Archive of posts from May 2023

As I covered in last week’s Productoon:

What’s the difference between a rideshare and a kidnapper?

One impresses you fancy wheels, the other gets you to your destination.

Creators forget this. And when they do, they accidentally become kidnappers.

If you’re fancy but don’t know where your people want to go, you just want them to get into your shiny car. That’s creepy.

But if you know where they want to go, and they see you’re familiar with the place, it doesn’t matter what your car looks like.

A great rideshare experience is much more than the chilled bottled water and smooth jazz radio.

A great rideshare experience is total confidence you know precisely how to get them to their destination safely.

Which does your product marketing talk about more: the car, or the destination?

Read more about the topic in the Productoon!

These is the worst ideas you can have as a creator:

The highly lucrative ones you know you’d hate doing.

They’re the ideas you have because of the social post you read that made you feel jealous, so you wanted to ideate ways to get what they have in the way they got it.

They’re the ideas you have because your peers got a shiny new thing and you want to show them that you’re at least as capable as they are.

They’re the ideas you have because you heard someone mention that a different industry is popping and that you’d be foolish to ignore it.

These are not the foundations for great ideas.

So let them go.

And do you.

I visited my hometown’s annual festival today.

And it reminded me of the importance of simplicity:

I recognised people doing the same thing there as they were on old childhood cine film reels from the same event. And they looked like they were loving it just as much as they did way back then.

Morris dancers. Maypole dancers. Accordion players. Balloon animal makers.

Their ambition was to be great at what they do, and that’s it.

Not great in terms of popularity, fortune and notoriety.

But great in terms of mastering their craft and bringing it to bear.

The creator economy can learn a lot from these elderly folks:

If you’re good, your tribe will show up every time. If you’re niche, you’ll be picked to do it every time.

Master your craft. Bring it to bear.

Dear indie product developers:

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” — Thomas Edison

This quote is around 100 years old.

That’s not all that long ago.

And despite all the advances since then, we still need to find 10,000 ways that OUR thing won’t work.

Don’t quit on your third attempt. There’s plenty of failure ahead to push through until you get the results you’re looking for.

Keep up the good work.

You know those rules you follow when building products?

Those aren’t rules. You don’t have to follow them.

You don’t need 100k followers. You need to connect with people you can help, and help them. ‘Followers’ is just an integer in a database.

Your tweets don’t need to be text. Your content can be anything you want it to be. Don’t be afraid to stand out.

Doing YouTube doesn’t need to be hardcore. Your channel, your rules. Build a cadence that works for you and those you serve.

Working 80 hours is not required. 40 is possible. 30 is possible. Plan for what you’d like to invest. You don’t have to compromise.

Money is not the measure of project success. You set a goal when you engage a project. If you achieve that goal, it succeeds.

Mediums can be mixed. I’m building courses that play like games, and educational videos that play like cartoons. Why not?

You’re not breaking the rules.

The rules weren’t there to begin with.

Before you head over to Google or YouTube to ‘research’…

Remember:

If your thing is worth creating, there probably isn’t a step-by-step tutorial for it.

Yes, there may be some best practices to keep in mind.

Yes, there may be some useful tips to pick up for your next project.

No, there are no shortcuts and secret tricks.

Here’s the big secret:

The only way to win is by trying, with discipline.

Get creating. You’ll learn so much more that way.

You achieve so much more in 3 hours of action than 30 days of dreaming.

But both are necessary.

30 days of dreaming may be happening while you’re doing other things. Your ideas are germinating. Your strategies are forming. This is the time for your vision to emerge and your plan to crystallise.

3 hours of action are where things actually happen.

If you don’t dream, your 3 hours will be wasted doing things that don’t matter.

If you don’t take action, the dreams also amount to nothing.

Both have a place.

Celebrate both.

Skip neither.

Marketing is like food.

Fast food (like fast marketing) might seem like a good idea for a short while, but too much of it and you (like your brand) will experience a decline in health.

Up-market restaurants (like premium marketing done by experienced artisans who love their craft) might seem expensive in the moment, but you’ll be talking about the meal for many years to come (like your customers will talk about your campaign).

There are many options in between these poles.

But most practitioners have an unhealthy diet.

Do you want a quick-fix, or do you want to be remembered long-term?

Invest your focus and resources accordingly.

