Getting Started

30x500 / Bootstrapping / Getting Started / Stories — 2 Comments
7
May 13

Why You Should Do A Tiny Product First

NOTE: The Bootcamp has been moved to June 15/16, so we can give both BaconBizConf and the bootcamp the attention they deserve. Expect an official announcement this week!

So, one of the major changes that Alex and I are making to 30×500 is to teach our students to create an educational product first. What’s an educational product, or infoproduct? Anything small that teaches (which isn’t software): an ebook, a report, a white paper, a screencast, a video series, a workshop.

Why? Well… let me tell you a little story.

(I say “story” because this is part memory, part extrapolation from their blog, part what I’ve heard, and part what I imagined.)

How 37signals got their start

You’ve heard of 37signals, right? They’re the makers of Basecamp, Campfire, and Highrise. The authors of the New York Times best-selling Getting Real and *Rework *. They’re a bootstrapped product dream team, with a monthly revenue in the millions… and it has been that way for years.

But on January 1, 2003, 37signals rang in the New Year as a tiny consultancy — just a few people. They had no apps, no books. Basecamp wasn’t even a glimmer in Jason Fried’s eye. Certainly, 37signals had a small measure of industry name recognition, and good clients. Software-and-publishing juggernauts, however, they were not.

That was all about to change.

Their first product wasn’t what you’d think

You’d think: Basecamp. We all know Basecamp came first, right? Wellll… yes, it came first among their software. But it went live a year after their first product, an industry whitepaper they called Evaluating 25 E-Commerce Search Engines. It was 45 pages and sold for $79. (Two years later, they decided to give it away for free.)

That’s right: 37signals started with an ebook.

An ebook? Why?! They could design & build software!

Certainly, 37signals was capable of designing & developing their own web app right away. So why didn’t they?

Well, if only I were psychic! I’d love to delve into the depths of Jason Fried’s no doubt immense brain and report the exact scenario. But because I’m not, I can, instead, do the next best thing — quote their blog:

We’re not designers, or programmers, or information architects, or copywriters, or customer experience consultants, or whatever else people want to call themselves these days… Bottom line: We’re risk managers. Designers who sell “design,” programmers who sell “code,” information architects who sell “diagrams” are selling the wrong thing. The thing to sell is reduced risk for the client. That’s what people want.[/quote]

That was from a post titled Eureka, dated August 13, 2003 (7 months after their report launched, 6 months before Basecamp launched).

It sounds to me like the Signals were figuring out that the outcome for the customer was more important than the tool, process, or skill used to create it.

If a 45-page report can solve a problem, why wouldn’t they start there?

Of course, that wasn’t the only benefit for them (or their customers)

And that’s why I recommend that everyone start with screencasts, an ebook, a workshop, a report, a white paper — yes, everyone, that includes you.

Think about it:

How long does it take to create your first software product? It seems to me, based on my excavacation of their old blog posts, that it took 8-10 months for them to build Basecamp. How long would a 45-page report take, by comparison? Not long at all.

And while a $79 report certainly wouldn’t make millions a month, it probably made the 37signals guys a few grand… at least . Which probably wasn’t all that remarkable considering they were consulting for big companies at the same time. But the first time you make $1,000 in product dollars, you will be forever transformed. It is entirely unlike consulting or working for a paycheck. So, for this small product, and small investment of time & resources, the 37signals guys got their first taste of product life . And it seems they were hooked.

They got to see results within days or weeks: build, then sell. And when they sold, they learned all kinds of things: What it takes to deliver a product. How many questions people ask before. What conversion rates are. How much support people need after. How most customers are happy (and silent). How (not) badly it hurts to give a refund. And as a bonus, ebooks don’t crash or require special servers.

Plus, they started to learn how to sell a low-touch product instead of a high-touch personal service .

Speaking of service, their report did one more thing…

Who’s more trustworthy on a design topic: a general design firm, or a design firm who wrote a white paper on that exact topic and who sells it for a rather healthy price? No contest. Any client who needed ecommerce search results designed would pick 37signals over another consulting agency, all other things being equal.

So while the 37signals guys were gaining product experience, they were also attracting clients. That’s a lot of bang for your buck.

Again, I’m speculating about the specifics of their experience. But I’ve seen this pattern over & over in my own work and so many of my friends & students who have taken this path: Create a product to break away from consulting, and it brings you more & better clients while you work your way to that goal.

That’s why you should copy from the best

Make your first product an infoproduct, like 37signals did.

Now, you might be thinking: “But, Amy, I’m hardly 37signals.” To which I would say: “Exactly!” When 37signals started out in products, neither were they . They weren’t the 37signals we think of today, not hardly. They were a good little design firm. They were passionate. They had very good (but not incredible) work and very good (but not earthshattering) clients. And they made it work.

If they could do it, so can you.

And heck, as far as we know, if they didn’t start small… maybe they never would have grown so big. Maybe Basecamp never would have happened, if they missed out on the lessons delivered by a tiny little 45-page white paper at $79 a pop.

