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:

Tickets are ON SALE NOW! Woot! There are 45 26 16 10 tickets left!

YES. IT’S FINALLY HAPPENING!

We are putting on a SMALL, INTIMATE, and CHILLAXING bootstrapping conference here in Philadelphia on May 30th – 31st!

SMALL – Just 45 attendees

INTIMATE – Held in our awesome industrial loft-office, with a 1:10 speaker:attendee ratio

CHILLAXING –
Day 1 is headline talks, panels, & Q&A with generous breaks & catering
Day 2 is lightning talks and social/outdoor activities so we have more time to “network” (aka: meet & make friends, and learn from each other!) and see what The Most Historic Square Mile in America has to offer you!

It’s called BaconBizConf — cuz bootstrappers are bringin’ home the bacon! And it’s going to rock your world, if you let it.

Speakers…

So far we have:

1. The founders of a 15-person SaaS business
2. An automated marketing whiz who sells a mix of infoproducts, SaaS, and consulting
3. A relative newbie who started with ebooks and is just about to launch a software offering
4. another in the works… shhh!

And a host of experienced bootstrappers who will be in attendance, and giving 5-15 minute lightning talks. We expect the audience to be as awesome to talk to, and as interesting to know, as the speakers themselves!

Also: unlike the Roundtable we did last week, none of our headline speakers are 30×500 alums. They’re a truly diverse crowd!

And every headliner will give a talk that’s specifically HOW TO DO something that you can take and use in your business right away.

Meet Our Headline Speakers (so far!)

These are just some of the folks you’ll get to learn from if you come to BaconBizConf on May 30-31 in Philly:

PATRICK MCKENZIE

Yes, patio11. Yes, “the Bingo Card guy”… the former American salaryman living in Japan. Who made a high five-figure business out of selling bingo card software to teachers (the most notoriously tight-pursed market ever!). Who turned what he learned in that escapade into marketing and conversion optimization genius. In the flesh!

THE NAGELES from WILDBIT

Our second headliners are the best two-for-one deal ever: Chris and Natalie Nagele, founders of Wildbit. You may not know their company name, but you know their products: Beanstalk and Postmark. Two infrastructure services the startups of the world rely on.

Natalie and Chris have grown their bootstrapped business to 15+ employees in at least 3 countries. (It’s hard for me to keep track!) In addition to being brilliant and driven and full of great stories… they’re hilarious.

NATHAN BARRY

It seems like Nathan Barry came out of nowhere. But of course he didn’t. You may know Nathan from such products as The App Design Handbook and ConvertKit. But those are “only” the culmination of his bootstrapping product journey.

Not long ago (compared to our other speakers!), Nathan was able to quit his dayjob and go full steam ahead on his growing, bootstrapped product empire.

SOMEONE ELSE AWESOME!

We’re in talks with several folks to fill out our day with 1-2 more headline speaker slots, and to join our panels for compare & contrast, debate and Q&A. Every single person we’re in talks with is amazing. This is going to be epic!

Confirmed Lightning Talks for Day 2

Each of our lightning speakers will be teaching you one specific skill, or telling you one specific story and what they learned from it. Focus is what creates results! And these guys will focus:

• Brennan Dunn, Planscope (and The Blueprint, and, and, and…)
• Garrett Dimon, Sifter
• Ian Borders, MergePay, who’ll be skyping in from Thailand (wicked)
• Anthony Eden, who recently went full time on DNSimple, skyping in from France!
• Ben Curtis, Honeybadger.io and RailsKits fame
• Lindsay Nixon, Happy Herbivore, skyping in from CA (about her sleeper-hit business)
• Ian Landsman, Userscape
• Dave Martorana, Domino! in the App Store (for contrast: he’s going to talk about what it really takes to create a full-time iPhone game company!)
• Scott Watermasysk, Kickoff Labs
• more in the works!

Plan Your Trip

Like to start planning your trip now? We suggest that you …

ARRIVE: May 29th, afternoon (or earlier) (pre-party!)

DEPART: ideally June 1, but late in the day May 31st at the earliest! You don’t want to miss out on lightning talks & the activities we’ve got planned!

AIRPORT: PHL is just 15-20 min by taxi from the venue/nearby hotels

HOTELS: For walkability, look near 2nd St & Arch St, Philadelphia 19106. Here’s a map showing nearby hotels. (We recommend the Penn’s View and the Kimpton Monaco. Be careful with the hotels on the other side of the freeway; it can be an annoying walk. If you want to stay further afield, taxis in Philadelphia are plentiful and cheap!)

