Kahuku Lab is a free course for anyone who wants to start a business or grow the one they have. It runs in twelve labs. Each one gives you a business skill, a principle someone lived by, and a week to try it for real. The aim is simple: earn enough to take care of yourself and the people who count on you, and have something left over to give.
Doing this with a group?
Run it like a Junto
In the fall of 1727, a young printer named Benjamin Franklin gathered a circle of friends, among them a shoemaker, a joiner, a surveyor and a self taught mathematician, into what he called “a club of mutual improvement.” They named it the Junto. Twelve members met on Friday evenings, and every member took turns bringing a question for the group to work through.
The club kept meeting for close to forty years, and its members helped Franklin start the Library Company of Philadelphia, which he called “the mother of all the North American subscription libraries.”
House rules for your group
Phones face down.
Speak from your own experience.
Ask before you give advice.
Start on time, end on time.
What people share stays with the group.
Go around once: your name, what you do now, and the business you want to start or grow.
Talk it over
Every Junto member brought a question. What question are you bringing to this group?
How a lab runs
Check in (20 minutes). Read your scoreboard and rate last week’s commitments. Starts in Lab 2; today, Get started takes its place.
From History (15 minutes). A principle someone lived by, and what it means for your business.
Build (60 minutes). The business skill for the week, with tools to work it out.
Reflect (5 minutes). Quiet time to pick one next step.
Plan Your Week (15 minutes). Choose your commitments and your partner. Then go do them.
Talk it over means discuss it with the group, or with one other person if you’re on your own. A dark card is a tool: open it on your phone, and what you type stays on your phone. Group marks steps meant for groups.
2From History
Self reliance
“Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” 1841
Emerson’s essay makes one big claim: trust your own judgment and act on it, even before anyone else signs off. For a business owner, self reliance means taking charge of what is yours to handle, like your work, your money and your next step, while still asking for help when you need it.
From history
The broom at Hampton
In the fall of 1872, a young man named Booker T. Washington set out from Malden, West Virginia, for Hampton Institute in Virginia, about 500 miles away. He went partly by stagecoach and partly on foot, begging rides where he could. By the time he reached Richmond he was completely out of money, so he slept under a raised board sidewalk and worked on the docks unloading pig iron from a ship until he had enough to keep going.
When he finally walked into Hampton, the head teacher, Miss Mary F. Mackie, didn’t admit him on the spot. She handed him a broom and told him to sweep the room next door. He swept it three times. He dusted it four times. She rubbed her handkerchief over the woodwork, the table and the benches, found nothing, and said: “I guess you will do to enter this institution.”
Washington later wrote, “The sweeping of that room was my college examination.”
What the broom teaches
Start before you have it all figured out. When he left home, Washington had “no definite idea of the direction in which Hampton was.” He went anyway, and worked out the next step at each stop.
Treat a small chance like a big one. One swept room was his whole entrance exam, and he cleaned it as if his future depended on it.
Let your work speak first. Mackie never saw a diploma. She saw a clean room.
Years later Washington wrote that “those who are happiest are those who do the most for others.” Standing on your own feet is how you get there.
Talk it over
Where are you waiting for someone else to make the first move? What is the “room” you could sweep this week to show what you can do?
This week
Do one thing you’ve been waiting on someone else to do for you, and write in your notebook what happened. Optional: read the rest of Washington’s story, chapter 3 of Up From Slavery (free online).
3Build
Ten people who built something
Before tools and tactics comes character. Here are ten people who built something, and the principle each one lived by.
InitiativeMadam C. J. Walker went from the cotton fields to washing laundry to running her own hair care company. In 1912 she told a room of business owners, …from there I promoted myself into the business of manufacturing hair goods and preparations.
Small stepsIn 2005, Kyle MacDonald set out to trade one red paperclip for a house. It took almost a year and 14 trades, each for something a little better, and he got there.
TimeDost thou love Life? then do not squander Time; for that’s the Stuff Life is made of.Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard, 1746
LearningLearning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardour and attended to with diligence.Abigail Adams, in a letter to her son, 1780
VisionIf you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854
ResolveAlways bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed, is more important than any other one thing.Abraham Lincoln, 1855
OwnershipPresident Harry Truman kept a small sign on his desk: The BUCK STOPS here!