Want some help to get there?

Then you may be interested in the 30×500 Accelerated Bootcamp, on June 15/16, as initially described in my post 30×500 Is Dead, Long Live 30×500. It’ll cost $1,550. (Less if you are an alum, or attended the Launch Roundtable, or will be attending BaconBizConf — we got your back! :) )

We’ll be launching it soon, so get on the list!

Be the first to hear about the 30×500 2-day Bootcamp:


Bootstrapping / Getting Started / Talks & Recordings — 23 Comments
22
Jan 13

Nathan Barry’s $5k App Challenge: My Seasoned Bootstrappy Advice

I think Nathan Barry is the bee’s knees. He’s been killing it with his info products: The App Design Handbook and Designing Web Applications.

Nathan Barry and His Books

Even before he announced his Web App Challenge, to build an app from scratch that would reach $5,000/mo revenue in 6 mos, I was sure it would only be a matter of time til he turned his hand to a recurring revenue product.

Because once you get that first product dollar in your hot little hand, you’re hooked for life. It’s better than drugs. And subscription income is even better.

There were a few things in Nathan’s App Challenge that set my worrydar a-beeping. This ain’t my first rodeo, as you know. It wasn’t his first rodeo, either, having grossed nearly six figures off his ebook/video packages.

But… there’s just something special about The Next Big Product that makes a person go a lil crazy. (I know, because I’ve been there.)

So I got on the bullhorn (aka Skype) with Nathan and we had a conversation, which he very generously allowed me to reprint here.

We talk about…

  • why doctors, lawyers, indian chiefs sound like great niches but are actually horrible
  • what bootstrapping really means
  • the peril of the white whale project (Second Product Syndrome, to wit)
  • the issues with outsourcing
  • why customer development can be one big tail-chase

I edited our Skype transcript just a tiny bit for length and content, but neither one of us is big on the chitchat so I think you’ll find it very readable (and info-packed!).

Me & Nathan Talking About His App Experiment

NOTE: Nathan is in italics. I’m in regular type.

Amy: So this is the key thing I wanted to warn you against:

“What I do know is that it will be a targeted niche. That may be lawyers, real estate agents, landscapers, insurance agents, construction companies, or pretty much anyone else.” — Nathan’s post

I know Hacker News types think that’s a great list of niches, but it’s actually a really terrible one. You can’t sell to ANY of those people.

Nathan: Okay, do you mean sell online?

At all. Bootstrapping a business is about learning to punch above your weight. The only way to punch above your weight is to use every advantage you have.

Not only do those audiences not buy things, not only are they scattered and incoherent and unprofessional and in many cases incompetent and/or broke… you’re throwing away every advantage you have.

With my existing audience you mean?

Yep.

You’re right… I’m struggling with that. I want to find a painful problem to solve, but haven’t found one in the web design (ish) space.

You have $80k in the bank that says otherwise.

So I wanted to find something really targeted where there was a very painful problem that software could solve.

True.

Targeted is worthless if you can’t find the people or they don’t want to buy. Woo! laser targeted goose eggs!

That $80k in book sales is all one off revenue, short of starting a training membership site, I don’t see how to turn that into recurring revenue.

It took four of us 3 months to build Freckle. You’re not gonna get anywhere on $5k. You will not find customers to invest in the product… unless you do presales, which I doubt you’ll do unless you have confidence the product will be done in a reasonable time frame.

My plan was to do presales. Then do all the design and front-end dev myself.

I’ve never seen anyone do successful presales for a software product, for the record.

[NOTE: Here we are talking about presales as an alternative to substantial customer investment in the product, meaning more than just a few folks signing up for $30 or whatever. At least that's how I interpreted it! I'm not saying I've never seen anyone sign up a handful of customers for a small commitment before shipping.]

That’s good to know.

So I know what position you’re in, believe it or not. It’s easy to take your success for granted and think you have to do bigger and better. Recurring revenue is nice but you’re not in any danger of having to go back to work, it sounds like to me.

No, I’m really not.

If you start chasing down a white whale, you could potentially lose all the momentum you’ve gained.

Actually, recurring revenue is fucking great, but I can’t even begin to imagine being in this biz without being able to develop my own software. Being at the mercy of a flaky freelance developer? Fucking horrible. And make no mistake, they’re all flaky; it’s simple economics.

It’s true. I can even be a flaky freelancer on other projects. I’ve seen it in myself.

I’m working on learning Ruby (I already write my own iPhone apps in Obc-C), but that will take some time.

[a little bit redacted cuz it's insider-y about a third party]

Nathan: So here’s another thought: this gives me all kinds of food for my blog. Posts that will help sell my book. My last two posts have pulled in a lot of sales the last couple days. So this project will grow my brand even more.

IF you have a project. :)

… Not that that is a reason to do it if the main idea still sucks… Right.

Take it from me. I got bored with what I had and decided I had to do something bigger and better. It ended up with me spending 2 years and $200k on something I had to shut down.

