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,...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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....

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...