Maybe you love building but hate distribution.

Maybe you love distribution but hate building.

One of these probably describes you better than the other.

Pretend you’re the other, for just a moment:

• What would you look forward to in the week?
• What would your plan for the week look like?
• What would be your favourite tasks and tools?
• How would it affect the thing you actually love doing?

Ooh, insightful.

How could you get some of those results in your real life, by learning to like the other side just a little bit more?

Darwin could have written this for 2023:

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”

The world continues to remain in flux, and many folks are getting tired of it.

They’re striking for raises. They’re off on stress. They’re arguing on Twitter over popular issues. They’re convinced they deserve to live like yesterday, today, and that it’s tomorrow’s problem.

But there are many other folks who aren’t tired of it.

They’re committed to their craft. They’re growing through hardship. They’re thankful for their families and what they have. They’re still doing right by others, especially when no one else is looking. They’re pivoting and responding to change, and glad of the opportunity to.

Perspective and virtue make all the difference.

Know when you go to YouTube for something, but click a homepage video instead?

Or when you watch a video ad to the end?

Pay attention:

• Edutaining (fun & informative)
• Good hook (you looked)
• Good delivery (you stayed)

Save them. Study them.

It’ll help your work spread.

People are desperate:

• tired of buying crap products
• tired of new-money-bro DMs
• tired of fake guarantees
• tired of obnoxious prices

Creators have the answer:

• pick a specific audience
• pick a specific problem
• solve it safely
• look after them

Creators are the ones who save us from a marketplace full of greedy, selfish corporations and entrepreneurs that pump out ill-conceived, marginalised, marked-up commodity products that hold us all back.

Creators are the new superheroes.

Q: What does niching down & coffee have in common?

A: Most only buy their favourite order!

• Offer someone a “general coffee”…
• Then offer their favourite mocha-choca-thing…
• Which will they choose?

If you’re “general coffee”, you’re at risk.

Become someone’s favourite.

Creators: think you can win without niching down?

Open YouTube.

Search “speedrun”.

Every game boils down to a tiny group of folks who went ALL IN. They win the game.

Every industry sub-niche has its own game. Want to win?

Gotta go all in.

True client story:

Before: “We have a budget of $2k.”

After: “We have a budget of $20k.”

The change?

My studio showed $20k of risk-free value.

They were prepared to take a $2k risk, but would much rather buy a $20k guarantee.

The formula is simple:

1. Listen to the problem
2. Offer to solve it
3. Make it safe to say yes

It’s not about fancy words, slick offers, and complicated funnels.

It’s about being patient enough to listen, caring enough to solve it properly, and being brave enough to make it safe.

People enjoy watching YouTube & playing games.

People hate school & never finish online courses.

What does this have to do with your product?

We don’t need new ideas. We don’t need to strap AI onto everything. We don’t need it to be on the blockchain. We don’t need it repackaged into an app.

We just need better delivery models.

We just need to make things people already want to do, more fun.

Courses are still just talking head videos. The best schools could do during covid was to half-ass Zoom. The bar is set so low.

Opportunity everywhere. Can you see it yet?

When I was 11, my friends gave me their pocket money.

It was simple:

1) I would listen to what video games my friends wished existed.

2) Then I’d listen to what what’d make those dream games awesome.

3) Then I’d make that game.

Fast-forward through a couple weeks of designing sprites and writing Java…

…and we’d have a new game, loaded onto floppy disks, for £3 each.

I’d sell it on the school yard. Then I’d listen for the next game they wish existed.

Listening was the key ingredient.

Listening is still the key ingredient.

If you’re building a product, remember to listen.

It’s so easy, even an 11 year old can do it.

So many ways digital products can get more customers by… …making the experience more Fun.

Building an exercise app? Imagine a daily dance-off with your virtual pet where your workouts help it grow.

Building a habits app? Imagine a Marie Kondo laundry folding race where you learn the folding techniques through speedy repetition.

People are starved for fun experiences in products.

Starving crowds everywhere.

The bar has been set so low.

You can be the one who raises it in your industry.

You’re probably familiar with time blocking.

Here’s how it works:

1. Fill your calendar with boxes representing tasks
2. Keep going until your whole day is boxes
3. Feel productive as you fly from box to box
4. Experience mild anxiety from constant clock-watching
5. Handle anxiety by cutting corners to avoid wrath of calendar gods

Hmm. Doesn’t sound so awesome when you put it that way.