Charm?

Yup.

You can still build an app… altho I’d recommend you start with something in between. But if you want to maximize your return, you need to go vertical.

What’s an example of in between?

A friend of mine makes $15k/mo selling an iOS component. Themes, webinars. What’s wrong with a monthly class? We did monthly workshops for a while there and it was great, until the other stuff started making so much money it didn’t make sense and I was tired.

Got it.

Yeah, I’d like to do some classes. Brennan‘s shown me how great they can be for revenue.

The more you teach live, the more you are exposed to people’s problems. People who are willing to pay, and who are already trained to give you money.

Good point. For me software is the ultimate goal, so it seems like a waste of time to delay it. Especially since I have plenty of time and money right now (though I’d rather not burn it up). Maybe I’ll look harder for a product that I could sell to my existing customers/readers.

You’ve shown with Freckle that you can enter a saturated market like time tracking and still do well.

“Saturation” is a load of bullshit :)

Really it just shows the market exists.

It’s more than that. So much more than that. If a million people use Harvest, there’s no way they’re all served well by the same tool. The presence of other products doesn’t just show opportunity, it CREATES opportunity. Because wherever there’s a big biz, there will be lots of dissatisfied customers.

Good point. I hadn’t thought about it like that.

That’s why they pay me the big bucks. ;)

You ought to develop your own software, if you’re determined to do a software biz. Otherwise you will always be at the mercy of somebody else. I don’t know ANYONE… ANYONE… who outsourced their product and made a success out of it. And considering I did freelance development for the past 12 years, that’s saying something special.

Okay. Yeah, that is.

It doesn’t mean you have to do it all.

You don’t think outsourcing could work as a temporary solution? Or is it just building on a house of cards?

You have a kid, right?

Yeah, I do.

In a perfect world, which is better — taking care of your own child, or hiring a full-time nanny?

Taking care of your own kid.

Why?

Because you can raise and care for them in the way you know best.

Yeah. And the nanny won’t love the child the way you do.

Damn. That’s a good analogy.

No freelancer is gonna love your project the way you will. And if you accidentally find one who will, look out, because that will create conflict in the end, because in the end it’s YOUR project, not theirs. But probably what will happen is you run out of money… (your budget, I mean). Then it will grind to a halt. Then, if you haven’t been doing your own dev work, you will be unable to pick it up. Or you’ll have a falling out and need a bug fixed. Or they’ll get busy with a new contract and won’t be available when you need them. Hiring & firing is exhausting, btw.

I’ve had that happen before.

Me too. Over & over. Luckily I wasn’t at their mercy.

You are absolutely right. I’ll buckle down learning Rails.

Good. It’ll be worth the wait.

For a more direct question, what do you think about Dane Maxwell’s approach to finding problems?

I’m not super familiar with it. What does he say?

Basically choose a market and talk to people until you can find a really painful problem they have. Then build a specific solution for that. So get them on the phone and try to find if there are problems (paperwork, or other specific tasks) that can be automated with software.

So, basic customer development.

Right.

I don’t like [pre-/potential] customer interviews.

Because they feed you BS?

Not intentionally. People put in that position, most want to be helpful. They also don’t really pay attention to what they’re doing most of the time.

So what you get is people being too nice, too helpful, too agreeable, too optimitsic about what they’d buy, and how their behaviors might change. Meanwhile they overlook all the really good stuff, most of the time.

IMO, the only way to get good data is to observe without them knowing you’re there… which is why I teach my students to analyze forum threads, blog posts, mailing lists, Twitter.

…[about customer interviews] The goal would be to get them to focus on the problem, and let you work on the solution.

Yeah, but look back over the convo we just had. How many of the problems I surfaced to you were ones you’d already thought of?

If I asked you, “where’s your pain with xyz?” how many would you have come up with?

Not very many. That’s my problem trying to come up with my own ideas for web apps.

I know them because I’m an expert. Not just cuz I went through them myself and am hyper-aware of it, but because I am surrounded by people doing these things all day, and I watch what they DO.

I don’t sit them down and question them.

This is another reason to not target an audience far from your own.

I guess I need to try it some more for myself and see if I can make something of it. Instinctively, I think it will work.

Which?

Interviewing to find a problem that is causing businesses pain. But that’s also where the presale request comes in. Because I need that to validate their opinion. To see if they really mean what they said, or if they were just trying to be helpful and make up things I might be interested in.

Plus I’ll look really hard at markets I can already influence.

Can’t hurt to try.

I suspect what you’ll find is that you won’t be able to get money based on them describing a problem. People don’t have very good imaginations.

[here we talk about a specific pain Nathan came up with that he didn't actually get from customer interviews, but rather observations of himself & others, which turns out to be the one he later picked to move forward with… one that his audience has… one that his mentors could use… and one that impressed me.]

So, I still plan to move forward scouting for problems, but I’ll look especially hard in areas that can serve my existing audience. Right now I don’t want to cancel my challenge, but I really appreciate the feedback. I wish I had talked to you before publishing that post.