We’ve worked hard to make this event as affordable as possible. How much will it cost? For two days, $529. Your ticket price includes at least two catered meals, and fun activities on the 31st, and we’re working on the budget to see if we can do more.

BTW, we won’t be making a penny profit off BaconBizConf… any extra money we’ve got, we’ll put to work for you, using our long list of “Extra-Budget Awesomeness.” Repeat: This is not a money-maker for us, not at all! We’re doing this for the community. So there’ll BE a community!

(Won’t it be nice to go to a ‘startup’ event where there’s not a single talk about funding types or how to attract investors or unicorn-like hockey stick growth?)

We hope you’ll come hang out with us, learn with us, and have a blast with us in May!

Keep an eye out on our twitter stream, this blog…

PS — we’re not kidding about our razor thin margins. Would your business like to get in front of 45 driven bootstrappers who are motivated to pay for education and tools? Become one of our sponsors, and fund & brand a tasty catered meal or our after-party! Drop me a tweet at @amyhoy and if it seems like a good fit, I’ll email you!

I’ve got a ton of interview requests in my inbox right now. I don’t know when my answers to this one will be posted, so I wanted to share it with you right now:

Q: When you speak with others who haven’t started their own business, launched their own product such as a new online course, what do you find are the most typical reasons they state holding them back? Do you feel there are other reasons they don’t state that are holding them back? What did you do to overcome your hurdles and have you found ways to help others overcome theirs?

A: You want the real reason, or the reason people want to hear?

The real reason is: Nothing. Nothing is “holding them back.”

Most people don’t genuinely want to be responsible for their own financial fate. They may daydream about “running their own business some day,” but they leave those daydreams firmly in the realm of fantasy. They don’t research it, talk to people about it, read books, etc. They prefer the fantasy to the reality. And there’s nothing wrong with that… until they say that something else is “holding them back”. That turns an idle fantasy into a bulwark of lies.

That was true of me, too, for a long time. (About creating a product biz anyway — I was running a small consulting agency for ages.) While I didn’t claim something was holding me back, I did seem to simply… never… do it. Then I took a long vacation and was out of the loop for a month and heard a small, quiet voice saying, “You hate consulting. You fucking loathe it. You know what you need to do.”

Then I came back from my vacation and did it. We started building Freckle two months later.

So, what to do about this, if you realize it sounds familiar?

Nothing. Stop lying to yourself, for sure, but otherwise? There’s absolutely no way to get over the hurdle of not really wanting it… until you do want it.

The Class… The Legend

As you probably know, I developed a course called 30×500. The goal: to help other designers & developers (people like me!) do what I did — create a growing, profitable stable of products, without outside funding, on the side, to create both improved lives for their customers, and more freedom & money for themselves, too.

I’ve been teaching one variation of this class for 3 years straight. Holy narwhalsicles, Batman.

The Evolution

After 3 years of constant improvements, additions, subtractions, and changes, my students’ successes are better & more numerous than ever.

In the past 3 years I have…

• created a 12-week class from scratch, based on the pains and fears I knew my would-be peers were experiencing
• rewrote it…
• reordered it, turning it on its head, 3 times
• added a partner-teacher (Alex Hillman)
• quadrupled the amount of time I spent talking live with students
• recorded a ton of video
• refined the way I teach the hardest steps — and the easiest
• studied research, and taken expensive workshops, and read infinite books in order to teach in the most effective way possible
• added tons of new material
• turned it from a progressive weekly schedule, to a million interlocking “micro” practices that build results
• created a whole pre-class class on habits and motivation
• created metrics for students to help themselves

Umm, that list is a little self-centered…

Yes, this list is all about me. Me me me. Because I was the one doing the work (and later, Alex and I were doing the work together). And holy shit has it been a lot of work.

But the reason I did it isn’t

I did all this for my students.

Sure, 30×500 pays very nicely. But you couldn’t pay me to do all that. It was herculean, and I’m rebellious when it comes to any kind of outside obligation. “They’re not paying me enough for this crap” is something I grumbled on a daily basis, back when I had a job/clients.

The dirtier fact is, too, that I could have kept selling the class exactly how it was. The demand, the need, was huge. But I wasn’t satisfied with the quality, the student experience.

I did all this heavy lifting for the love.

I did it so I could watch my students succeed.

The last 30×500 has been the best ever

The changes in the last class have been the most epic: the pre-class, the habits, the micro-practice, the entirely new schedule/order/approach.

