback and developing strategies to improve their experience.

• Planning and coordinating activities across your team for a product launch.

• Analyzing how well your website is meeting the needs of a particular audience.

• Reviewing performance of activities in your marketing funnel and discussing ways to improve.

• Discussing ways to use social media (and other channels!) to acquire customers in a new market.

• Prioritizing features in your app to lead users towards specific actions.

What kinds of projects do NOT work well for a Whiteboard Strategy session?

• Discussing whether visual design and branding elements are "good".

• Reviewing the usability of an entire website or app experience.

• Dissecting and interpreting business metrics in detail.

• Figuring out how to "get better at" social media.

Still not sure whether your project would work for a Whiteboard Strategy Session. Just reach out! We'd be happy to help.

What is a Holiday Marketing Strategy Session?

Does the thought of getting preparing for emails, social posts, holiday markets, best gift lists, and all those many, many days of sales have you wanting to crawl under the covers and not come out until New Years Day? The holidays are crazy, but holiday marketing doesn’t have to be.

A Holiday Marketing Strategy Session is your time to focus on what you want to achieve and how to get there with expert advice from experienced senior marketers (including folks from the team who launched Small Business Saturday!). We’ll help you make sure that the steps you are taking with your marketing are aligned with your goals and put a plan in place for the holidays that fits your budget and timelines.

What can I expect?

When you purchase a Holiday Marketing Strategy Session with us, you’ll get:

• A 20-30min planning session via phone or video conference with our strategists

• 2 hours of market research and analysis in preparation for your strategy session

• A 1 hour in-person or video conference strategy session to jumpstart your holiday marketing

• A full outline of your holiday marketing strategy and analysis with links to tools and tips to get started

• A customized holiday marketing project calendar outlining key tasks and deadlines to optimize your team workflow

Who can benefit?

Retail? E-commerce? Need to make some holiday sales?

First time doing holiday sales? Working to beat last years’ numbers? Just need to get some eyeballs on your site, or some boots in the door?

You came to the right place.

When should I start planning my holiday marketing?

It all depends on what you want to do, but we usually recommend starting around “Back to School” season to give plenty of lead time for more strategies like PR, partnerships and events. That doesn’t mean you should give up if you are only a few weeks (or days!!!) away from Black Friday. It just means that you’ll need to adjust your expectations for what you can accomplish, hustle like your business depends on it, and take a few smart shortcuts if needed.

During a Holiday Marketing Strategy Session, we can help you sort through your options and focus on marketing tactics that best fit your goals, resources and timelines.

How much does it cost?

$1,000 gets you everything mentioned above, sprinkled with tinsel and holiday cheer.

What is a Holiday Marketing Package?

Does the thought of getting preparing for emails, social posts, holiday markets, best gift lists, and those heaps of sales waiting to be fulfilled have you wanting to crawl under the covers and not come out until New Years Day? The holidays are crazy, but holiday marketing doesn’t have to be.

You and your team have enough on your plates. With our Holiday Marketing Package, we’ll take care of the work to plan and prep your marketing. We’ll get your marketing material and communications ready for showtime, so all you have to do is sit back, relax… Who are we kidding? You’ll be busy shipping packages, managing the shop, rocking those holiday markets, and generally killing it until New Years!

What can I expect?

When you purchase a Holiday Marketing Package, you’ll get:

• A 20-30min planning session via phone or video conference with our strategists.

• 2 hours of market research and analysis in preparation for your strategy session.

• A 1 hour in-person or video conference strategy session to craft a full holiday marketing plan aligned to your goals and key opportunities for your brand.

• At least a full week’s worth of time from our team dedicated to preparing marketing copy and creative, developing assets, managing campaigns, and analyzing performance and impact on holiday sales.

Who can benefit?

Retail? E-commerce? Way too busy to handle holiday marketing on your team?

You came to the right place. We’ve got you!

When should I reach out?

NOW! Black Friday is fast-approaching, and if your holiday marketing plans aren’t in place by then, you’re late to the game. Let’s get started today!

Our deadline for Black Friday weekend marketing is Friday, November 1st.

We can start working on Christmas marketing as late as Monday, November 25th for a late holiday push.

How much does it cost?

We’ll work with you from start to finish during the holiday season to assess current marketing, create a strategy aligned to your goals, and create marketing that will carry you through the holiday season. Each team has different needs and we’ll work with you to create a plan that fits your needs and resources with an up-front scope of work and cost estimate.

Based on past experience, an effective end-to-end holiday marketing campaign (covering multiple channels and audiences) is likely to take at least a week’s worth of work. Pricing starts at $5,000 for a full week’s worth of time.

What is Digital Product Strategy?

Today, every business is digital. Regardless of whether you are a tech startup or just need to build a web presence, having a digital strategy that is mindful of your customer’s experience is integral to the success of your business. We can work one-on-one or involve your team to rally everyone around your goal.

Work with Heroic Aspirations to:

• Define the problem you are solving,

• Review brands and experiences you find inspiring,

• Ideate strategic solutions,

• Create an actionable product roadmap.

What is Marketing Strategy?

There's more to marketing than a never-ending game of whack-a-mole across email, social, SEO, etc. Heroic Aspirations can help you create a managable, end-to-end marketing strategy that demonstrates how you meet your customers' needs and connect to them where they live. We can work one-on-one or involve your team to rally everyone around your goal.

Work with Heroic Aspirations to:

• Map your marketing funnel,

• Define the areas of greatest opportunity,

• Discover messaging that resonates with your customers,

• Explore marketing channels that will have the greatest impact for your brand and budget,

• Create an actionable marketing plan that you can roll out over time.

The view from the top can get a little lonely when you're the one making every decision. Hiring or working with an agency is too much. Classes or workshops are too little. What you really want is just a little help and personalized advice to move forward. And that's why we started coaching, to offer one-on-one support and attention... without spending a fortune in the process. Think of us as your "business therapist" — someone who's there to check-in with along the way and act as an advisor when you need to make tough decisions as you grow your business. 

Coaching includes:

• An experienced professional who will learn your business inside and out, act as thought partner throughout our engagement, and serve as your right hand and confidant every step of the way. (Just call us Alfred, Bruce!)

• An introductory consultation to discuss challenges in growing your business, set a strategy and goals for the duration of your coaching engagement, and set you up with the tools and resources you'll need to move forward.

• One-on-one coaching, 1 hour a week via phone or video call to review your progress, work through any challenges and get through the next steps to accomplishing your goals.

• Email support between calls to answer questions and keep things moving forward.

Ready to get started? Reach out to schedule your consultation sessions. You can purchase a 4 or 8 week package, risk free. If you aren't excited to move forward after the first session, we'll refund you the cost of the package. 

Still have questions? We’re here for you. Reach out to discuss whether coaching is right for you.