I also plan to do some mockups and further research on the [redacted] concept. I think the market that understands how important they are would be willing to pay to get it right.

Note: I never thought it was unsalvageable. Your challenge, I mean.

The main key is to use what you’ve got and not get yourself in a position where you can’t work on your own product.

Good. But I see what you mean. I think I was making it too difficult (without reason).

I’m sure there was a reason somewhere :) I think we all tend to take our success for granted. So we want to move onto something harder.

True. And I do like a good challenge.

Me too… it’s a kind of a sickness sometimes ;)

The other thing I should say is that I have a crazy amount of respect for you and really appreciate your blog posts, training, and especially this conversation.

[Yep, I left this in because I HAVE A GIANT EGO MWAHAHA. J/k.]

My pleasure. It’s always a pleasure to help somebody who helps themselves.

Well, I should get back to my rails tutorials now. Thank you so much for the advice!

Closing notes from me

One thing I forgot to bring up is how long it takes subscription income to pick up. Even if all things go perfectly for Nathan, I highly doubt he’ll be able to get to $5,000/mo in subscription revenue by mid-summer.

But it sounds to me like that part of his experiment isn’t the important part to him, anyway.

If you shoot for $5,000/mo and get to only $3,000/mo… that’s still an extra $36,000 a year you didn’t have before, and subscription income can be grown.

Of course, there’s no such thing as passive income, not even subscription income.

Want more of this? You’ll want to follow me on Twitter or subscribe to this blog via email:

Don’t miss out just cuz you don’t open your feed reader. Get my bootstrapping advice delivered straight to your inbox. :) Just drop your email in the form below!

More from Nathan…

Nathan’s blogging about his challenge, as promised.

Getting Started / Hard Work / Psychology — 66 Comments
13
Aug 12

Why Blacksmiths are Better at Startups than You

Blacksmithing

Translations: русский язык

There’s a great show called Mastercrafts, a mini-series documentary from the BBC. I recommend you go out and find a way to watch it, right now.

Mastercrafts is all about — surprise! — master crafts:

  • blacksmithing
  • stonemasonry
  • thatching
  • hand weaving
  • stained glass
  • green wood furniture-making

Trades we barely even think about today; obsolete, cottage industries.

Nevertheless, there are still people who dream of learning these trades, and that’s where Mastercrafts comes in. Each episode follows the trials & triumphs of 3 would-be students during an intense 6-week course at the hands of a master craftsman.

I’ve watched the series twice, and loved it both times. Because it turns out that learning to work iron and weave by hand are perfect corollaries to founding a startup.

Whoever cast the shows did a fantastic job. Each episode features a great mix of student personalities. And because it’s a kind of reality show — although a very refined, smoking-jacket-wearing reality show — those personalities are brought to the fore. All the while the students are shaping stone, hanging thatch, cutting class, spinning wood on a foot-operated lathe in a tent, or hammering hot iron, they’re being aggressively human. We see their best sides… and their worst.

Every flaw you’ll ever see in a “startup founder,” you’ll see play out in Mastercrafts. And if you sit & watch the whole series in one or two sittings, the patterns will leap out at you.

Green Wood

Bad behavior you’ll recognize

Here are some of the personality flaws I’ve spotted:

Several students in different episodes are obsessed with “expressing themselves” instead of following the brief (the job specification). They waste precious time in “creative” noodling instead of actually getting shit done.

Others indulge themselves in childish boredom and rebellion when it comes to the repetition of early stages of learning, instead of committing to the basics with all their hearts.

Several more wield perfectionism as a weapon against their own achievement… a weapon, and an excuse.

Several show a great deal of self-importance, unwarranted — they talk themselves up, they expect they’ll win, they treat the advice of the master as irrelevant, or they crumble at the slightest criticism.

Others engage in bitter self-denigration, unwarranted — fatalistically wailing, “I’ll never be able to do this,” when experiencing the simplest of setbacks. They want to throw in the towel at the first bump. And the second. And the third.

Finally, and perhaps most fatally, many of the students seem to have zero patience whatsoever. They expect to jump straight to results, straight to the fun stuff — the creative stuff. They don’t want to put in their dues. They think they’re special. So they stamp their foot petulantly when their shortcuts fail.

These students claim to want to master a craft, but they resist the very nature of “craftsmanship.” Even though, to even get the apprenticeship, they had to apply and interview and disrupt their lives for 6 weeks or more!

Thatching

Wait? So the show sucks?

I’m sure I’m making the show sound like a kind of horror parade of bitchiness, but nothing could be further from the truth! All but a few of these divas are transformed over 6 weeks by the simple, honest, difficult work, and the rewards of making something real.

They find themselves achieving extraordinary things… just as soon as they decide to get over their crap.

This transformation is wonderful to watch. It’s LIFE.

And because it’s life — because, if you watch it, you’ll recognize your coworkers, your friends, and probably yourself — we can’t help but ask…

Why? Why is this the universal experience?