Hard workMy theory of self-made men is, then, simply this; that they are men of work.Frederick Douglass, 1893
Bouncing backMilton Hershey’s first candy shop, in Philadelphia, went bankrupt. His next one, in New York, failed too. His third try, the Lancaster Caramel Company, worked; in 1900 he sold it for $1 million and kept the chocolate business that carries his name.
GenerosityWhen Benjamin Franklin invented a better stove, he turned down a patent: …as we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours…
Talk it over
Which two of these do you already have? Which one do you need most this year?
People start businesses for very different reasons, and none of them is wrong. What matters is knowing yours, because it decides what kind of business you build.
Money: extra income, a full living, building wealth
Freedom: control of your schedule, being your own boss, working from anywhere
Meaning: work you love, serving your community, something to hand down
Necessity: no good jobs nearby, caring for family, a schedule a regular job can’t fit
And how big do you want it? A side income, a full time living, a company with a team, or not yet while you learn first.
Every hour and every dollar you give a business comes out of something else: family time, sleep, savings. Decide up front what you can spare.
Which result surprised you? What could you do this month to raise your lowest area? Who could help?
Your weekly scoreboard
What gets counted gets done. Every week you’ll keep a simple scoreboard. Out of the last seven days, how many did you:
Talk with a possible customer? Ask about their problems, not your idea.
Write in your notebook? One line counts.
Ask someone to buy? Starts in Lab 4.
Write down money in and out? Starts in Lab 6.
You’ll read your scoreboard at every Check in. This week, count the first two.
Twelve labs
Ready for BusinessYou are here
Find the Problem People Pay to FixSoon
Do the Napkin MathSoon
Land Your First CustomersSoon
Turn Buyers into RegularsSoon
Know Your NumbersSoon
Give Your Business Its Own WalletSoon
Never Run Out of CashSoon
Grow on PurposeSoon
Find the Money to GrowSoon
Get Better Every WeekSoon
Tell Your Business StorySoon
Plans are drafts
“Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.”
An old Army saying Dwight D. Eisenhower repeated in 1957
Your plan will change the moment it meets real customers. The thinking you did to make it is what you keep. You’ll start a rough business plan in Lab 3, test it against real conversations every week, and by Lab 12 it will be sharp enough to present.
Track it daily, like Franklin
From history
Franklin’s little book
As a young man, Franklin picked thirteen virtues he wanted to build. He made a little book with a page for each virtue, ruled into seven columns, one for each day of the week, and marked a little black spot for every slip. Each week he gave one virtue his full attention, so he could get through all thirteen in thirteen weeks, four times a year.
“I was surpris’d to find myself so much fuller of faults than I had imagined,” he wrote, “but I had the satisfaction of seeing them diminish.” He never got perfect, and said so, but by trying he was “a better and a happier man.”
Your commitments work the same way. Pick a few, mark each day, look honestly at the week, adjust. Every lab ends by choosing commitments and begins by checking how they went.
Talk it over
What would make it easier for you to keep a promise to yourself this week?
4Reflect
Five quiet minutes
Franklin opened every day with a question, “What good shall I do this day?”, and closed it with another: “What good have I done to-day?”
Take five quiet minutes and write:
What idea from today do you want to act on first?
What is the smallest step you can take on it before the next lab?
Promises kept in private are easy to drop. Pick one person who will check on you this week, and you on them. Agree on two short check ins, and end each one with the next step you’ll take. Pick someone you’ll actually answer, ideally outside your household. Not in a group? A friend, coworker or another owner works.
Questions that make check ins useful:
What’s one thing from the lab you’ve already tried?
Which commitment is going well, and which one is stuck?
Who did you talk to this week? What did they tell you?
Most good ideas start as one scribbled line. Each day, write down one thing you noticed, heard or wondered about: a complaint you overheard, a price you saw, a question a customer asked. One line counts. Your notebook is where your business plan gets its raw material.
Kyle MacDonald turned one red paperclip into a house by trading up, one conversation at a time. Your version takes a week. Start with a paper clip, or anything small. Offer it to someone in exchange for something a little better, then do it again with what you got.
Plenty of conversations won’t end in a trade, and those count too, because the real goal is to talk with someone new every day. At the next Check in, show what you ended up with.