Alex and I got together and added an extra month of material. We cut stuff out entirely. We scheduled and rescheduled. We planned: What is the meta-lesson here? What is the meta-meta lesson? How can we coordinate on the Socratic approach? How should we structure new live exercises?

These changes have made all the difference. We have nearly quadrupled the number of students who stick with the program, who complete their work, who are ready to use these skills forrealz. Even returning alumni have been shocked by how much more savvy & prepared these new students are.

Yes, a couple weeks ago, 30×500 Winter 2012 wrapped up. Something epic and new came to a close.

Was it perfect? Nope.

Are we still working our butts off to improve it? Absolutely.

That’s why I’ve been quietly telling people over the past few months: We will never run another 30×500 the “old way,” ever again.

The old way and the new way…

This last 30×500 was a mixture of the new way and the old way.

Here’s what works about the new way:

• the application process
• the emphasis on habits, and micro-wins vs micro-failures
• identifying good habits and bad habits
• doing a preview of the entire class, in the 1-day bootcamp
• start with the “real work” (the hard stuff — pitches, pain, and sales Safari!) right up front, from week 1
• a Socratic response to student questions/homework, helping them figure it out on their own instead of dictating
• breaking up the whole process into tiny chunks that build on each other (reflecting the “stacking the bricks” ethos in every way)
• tiny daily exercises that build up to big projects, instead of semi-punitive homework that takes days to complete on your own
• weekly office hours, with live lessons and live practice & review, every single Sunday
• removing every barrier to moving forward (example: all students get hung up on ‘audience selection’ so we had everyone work together on a ‘rented’ audience instead, at first, to share the learning experience without hangups)
• meta-lessons; I won’t tell you what they are, and we didn’t tell students what they were, but we designed them into the new structure and as a teacher I can say the students “got it”
• and something that works even better every time we run the class — the alumni list, a private Google Group that every 30×500 alum has access to, for support, for feedback, for community

Here’s what didn’t work this time — holdouts from the old way:

• it’s too damn long
• too much theory
• it takes too long to get to the “real work”
• shipping — anything! — was not built into the class
• hedging bets — yes, you can use this process for any type of product, in any order — leads to weaker student outcomes
• it’s a big investment of $ to start with — there isn’t a product family with more affordable classes or products to try first
• it’s a lot of unnecessary hand-holding, if you’re a self-starter
• really, it was way too damn long — everybody starts off super excited, but by the end of it, everyone is exhausted (smarter, but damn tired!)

So… if we’re not doing 30×500 ever again the old way, what should we do?

What do our students (& prospective students) really need?

It’s taken me 3 years to figure this out. But I think if you look at this list, it’s clear:

• for self-starters a much shorter, more affordable, 100% action-focused 30×500 — call it the “Swift Kick in the Ass” edition
• for those who want lots of hands-on support, & who have a higher budget, a more-succinct-but-still-comprehensive 30×500 with all of the cruft removed, throw out the written material, 100% focused on daily action and shipping
• for those who aren’t ready for / don’t need a class, stand-alone products and small events geared towards helping them conquer specific topics, e.g. marketing, pricing, product launches, entrepreneurial habits
• for absolutely everyone — help building a real bootstrapping community that isn’t tied to 30×500 Alumni-hood

There you have it, my friends. That’s Alex’s & my to-do list for the next 12 months.

Yes, if you do the math, 30×500 brought in over $300,000 for us last year. Yes, we’re potentially throwing that away, by shutting “30×500 As You Know it” down completely.

We’re not just dropping the golden egg and smashing it, we’re strangling the goose. Why? Because, as it turns out, goose eggs don’t make great omelets. And helping to create a world full of great omelets is our raison d’être. And by “omelets” I mean “thriving bootstrapped product businesses.”

Frankly, it’s a little scary to commit to this publicly, but this is what needs to be done — to reach more people, to help more students ship, to create more success stories.

Our plan at work: Events, Classes, Products, & hey, a Conference!

We recently announced our Launch Roundtable, an affordable ($199) and highly focused event: all about product launches. Real talk, with exact launch sequences / content, no-holds-barred revenue discussions, and all.

We will soon be launching a brand new class that we call 30×500 Bootcamp. It is an intense, 2-day, action-packed workshop (online). You will learn all the major moving parts of the 30×500 process… and you will implement them. You’ll learn the theory by acting instead of listening to me lecture. The dates: May 25/26. Right before BaconBizConf (see below).

30×500 will never again be a 4-month class. It nearly killed us all, students and teachers alike. The next iteration will be max 6 weeks long… with more live practice than ever before, more shipping experience built in, 100% action-oriented. We’ll take even more advantage of the “OMG YES WE’RE DOING IT!” excitement at the start of class, and get in/get out/get shipped.