This is something I’ve spent half a lifetime pondering. Here’s my conclusion, in progress.

The reason the students resist the process every step of the way is because their entire self-concept is at risk:

They’ve never worked in an environment where results are all that matters. They’ve been coddled by parents, the school system, and their bosses. Their work is abstract; they rarely if ever see the end product of their work in use, they rarely if ever meet anyone who uses the product of their work in its final form.

Until now, they’ve always worked for approval, abstracted from results: the question has always been, Is this the answer the teacher wants? or Did the committee like it? — not Is it true? and Did it help the customer?

It’s as if Galileo dropped his ball and feather from the top of the tower and, as they fell, sought to convince his audience by argument instead of simply looking.

This is the way most of us grow up to live, learn, and work. And it’s toxic.

Spoiled children

Have you ever engaged with a truly spoiled child?

It’s tempting to think of spoiled children as cold, calculating brats, calmly deploying tantrums as tools of manipulation. But if you’ve ever been a spoiled child, you’ll know this is far from the truth. When a spoiled child doesn’t get what he wants, he feels like the world is spinning completely out of control. He is a victim of his emotions (and he really feels as badly as he acts).

A spoiled child literally can’t cope with the reality where things don’t happen the way he expects. He’s held prisoner by his feelings.

NewImage

And a coddled child literally can’t cope when his excuses don’t work.

When the world fails to deliver the expected result to a spoiled child, or a coddled child, they feel like their world is ending. Their egos react accordingly, to force external change, to protect their mental model of the universe.

Sound familiar?

When you live and work in an insulated life — divorced from the end result of your work — you are spoiled. You’re graded more on your ability to please and manage gatekeepers than your work product. Gatekeepers are human; humans can be persuaded to accept excuses. That doesn’t apply to me. I know, but. I’m not good at that. What I really want to do is. The client said. I tried my best.

Find yourself dropped into a reality-driven environment and blam! Your carefully groomed gatekeeper skills are useless. Your ego is at risk. And it fights back.

thatching 2

Stone doesn’t care if you’ve had a hard day. Iron won’t stay hotter longer just because you’re feeling hesitant with the hammer. If you don’t get your thatch right, it will leak, and that’s that. There’s no room for error.

It must feel terrifying.

Ah, you might be thinking, but in Mastercrafts, these students are being taught & graded by a master. The master is a human. They are trying to please the master. The master is a gatekeeper, right? The master will accept excuses.

In theory, yes. But in reality? Not these masters. There’s nothing more pragmatic than a blacksmith or thatcher in 2012. They’re pragmatic because they would never survive if they weren’t.

These masters know the score. They know they serve reality and no higher authority. They know reality can’t be denied. Whether that reality is the one where the fabric is flawed, the stone doesn’t measure level, the chair breaks, or the client won’t pay… their feelings don’t matter, their excuses won’t hold, and no amount of belief in their unique value will change that.

As the master blacksmith said, when the customer asks for “10 more of these” they’re going to be bloody upset when you come back with a newer, creative design and say “But this was more fun to make.” And then you don’t get paid.

This is the 21st century condition in a nutshell: We are abstracted people living abstracted lives. We don’t know how to live any other way. When we find ourselves suddenly butting up against hard, disintermediated reality, our egos cry out like spoiled children, and kick and scream and pitch fits.

That’s what happens when these abstracted people arrive in the workshops of the master craftswoman on Day 1, thinking,

“Gee, I work with fabric a lot. I could totally weave by hand on a loom. People hundreds of years ago did it. How hard could it be?”

The answer, of course, is incredibly fucking hard. Mindnumbingly hard. Weaving is like playing a pipe organ only with the opportunity to break and snap and knot and twist. Make a mistake, and there goes hours — maybe days! — of configuration alone.

NewImage

Mastering a craft is HARD. It’s HARD, and their spoiled little inner brats thought it’d be easy. No wonder they rebel. No wonder they indulge their “perfectionism” or chafe bitterly at boredom.

It’s this same attitude which leads you to abandon your project at the first sign of trouble. The same attitude which causes you to noodle endlessly on features. To delay marketing; to believe that if you build it, they will come. Or, hell, to ever build it or ship it at all. To seek feedback from your peers instead of your customers… to spend more time catering to venture capitalists than the people who’ll pay for your product. To lavish your energy on “innovating” instead of mastering the basics.

Infinitely more endeavors have failed due to childish misbehavior than due to the market, the economy, the customers, or the competition.

Business is a reality engine:

Don’t work on the basics every day? You’ll fail.

Don’t market constantly? You’ll fail.

Don’t solve your customer’s pains? You’ll fail.

Don’t ship? Ha!

There you go: business in four sentences.

Business is truly a mastercraft. Attack it rigorously, honestly, and openly — and commit to mastering your spoiled inner child — and oh! the places you’ll go. Reality will become your fondest friend. Your driving questions will evolve from Does this make me sound smart? to Does this motivate a customer to buy? — from Gee, what do I feel like doing today? to How will I make my customers’ lives better today?