Here’s an alternative:

1. Switch your calendar to “month view”
2. If the calendar cells truncate, you have too much on
3. List 2–3 things you’re going to do (well) each day
4. Do those 2-3 things (well)
5. Go for a walk or read a book or something

Ahh. Sounds like you’re going to do some good work then relax. Nice.

The choice is yours.

I’m starting a new weekly newsletter!

It’s called the ‘Productoon’:

• 1 actionable product marketing tip
• For creators & indie hackers
• 1 minute read time
• Comic-style
• Weekly(ish)
• Fun

(Plus, updates on fun products I’m working on right now.)

See you inside: https://fairhead.net/productoon

So it’s 2am as I write this.

Not because I’m normally a night owl. In fact, before we had our baby boy, I was normally in bed by 10pm.

Social media is full of young-money hustle-bros flexing their late night grind.

But they have no idea what it’s like running businesses when you have young children. Then, you get things done when it suits them.

And that just so happens to be 2am at the moment.

So. To the fellow entrepredads and entrepremoms out there…

I salute you.

You’re working harder than the general public and the young bloods would ever understand.

You’re passionate and crazy in equal measure.

Keep it up, you nutter.

There are a lot of businesses and projects out there.

Most of them many not be worth your time.

It’s your choice, of course, but:

• If they’re slow to pay, you don’t have to pay them attention.
• If they routinely try to put undue pressure on you, you don’t have to deal with it.
• If they keep trying to impose requirements that don’t work for you, you don’t have to work with them.
• If they don’t like your way of doing things, they might simply not be for you.

More is not always more.

Oftentimes, less is more.

That can include less customers. And less of their money.

For more of your time. Time you can spend attracting more of the right people. Or perhaps simply time you can spend checked out with your family.

Ask not if you are worthy of them. Ask if they are worthy of you.

I can tell whether or not a found is likely to be successful or not in one conversation.

It boils down to one thing:

Are they focused?

This manifests in a bunch of different ways:

Wanting long-term growth but creating short-term behaviour among staff. This includes imposing lofty 1 week requirements, rather than measured 6 week bets. Or getting the right people ‘on the boat’, but kicking them off just because you didn’t need that person to row today.

Wanting 8 different things to get done at the same time. And everyone to be responsible for those 8 different things to get done, at the same time. This lack of patience blinds them to the benefits they’d unlock were they to do their best with one thing at a time, one after the other.

The plan changes every week. They read an article about something and now we’re doing this. They heard a peer mention something and now we’re doing that. This freneticism keeps them in one place, spinning their wheels but going nowhere.

The team doesn’t know what they’re doing. They’re all secretly wanting things to move forward, but despite the executive rally cry that ‘we move fast’, movement is in fact very slow due to the founder’s inability to focus on anything for long enough to make a decision they’ll stick to.

These are easy things to fix.

They have nothing to do with the founder’s hard skills, nor with their team’s.

They have everything to do with focus.

Focus.

The startup world loves quipping about skipping the details.

You’ve seen the tweets:

“If it works properly, you shipped too late.”

“Move fast and break things.”

There’s another side to this though.

Why do people pay to read RSS feeds from products like Reeder and Feedbin, when Feedly is free? Because, to those people, details matter enough to be worth paying for. If they weren’t, they’d use free or ad-supported alternatives.

Why do people pay to use email from products like HEY and Superhuman, when Gmail is free? Because, to those people, details matter enough to be worth paying for. If they weren’t, they’d use one of a near-infinite number of free alternatives.

Why do people buy what you sell? It could be because it’s the only option on the market, or because it’s slightly better or cheaper than the competition, or because it’s hyper-focused on a specific niche.

Or maybe… just maybe… it’s because you chose to sweat the details.

If you build great products…

Eventually you’ll find them.

Trolls.

And if you’re not prepared for them, they can be a bit of an emotional rollercoaster.

Last year we led an experimental product launch, designed to raise funds for R&D around an innovative new way to create online courses and edutainment.

It met the goals we set for it. There were thousands of sales in under an hour following launch. These are good things.

Some bought because they support such innovations and want in. Others bought because they wanted to take advantage of the limited supply, and use us as a means of profiting from our work.