Our new habits workshop, that so helped our students in the last 30×500, will become its own standalone product. We will price it very affordably. Some of it will even be free (subscribe to my blog!).

Finally…

We’re putting on BaconBizConf, an intimate bootstrappy-products conference, May 30th in Philadelphia. You may have been waiting for a long time for the details, and for that we apologize. With these revelations, we realized we had to change our basic conceptions of how to run a conference, too.

The redesigned BaconBizConf will be more affordable, more enjoyable, and more educational. We’ve shrunk the speaker-attendee ratio (by half!), and we’re going to hold it in a low-key (free) setting. Instead of paying for a hotel ballroom, we’re hiring videographers to record the event to reach more people. And just wait til you see who’s speaking.

Tired yet?

… ok, I admit it, even reading this list is making me rather tired! But I’m also super excited. And a little nervous.

But I know this is all based on research. On what we’ve learned from watching students struggle… and what we’ve learned from watching them win. From all the folks who wanted to take 30×500, but couldn’t, or shouldn’t, in its older form.

30×500 alums will recognize this list of data: It’s called “Sales Safari.”

And if you read, buy, attend any of the above… you’re going to learn all about it, because instead of locking the concept up behind multi-thousand-dollar gate, we’re going to get it out to the world, to everybody who wants it & needs it, in the way that makes the most sense for them.

Can I get a “hell yeah”?

How did she do this? With a single, solitary email, reading…

“Hey, doors are open! Buy your seat now!”

That’s how most folks launch their products. It’s easy, and it’s wrong. And one time, I tried to launch my 30×500 Product Launch Class that way.

I made a single sale in 24 hours. One single, solitary sale.

Never before had I failed to sell fewer than 30 seats in the very first day. Never.

And so there I was, 24 hours later, with 74 empty seats. At the time, each seat cost $1,450, and there wasn’t even a trickle of sales, there was just one sale, period. I was facing down the very real prospect of losing $107,300 of planned ticket sales.

I was freaking out. Was the market simply tapped? Cue dark teatime of the soul.

Once I stopped pitying myself, I realized: Maybe it’s not the market. Maybe it’s me.

Instead of using the launch process I’d always used, instead of doing it the way I learned over 10+ product launches, I’d gotten cocky. I sent that single email, just on the launch day itself, and then I sat back to await my sales. Like I said: Cocky. And easy. And wrong.

Once I came to grips with the idea that I had caused the problem, I realized I could fix it, too.

So I hit the rewind button

I swiftly took the ticket sales offline, redid the launch the way my own process dictates, and launched again over the next week. The proper way.

That second time, I sold $35,000+ in tickets in a matter of hours.

(Surprisingly, nobody said a word about this whole fumbled, launch-it-again approach. Cuz… nobody noticed.)

The class went on to sell out, completely.

Learn from my mistake… please!

I consider this experience my “A/B test” for my launch strategy and tactics. And lemme tell you, there was no doubt about which test won.

That story is one I tell in every 30×500 semester, and one I repeat especially to students on the verge of launching.

That’s because launching the wrong way — “Hey, look! We’re live!” — is the easiest, simplest, most seductive way to launch. But, of course, it doesn’t work. And a busted launch can lead you to give up. You may believe things like “Maybe the market is saturated,” when, in fact, the only thing that was saturated was your soggy launch, soaking in ego and laziness.

But enough about bad launches. What does a good launch look like?

The 3 critical ingredients for any launch

They’re super simple. Ready?

1. Slow build-up
2. Inherent value
3. Path of logic

SIP! Like champagne! That you break… on a ship… that pours into the ocean… ok, maybe my mnemonic needs work.

Regardless of how wanting is my phraseology, these are the three elements you cannot dispense with if you want to launch successfully.

Why?

Because of how people actually buy things

Because people don’t suddenly see a new thing, then bam! decide to buy it. People simply don’t behave this way, nope. Not in large enough quantities for your launch.

The typical potential customer is full of doubt:

• They’re unsure if they want what you’re selling.
• They’re unsure how it would help them.
• They’re unsure if they should trust you, if you’ll deliver.
• They’re unsure if the price is reasonable.
• They’re unsure if they should buy now or wait til later, when the need seems more pressing, or when they remember it again.

And that’s assuming they even read your launch announcement. Assuming they don’t say to themselves, “I’m busy, I’ll come back to that later.” Which is not a safe assumption at all.

Aren’t those just “objections”?