You’ll make things with your hands and your brain that will help people, people you get to meet, to talk to, to learn from. And you will feel rewarded.

Forging Metal

If you’re not in it for the long haul, though, don’t bother. If you’re too special to practice the basics, don’t bother. If you’d rather feel validated than achieve a result, don’t bother. If you’d rather defend the status quo than grow, give up now.

That is the decision you’ll face every day:

Do you just want to splash about in the kiddie pool and rebel at the first sign of seriousness…

Or do you want to craft a real business and a real life, with reality as your favorite ally? Do you want to surprise yourself with how much you can achieve?

Do you have what it takes to become a master craftsman?

NewImage

UPDATE: This is what you’ll learn in 30×500!

The philosophy and practice of craftsmanship doesn’t come out of nowhere — it comes from being around the right people, learning the right things, in the right environment, and practice, practice, practice. It’s almost impossible to do it alone.

That’s why I teach 30×500, a product launch class. If you’re a designer, developer, or writer, and you want to run your own business & create the kind of personal and financial freedom you desire, you should check it out.

Learn how I built my product business to over $500,000 a year in revenue, and about how I can help you learn & develop the skills you need to create your business with a craftsmanlike attitude.

NOTE: Applications open on Friday Sept 21st. There are only 75 seats available & it always sells out (this will be the 6th edition!).

Drop your email in the box below for free lessons and a chance to grab a seat for yourself:


Funmail Guarantee: Obv there’s no obligation whatsoever. You can unsubscribe at any time. And I promise to send you nothing but information on the class, free goodies, stories, samples and discounts and awesome stuff like that!

Day to Day / Getting Started / Hard Work — 7 Comments
1
Mar 12

Letter to My Struggling Baby Business – Feb, 2009

Par Avion

The date: February 2009. Two months after the (unglorified) launch of Freckle Time Tracking, one month after the surprisingly not bad launch of the JavaScript Performance Rocks! beta. What with all that, the consulting, and the traveling, and the drama with our flakey partners in Freckle, and being newly married and in a foreign country where I didn’t speak the language, and and and… I was having a really, really tough time. So I sat right down and wrote myself a letter. And signed it “with love” the way you do. Wait, that’s a song. Anywayz…

Dear new business,

I know you feel like you’re having a rough time these past couple months. Things seem really swell, and you’re up up up, until suddenly a needle appears, and bursts your little bubble, and crash! Back down to earth again.

Or lower.

Because after the impact—smack!—you realize that while things were feeling so wonderfully amazing and fresh and new, that was probably because you were selectively forgetting about less happy-fun things that “have” to get done.

It’s like hitting the ground all over again. Smack! Smack! Ow!

I know that when this happens—and it’s happened several times—you feel guilty as well as deluded. You end up wondering if the happy stuff can only ever come out of denial.

New Business, I want to tell you something important: Change can be really hard.

I know you’ve experienced a couple of overnight life-changing epiphanies, which seemed effortless at the time, and were just totally awesome.

But that’s not usually how things work. And those lucky, beautiful, awesome breaks have made it unfairly difficult for all the ordinary, long-term slugging-it-out change that has to happen most of the time.

With ordinary, long-term, slugging-it-out change, sometimes there are “casualties.” Sometimes things don’t get done. Sometimes people don’t like you any more. That sucks, but not changing sucks more.

And I think that sometimes you forget that those beautiful overnight changes came from years of not changing at all. They were unacted-upon but desperately needed change, bottled up for years. The change champagne cork just finally exploded, and thank god for that.

Speaking of champagne, don’t forget to celebrate the victories you’ve already won… just because you find yourself looking around and what you see is a lot of stuff you’ve still got to do before you’re really free.

Think about it… you’re already ahead of schedule. You wanted to be in place by January 2010, and yet you’ll be in nearly full force by April 2009, instead.

That’s pretty awesome! And yet you are all angsty and morose that it’s not now, dammit.

I don’t want to say you SHOULD still be high on that, but it’s worth thinking about when you’re feeling in the dumps because not everything is done and perfect yet, and leftover bits of Old Business are still hanging about in in the corners, glaring at you and making you feel tremendously guilty.

I know you feel stressed out, and harried, and overcommitted, and totally overwhelmed right now and pissed at everyone.

But remember: you’re still in transition. You’re fucking up. You’re also kicking ass. At the same time. That is possible, and yes it’s awkward, but that’s where the value lies, doesn’t it? If it were too easy, that’d make you mopey too. I know it would—I know you.

Butterflies look great a couple days after they come out of their cocoon. They really look neat inside the cocoon, too. It’s the bit in the middle, with the squeezing, and the wrenching, and tearing, and wrinkled wings, all damp with cocoon goo, that we don’t tend to think about. It’s amazing and miraculous, but also tough and uncomfortable and really quite gross.

But you can’t have the before & after without the in-between.

