These five “life” symbols are your bread and butter. Combine them with emotion symbols where appropriate. Pains and obstacles carry a lot more weight when someone is embarrassed or angry about them.

With the exception of industry experts who have built very similar businesses, opinions are worthless.

Getting specific about your ideal customers allows you to filter out all the noise which comes from everyone else. In our case, we eventually noticed unusually strong signals from creative agencies who wanted to be edgy. We ignored everyone who wasn’t them, cut a bunch of features and were finally able to get a sense of what was working and what wa

Commitment — They are showing they’re serious by giving up something they value such as time, reputation, or money. Advancement — They are moving to the next step of your real-world funnel and getting closer to purchasing.

“So, first off, thanks for agreeing to this interview. I just have a few questions for you and then I’ll let you get back to your day…” “On a scale of 1 to 5, how much would you say you…”

Regardless of the medium, the most important thing is that the notes are lightweight enough that you’ll actually review them yourself and with your team.

Rule of thumb: “Customers” who keep being friendly but aren’t ever going to buy are a particularly dangerous source of mixed signals.

If you just avoid mentioning your idea, you automatically start asking better questions. Doing this is the easiest (and biggest) improvement you can make to your customer conversations.

While prepping, if you come across a question which could be answered with desk research, take a moment to do it. You want to move past the obvious stuff and use your in-person conversations to find insights the internet can’t give you.