Countering ‘objections’ doesn’t solve this problem. I don’t care however many times copywriters tell you it will, ‘handling’ objections just slaps a bandaid on a broken process.

For these doubts to be objections, the potential customer has to already want to buy… but something is holding them back.

That’s not the case for these fundamental doubts.

How SIP solves this problem

SIP solves the problem by helping your potential customer decide if the product is right for them, if they want it, if it’ll help them, if they trust you, if they should buy it right away… before you ever offer the product for sale.

And if you use it right, it can even help you use (indirect) customer feedback to adjust and improve your launch strategy before your launch falls flat.

Slow Build-Up

What are you more likely to say “Yes” to — “Can you decide this by next week?” or “Can you decide this right this second?”

Most folks hate to be rushed. They don’t like being put on the spot. They like acclimating to major decisions by degrees. That’s because they’re smart.

Think about the last time you decided to buy something based on a cold-call, if you don’t believe me. Even if the cold-call was totally trustworthy, nobody likes a surprise intrusion much less one that demands immediate attention and a decision. We’re busy, we’re thinking about other things, we don’t have the headspace for it, so we put it off… and often we forget.

We all know this is true. So why do we launch in exactly this way?

Slow build-up is about honoring the way people actually want to make decisions, and making it work to your (and your potential customer’s) advantage.

If you do it right, “slow” means over a period of weeks. Yes, weeks!

Inherent Value

Who are you more likely to hire: the nice person you see every week at the user group, who’s given talks there about the subject area you’re hiring for, who’s given you free advice that totally worked… or a stranger who just sent you their résumé?

The known — and trusted — quantity, right? Naturally. We all hate risk and we love feeling safe. And this explains the need for Inherent Value.

So what do you do over those slow build-up weeks? How do you reduce risk and create a sense of safety? What do you build up with?

Valuable content.

You want your launch process to be chockfull of goodies — information, freebies, live consultations, whatever — that are so good, your potential customer is delighted to hear from you.

Give them things that make them smarter, stronger, better. Yes, for free. Yes, your (pre)launch content has to be useful and interesting, even if the potential customer never buys.

Think of each one as a mini-product in and of itself. And then give it away.

Why? Because this is how you build trust. You show the customer that you understand their pain — and you can help them kill it. You show them you understand them. You show them you can help them. You show them that what you’ve got is good quality.

They learn, over time, that:

• you get where they’re coming from
• your emails are worth opening
• your advice is worth following

Bam!

That’s a kind of trust and collaborative relationship you could never build by “countering objections.”

Path of Logic

Have you ever worked with somebody — a boss, a coach, a friend, a parent — who knew far better than to tell you what to do? Who, instead, wisely and deftly, helped you realize the right choice, and let it be your decision?

Keep them in mind, because that’s what your end goal is.

Our final ingredient is this exact experience. Path of Logic is really the strategy, and the previous two ingredients are tactics you used to implement this strategy.

Your goal is to build a logical path of decision-making, and then lead your potential customer down it.

That path will lead them to conclude on their own that yes, you do solve a problem they have — or it will lead them to conclude that no, you don’t.

Path of Logic is not about getting to yes, it’s about persuading the customer to take the time to consider your product at all.

Most folks can’t even get that much mindshare with their (failed) product launches. It’s like that old joke — “Tell me, what do you think of me?” “I don’t think of you at all.” That’s where most people’s products live: the zone of no-thought. The potential customer has no opinion, which is worse than a negative opinion.

If you can persuade a potential customer to take that time to consider your product long enough decide yes or no, you’re winning.

Putting it all together

And you do that by:

• Slowly
• Giving them valuable content
• Showing them you understand their pain points
• Demonstrating that you can help them kill the pain points
• Persuading them to try your [free] advice, freebies, excerpts, tools, whatever
• Broaching the topic of “If you like this free stuff, you’ll love my paid product”
• Explaining more about how the product will help them
• Counting down to when they can buy it
• And finally, launching your paid product

SGSDPBECA… it’s that easy! (Please. Send help.)

Seriously, though, if you use this process in this way, by the time you actually launch your product, you’ll have plenty of customers trusting you, convinced that they want what you’re about to sell, and ready to buy. All before you slap a Buy Button on it.

It means you can launch in a respectful way, and a useful way, which creates and preserves goodwill… while also making sales.

It also diffuses launch day freakout, somewhat, because you know that it’s not One Day That Changes Everything, but a process that you’ll implement over time, piece by piece.

Want to learn more about how to implement all this?

I practice what I preach And I’ve got something to offer you.