All that energy attracted some trolls.

‘Trolls’ are people on the internet that are either very hurt, very stupid, or both.

In our case, these creatures came out to poke holes in our work, make inappropriate comparisons, and generally attempt to lower the tone and our moods.

We weren’t prepared for it. And so both my wife and I found it all quite hurtful when we saw it.

“Why are these people trying to hurt us”, we asked each other.

“Have we done something wrong?” we wondered.

Of course, they don’t know us. And no, we hadn’t:

• They were comparing our work to things that had nothing to do with our work
• On inspection, they seemed to be this way to all sorts of creators online
• If our work isn’t their cup of tea, they didn’t need to drink it

There’s absolutely no sense in feeling hurt by strangers who don’t know you, for whom you would otherwise care so little.

There’s absolutely no sense in changing your work to suit those it isn’t made for, instead of staying committed to those it is made for.

There’s absolutely no sense in giving them emotional energy you could otherwise be spending on doing your best work.

So if you ever encounter these creatures:

• If you’re using a platform that allows it, just delete their comments and forget about them.
• If you’re using a platform that doesn’t, just ignore them. People worth their salt will also ignore them, and people who are easily swayed by fools will continue to be so.
• It sorts itself out without your emotions getting involved.

Let it.

Building things takes a long time.

And you probably know that there are three ways to build:

First, the rusher. These folks feel anxious about not having shipped yet. They’re afraid of what others will say, so they ship rushed junk.

Second, the perfectionist. These folks don’t build. They think about building, afraid to put a foot wrong. They ship nothing.

Third, the sustainable. These folks build at the pace that works for them. They don’t rush, nor do they over-think. They just do.

The third type gets things done they’ll be proud of.

The third type then gets to focus on spreading the word, one drip at a time, at their own pace, as people find their work in their timing.

Their work may explode, or it may not. They know that things only explode because of random, FOMO, or because the work was good enough and the timing just happened to be right.

They don’t rely on explosions. They don’t fear the opinions of others. They simply doing the work.

Be the third type of creator.

One of these may sound like a bad thing to you.

But not everyone chooses the same answer.

Do you create or reduce risk?

CEOs reduce risk. That’s why shareholders like them, the value of their stock is more stable, and there’s less chance of volatile trading activity based on a newsbreak.

Founders create risk. That’s because they’re making something where their was previously nothing, and the very act of doing that carries the risk of that new thing not working.

It’s tricky to create and reduce risk at the same time.

And you add very little if you do neither.

So back to the question.

Do you create, or reduce, risk?

Your answer may tell you some things about what it means for you to thrive.

SaaS businesses have a big problem.

It may not be obvious to start with. Or even for many years.

But eventually, it shows up:

How do you end a SaaS project gracefully?

Think about it:

We used to buy software on discs, and could run it anytime we wanted. And if we never changed our hardware, the product would run basically forever.

But the SaaS world is littered with expired domain names or condolence letter landing pages… projects that may have been great, right up until the point they weren’t: because they were shut down and taken away.

There’s a whole world of opportunity for us to explore here:

• Could we make offline/local versions of our work?
• Could we sell self-hosted versions of our work?
• Could we make our server/operating costs lower so we can run it indefinitely?
• Could we modify pricing for retired products, so that it breaks even and lives on?
• Something else we have yet to think of?

If we make great work, we can distribute it forever even if it doesn’t sell like crazy to begin with, or if it’s time to move on.

There are options.

And having an option in hand could let customers feel even more confident in buying your product.

Because they know it’s never going away.

This is a rare skill:

Learning to filter what can wait from what cannot.

Learn it and live with no regrets. Fail to learn it and find yourself working harder and harder yet feeling more and more ‘behind’.

For isntance, your new project can wait. A market opportunity may pass you by, but that’s the trade for waiting. The project will still be there when you return to it, as will your ability to start new projects.

Conversely, watching your baby grow up cannot wait. There is no pause button; once a chapter is over, it’s over, and you cannot get it back. The memories were either seized in the moment, or lost forever.

Learn the difference, prioritise accordingly, and live with fewer regrets.

You may need to hear this today.

During market research, ChatGPT cited a successful biz, noting:

“While revenue is a useful metric for evaluating a company’s financial performance, it is not the only factor that determines success or failure.”

Stop comparing.

Start creating.