As long as you can survive my redonkulous butterfly metaphors, you’ll be all right.

Love and admiration,

Me

February 25, 2009

Horrifying butterfly metaphors aside, I was right. Now, it’s 3 years and one week later. I quit consulting in January 2010 as planned, even though our product income wasn’t quite there yet. It was hard, again. I should have written another letter. But I made it through, and our business is going awesome. All our dreams are coming true.

I am so thankful to the Me of Yesteryear who, for once in my life, broke out of her cycle of short-termism, who for once didn’t give up, and stuck it out through all the hard shit. It was worth it.

What would you put in YOUR letter to yourself?

Getting Started / Selling — 8 Comments
22
Sep 11

Niches Don’t Work – but Worldviews Do

Hi there! This is an excerpt from 30×500 Launch Class, a class designed to help you create & launch your very own paying product.

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“Find a Niche”

When you get into business, you can’t swing a cat without being told you have to find a niche.

What the hey?

Well, niches are groups of people. Typically a niche defines a group of people by slots and numbers: middle-aged housewives, young men with disposable income and technical skills between the age of 18 and 35, white Republicans with an income of $70,000 to $100,000, new mothers, cat fanciers, Rails developers, web designers.

But take any group of new mothers, cat fanciers, young men, Rails developers, web designers, or white Republicans with a firmly middle-class income, and you’ll find they vary hugely when it comes to opinions.

And, let’s face it — external attributes don’t matter nearly as much as opinions do. There’s a reason the saying doesn’t go, “External attributes are like assholes: everybody has ‘em, and they all stink.”

Everybody’s obsessed with finding a niche when what they should be doing is expressing a worldview.

Overcome Inertia & Inspire Movement

The best way to use the Laws of Customer Physics [see below!] to your favor is to take a stand. This is more powerful — and easier to implement — than a massive advertising budget.

If you respect the awesome power of worldviews to direct attention and interest, you can use them to lure the Right People to be your customers:

If your plan is to be bland, to make your product middle-of- the-road so you don’t offend anyone (because you think your market is everyone), then everyone will ignore it equally. Your product will exert no gravitational force; extremely few customers will be moved.

If, on the other hand, you have a worldview (or taste) that drives your product, and you let it out, you’ll exert gravity. You’ll pull the Right People in, when they land on your site or pass by your store, and feel OH YEAH! THAT’S FOR ME!

You’ll also repel the Wrong People. Result: everybody’s happy!

This is positioning. It’s messaging. It’s branding. It’s purple cows, and differentiation, and customer segmentation. Those things are all important — but it’s the worldview, the tastes and beliefs, that drive them. If you try to do big, business-y sounding things before determining your worldview (and the worldview of your customers), you’re going to find yourself in deep doo-doo.

Your worldview, and the worldview of your product, have to get in at the ground floor, and make nice with the worldviews of your Audience.

This happy confluence of worldviews should influence everything, from feature choice to the way you write.

This is the way to make a name for yourself… and make sales. Everything else is just struggling against the tide.

Learn More… Free 39-page Guide to Worldviews!

Yup, I’m releasing two whole lessons from my always-sells-out 30×500 Product Launch Class for absolutely free. Yes, zilch, zippo, nada, nil.

(But wait! There’s more! — just kidding! Who do I look like, Ron Popeil?)

If you’re targeting developers, or even Ruby developers, or designers or even web designers who use WordPress, or freelance writers or even freelance writers in the business space… you’re making a mistake, because you’re working off the very ineffective concept of niches.

And you should definitely download my free guide to Worldviews, with a bonus introduction to the 3 Laws of Customer Physics. (Which cannot be denied & must be understood — unless you want your business to fall as fast as a feather OR a bowling ball in a vacuum)

For serious: check out this lesson. If it doesn’t rock your socks, you lose nothing!

But if it does rock your socks — and boy am I hearing a lot of great feedback! — then imagine what it would be like to have 3 full months of this kind of education delivered to your doorstep. Concise. Funny. Effective. Breathtakingly simple, once you read it. Actionable. Yup, that’s 30×500 in a nutshell.

But don’t take my word for it. Try it yourself. And read what some of my students have to say (below).

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Case Study – Adam Brault of AndYet

Adam and his team at &Yet are about to launch a new product called &! (“and bang”), which is a remarkably fresh take on team communication.

Here’s what he has to say about 30×500:

So I’ve had dozens of people recommend, ″The Entrepreneurs Guide to Customer Development″ which is a short version of the longer book. And read it, enjoyed it, thought there was a lot of value in it.

But the thing to me that it did not give was the most important piece which is what 30 x 500 did, and that is the right place to start. And to me the right place to start is everything. It’s demonstrated by the class itself and it’s demonstrated by Amy’s success.

If you don’t start in the right place, you can pivot all you want, you’re not going to get there.

Thanks to 30×500, we’ve got our process and we can just keep working the process and keep improving. And that’s just totally awesome And the materials! Honestly, the materials are so great. Amy is such a good writer. And it’s so entertaining, and really to the point in a way that’s very effective.