Want to see how this works in practice? Want insight into how you can make SIP work for you?

Learn how SIP works for real people and real products in my Launch Roundtable, on April 7.

What: A mini-conference
Where: 100% online! attend from your couch!
When: April 7, 12 pm to 3pm Eastern
Who: Me, Alex (my co-teacher for 30×500), and three of my students, Brennan Dunn, Brandon Savage, and Chris Hartjes. And you?

It just so happened that three of my 30×500 Launch Class students recently launched 3 products, all in the same week. What a great case study, I thought. And what a great opportunity to compare methods, approaches, results, and help folks learn.

And so we decided to put together the Launch Roundtable for you.

Our lineup:

• Chris Hartjes, from 30×500 Summer 2012, launched his first 30×500-style product, a book
• Brandon Savage, from 30×500 Summer 2012, launched his second product, a workshop
• Brennan Dunn, from 30×500 Summer 2011, launched his fourth product, a big ebook/video/workbook package

You’ll learn how each of these launches went, how they were designed, when they were started, and what content was used. And you’ll learn how these guys changed their launch strategies from one product to the next, as they learned and evolved.

(In case you’re wondering, I’ve used the SIP approach to launch software (and so has Brennan). It’s sort of a coincidence that these 3 products are educational products, but SIP works on anything.)

You’ll also get:

• an insider’s look at exactly how those 3 implemented the SIP approach for their “boring” products, leading to more than $36,000 in sales
• the emails they sent and blog posts they used, and when
• revenue breakdowns
• the opportunity to ask your own questions
• a recording and transcript to keep forever and ever

You can’t beat it. Tickets cost $179 if you buy by Friday Mar 22, and $199 afterwards.

And thanks to my launch process, there are only 35 seats (out of 100!) left at time of writing

“Launch Day” is a toxic phrase. It’s all backwards.

NASA, after all, doesn’t decide which date they’re going to launch the rocket and then the day approaches and just BAM! There goes the rocket, and that’s that, they’re all done.

There’s always a countdown

There’s a countdown the day of (T-Minus 10, 9, 8…). And months before that, they start a different type of countdown, of all the things that need to happen to get that rocket off the ground. (And there’s lots of stuff that goes on after liftoff, too.)

Successful launches aren’t about a single day

Even though that’s what fits the happy lil montage in our heads (set to Eye of the Tiger, natch — or perhaps The Final Countdown), launch isn’t about putting something online.

Launch is really about coordination — and coordination requires preparation. (And your launch isn’t so much about coordinating with yourself/your team as it is about coordinating with your [potential] customers. Buying/selling is a team effort; it takes two to transact.)

Of course, we’re not rocket scientists…

But take this Launch Roundtable business, as an example closer to home.

Did I do a full-on Amy Hoy Launch Sequence™? Nope — for reasons I’ll reveal to you, if you attend. But did I just email you out of the blue and say “Hey, here’s this thing, buy your ticket right now?” Nope, I did a lot more than that:

• I posted on my blog a couple days before.
• I emailed my list the day before.
• I emailed my list before I opened the doors.
• Then I emailed my list again.
• Then I sent this blog post as an email

This is what works. 53% of tickets sold out in the first 24 hours alone.

Now, that’s no fluke

Alex has been pre-interviewing our guest speakers:

• Brennan Dunn, who launched his fourth product
• Brandon Savage, who launched his second
• Chris Hartjes, who launched his first, following the 30×500 rules

Last night, I was reading the transcripts. (We believe in preparation!) They’re full of gold.

Like: How far out did Brennan start his launch process? 3 months. He started in December, and launched in March. His launch sequence included emails, blog posts, and presales.

How far out did Brandon start his launch process for his ebook? 10 days. Emails and blog posts, again.

Chris, too, started ahead of his actual launch day.

Why? And what? And how? And when? Then what happened?

And can you really “launch” a product after it’s already been online, available for sale?

These are the questions you’ll learn the answers to, if you attend our Launch Roundtable on April 7!

Remember, it’s internet only, so you can attend in your pj’s. It’ll be from 12 noon to 3 pm Eastern time.

Not only will you learn the answers to these questions, and have the chance to ask your own… you’ll also:

• get a peek inside each of these launch processes
• see Brennan’s, Brandon’s, and Chris’ exact launch emails and blog posts
• see their detailed timelines, with dates for each pre-launch/launch content
• learn how they built up their launch list
• not to mention see detailed sales numbers, broken down over time

You’ll also get a text transcript and video recording of the event, to read/watch again at your leisure!

Wanna learn how to launch, and save $20?

Now’s a great time to register! Early bird pricing runs out this Friday!

Book your seat today

Want the details? They’re all here.

See you there

PS — We WILL be selling the videos afterwards, as well, but for the same price! Think of the live experience is a free bonus!

What’s stopping you from building, launching, selling? Or from squeezing more out of the products you’ve got?

Not facts. Not figures. Not how-to’s.

Oh, sure, you could always use more how-to’s and more stats. But that’s not what you’re really starving for. That’s not what’s stopping you.

That’s not why you vaguely suspect that something is missing. It’s certainly not why you feel alone and, perhaps, a little bit adrift.

What is it, then, that you really need?

Real life stories

You need the opportunity to watch your peers as they make it happen.

You need to be reminded that even the biggest bootstrapping icons like 37Signals once started with zero products.

How did they do it? What can learn from people far ahead of you? What did they do when they were in your position? What can you learn from people who are in your position now, or just a month or two ahead?

You need to watch people like you make mistakes — then persist, and overcome them, and win. Then you’ll know you can, too.

I swear, I’m coming to a point here

Last week, three of my 30×500 students launched products

Three separate products!

Three students at very different stages in the empire-building process:

• Chris Hartjes, from 30×500 Summer 2012, launched his first 30×500-style product, a book
• Brandon Savage, from 30×500 Summer 2012, launched his second product, a workshop
• Brennan Dunn, from 30×500 Summer 2011, launched his fourth product, a big ebook/video/workbook package

Their combined revenue? $36,000

Just for these new products.

They must be selling something sexy

That’d be the logical conclusion, right? For 3 (non-famous) people to bring in that kind of money in that kind of timeframe, there must be some kinda sexy, discover-untold-riches action goin’ on… right?

Well, you be the judge:

• Brennan’s self-training package is about attracting clients with your consultancy’s web site.
• Brandon’s workshop is about object-oriented PHP programming.
• Chris’ book is about PHP unit testing.

Does sex sell? Or is there something more valuable at work here?

And, hey. Just how does a person drum up $7,000 in sales for a PHP unit testing book in a matter of days?

Join us and find out on April 7

On April 7, we’ll be holding a round table discussion all about product launches. Think of it as a mini-conference.

Alex and I will serve as your hosts, and Brennan, Brandon, and Chris will be our speakers. We’ll talk about:

• how did they manage to build products on the side?
• how did they launch?
• no, really, how did they launch? details! lots of details!
• how did the revenue break down?
• what have they done better this time than their previous times?
• what would they do differently, if they had the chance to do this over again?
• how did they prepare customers to buy?
• how did they deal with customer questions/concerns?

Don’t like our questions? No problem! You’ll have plenty of opportunities to ask your own.

We picked these speakers just for you

Of course, Alex and I have some stories to tell, too — but what’s great about our three speakers is that they’re like shades of you.

When you’re starting out, it can be harder to learn from people like us, who’ve been doing this for years.

Brennan, Brandon, and Chris, on the other hand, are in three different stages of starting out:

Brennan has been bootstrapping for nearly year now. (Check out his first income report!) He started with a subscription web app (Planscope) which is still growing. But SaaS grows slowly, and Brennan wanted to ramp up faster… so he began adding ebooks and workshops to his repertoire starting this past fall.

Brandon launched his first ebook, Mastering Object Oriented PHP, just a few months ago. To build on that success, last week he launched the Object Oriented Masterclass to give his customers more hands-on experience.

Chris just launched his second book — but the first one that followed 30×500 principles. (He came to class with his first book nearly done!) His new book, The Grumpy Programmer’s PHPUnit Cookbook has nearly equaled a year of sales of his last book, just in the first week alone.

That’s why we were so delighted that Brennan, Brandon and Chris agreed to talk openly about their launches, and to answer your questions.

We designed this conference just for you

Because we’d love to have you! Check out these attractive details:

Where will it be? Online! You don’t have to leave the comfort of your couch — because we’re holding it online.

Um, will I be on video? Nope. Feel free to stay in your jammies.

How long will it be? 3 hours — easily fit into the afternoon.

When is it? April 7, from 12 pm (noon) to 3 pm Eastern Daylight Time. Or: morning on the west coast, and early evening in Europe.

What do I get? For the price of your ticket, you’ll get:

• Access to the round table (live!)
• The opportunity to ask Amy, Alex, Brennan, Brandon and Chris your questions (live!)
• A recording of the round table for your later perusal
• A transcript of the recording, formatted for easy reference

Will there be lunch? No, silly. How could we send you lunch through the intertubes?