I just can’t say enough. I’ve told a lot of people like they should take the class.

I would pay ten times the amount I originally paid for the value that I got out of the class.

Take Charge – Take 30×500!

You don’t have to be a wageslave forever. (Or run on the hamster wheel of freelancing forever, either.) You can learn a system that will help you create paying products, that make money from the outset, with the least amount of stress and wasted effort and the highest possible chance for success.

30×500 will help you immensely.

Drop your name & email in the box below to qualify for a special pre-launch discount of $250:

Funmail Guarantee: Obv there’s no obligation whatsoever. You can unsubscribe at any time. And I promise to send you nothing but free goodies and samples and discounts and awesome stuff like that!

Digital Goods / Getting Started / Money — 9 Comments
11
Oct 10

Running the Numbers: Your First Infoproduct

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If you’re a freelancer, doing creative-y things, then it won’t take but a small push to get you from No Products zomg! to Hey I Gots a Product.

Let’s look at the numbers for Your First Infoproduct.

First up: Your Freelance Income

Say you typically charge $75/hr. Your rate may be higher or lower; adjust as necessary.

I bet you could make and begin to market an infoproduct in 75 hours or fewer. Dave Navarro says you can do one in a weekend. I agree.

That means your infoproduct would have a freelance opportunity cost of $5,625 (75 hours • $75 hourly billing).

Second: Launch Your Product

Price your short, sweet, punchy infoproduct at $19. Sell 75 copies at launch, that nets you $1,425.

Don’t freak. It’s not hard to sell 75 copies. If you have an audience of 200 to 400 people, and you create a product offer that speaks to them, that solves a problem for them, you’ll have no problem at all.

So, $5,625 (Hourly Potential Earnings, an opportunity cost of creating a product) minus $1,425 (Product Launch Earnings) is $4,200. Let’s call that the Wage Slave vs Freedom Gestalt. That’s still a big number, in favor of freelancing.

Or is it?

Ongoing Sales: Not Spectacular

You’ve done a little bit of other marketing: put a banner in your sidebar, blogged about your launch, posted on forums with it in your signature, basically made sure you didn’t commit the criminal mistake of Not Tellin’ Nobody.

So you keep selling copies. Slowly, of course, since you’re no marketing genius. Let’s say you sell another 15 copies per month for the first 2 months. That’s $285 x 2 = $570.

Your total product earnings are now up to $1,995 (hurry, act now!). Gestalt is still big.

Ehhhn: The Sound of a Mild Additional Effort

Now, you’re a smart cookie. You know a product won’t coast forever just on one push. (That’d defy physics, for one thing.)

So you gird your loins and do you a little bit of extra marketing. Take two hours of your time ($150 opportunity cost) and write 3 more blog posts that appeal to the audience for your book, create an infographic, release a bit of open source code, post more on forums, and so on. Update your sales page with some customer quotes. Send a couple review copies out. Your Gestalt increases slightly.

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The Magic Formula: Earnings = Reward x Effort

Hey, what’s this you find? That tiny bit of effort was almost like another launch!

Sell 30 copies. $1995 + $570 (30 copies) = $2,565.

You now rest on your well-padded laurels. Your monthly sales are up to 20 copies a month on average, though, because of your extra bit of marketing. For the rest of the year (10 months), you earn an average of $380 a month in sales — $3,800 in total.

$3,800 (10 months’ coasting) plus $2,565 (launch, relaunch, first 2 months’ sales) = $6,365.

Your original Hourly Potential Earnings was $5,625 plus two extra hours of marketing at $150 = $5,775.

Congratulations. You did better than break-even on on the opportunity cost, by 10.2%.

Your Wage Slave vs Freedom Gestalt is a negative number: doing a single freelance job, for the same amount of time, would have been 10.2% less profitable.

The Numbers Again: In Short

You charge $75/hr. You spent 75 hours (+ 2 later) creating and marketing your product.

$75 x 75 hours = $5,625
$75 x 2 hours = $150
Total Hourly Potential Earnings (freelancing): $5,775

You priced your infoproduct at $19, and sold 75 copies at launch. You then sold 15 copies a month for two months (average). You did another mini-launch and sold 30 copies. Your extra marketing paid off with an increase to 20 copies per month for the next 10 months (average).

$19 x 75 copies = $1,425
$19 x 15 copies x 2 months = $570
$19 x 30 copies = $570
$19 x 20 copies x 10 months = $3,800
Total Income from Sales: $6,365

That math is a no-brainer, if you ask me.

Whaddaya say?

Have you been running the numbers?

Oh yeah. Kelly and I are doing a free 90-minute online class on infoproducts on Oct 29th. In preparation for making a full-day workshop on making and selling your very first infoproduct. Interested? Subscribe to my Advanced Discount List for the heads’ up & discounts. Or follow me on Twitter for the heads’ up, but no discounts. Your choice!