How many people can attend? We’re capping the attendance at 100 people. That way we can have ample time for questions.

How much does it cost? Tickets are $179 if you book by March 22, and $199 if you book March 23 or later.

Tickets go on sale Friday, March 15

And they’ll be sold on a first-come, first-serve basis! And the 1,400 people on my mailing list get first dibs.

If you’re not already on my (Amy’s) mailing list, you’ll want to drop your email in the box below:

You’ll get an email with details about when tickets will go on sale, and an invitation when they do!

More questions?

Ask @amyhoy or @alexknowshtml on Twitter, or drop us a line at baconbiz@slash7.com. We’d be glad to answer.

I’m here to tell you: That’s largely a load of crap.

If you want to know why — and if you want to know how I succeed at so many things people said would never work — you want to watch this video. It’s short (12 minutes) and it’s awesome.

It’s nominally about habits, but it’s really about the stories we tell ourselves, and why they make us fail.

(PS — this is a lesson straight outta the new 30×500. Why am I giving it away for free? Because everybody needs it.)

Did you recognize yourself in this video? Did you spot stories that you hear every day?

If so, you have three things to do right now:

1. Rush out and buy The Power of Habit. And actually read it. And take notes. Seriously. This book is worth every single penny and every single moment you will spend devouring it.
2. Drop your email in the box below, because I will be sending out the next video (and other awesome free content) and you really don’t want to miss out.
3. Try the assignment: dechunk 3 of your every day routines. Then leave your instructions for a day or two, and read them. Try to follow them. See all the stuff you left out. Oops! This is the stuff that habits growth is made out of.

Get the next video in this series for free, straight to your inbox:

Funmail Guarantee: I will never sell your email address. There’s no obligation whatsoever. I am not an affiliate of anything. You can unsubscribe at any time. And I promise to send you nothing but free goodies, stories, samples and discounts and awesome stuff like that!

I had a blast at Microconf. Highly recommend it. I’ll be back. And thanks so much to Rob and Mike for making these videos available so I can share them with you.

Transcript below!

Amy Hoy – “If You Don’t Like Drunk Frat Boys, Don’t Open an Irish Pub…” – MicroConf 2012 from MicroConf on Vimeo.

(OH. AND. After you watch my talk, definitely check out the other talk videos from Microconf 2012! It was one of the best confs I’ve ever had the pleasure of attending.).

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

Transcript

Slightly edited for clarity.

Amy: The talk title that was on the Speaker’s Page on Microconf.com was, “If you hate drunken frat boys, don’t open an Irish pub.” I have to say that the talk that I actually wrote for this day evolved away from that. But I feel like I can’t put a title like that out there, without giving you the reason why. Yes, I did combine Clipart to make a barfing shamrock.

It is barfing rainbows. I do not feel like rainbows are a good thing though. So don’t get my opinions about frat boys confused. I have some friends who are super, super into karaoke. Some of them don’t live in town. When they came to Philly to visit, we were like, “We have to go do karaoke.” Our usual karaoke joint was not having karaoke that night.

So we ended up at McGillin’s, which is pictured. It’s not actually that pixelated in real life. McGillin’s, first thing, is an Irish pub. Warning sign, second, it is actually from 1860 and has been operating continuously since then. So it’s an old Irish pub. Now I don’t like Irish pubs that much, as you might have guessed. I do love my friends, however. So we went to karaoke. There was a guy doing…

Man 1: Is that Sarah?

Amy: Yes, that’s Sarah. It’s Tony, Sarah and Alex. Right. For some reason, Tony has a balloon animal crown thing. There was a guy doing balloon animals there. It was full of people like this, but less attractive. We had fun, because we were really trying hard to have fun. But honestly, we didn’t really enjoy the location or the music or the people.

So it was kind of a wash, except for the fact that my friends were there. Of course, it made me think of Socrates, because when doesn’t karaoke make you think of Socrates? Am I right? Am I right? “Men are mortal.”, the example goes. “Socrates is a man. Therefore, Socrates is mortal.” I think we can all agree with this. That’s basic logic. That’s a syllogism; totally makes sense.

I hate frat boys. Irish pubs attract frat boys. Therefore, I will gnaw off my own leg before I ever open an Irish pub. Now, you might think, “OK, Amy, that’s hilarious, but what does it have to do with business?” How many people here are frustrated with their customers? Who here is afraid to raise their hand?

A lot of us, we start businesses because we think we’re going to solve a problem and we never really think about who are we solving it for, and can I stand them? That was going to be one of the logical points in my old talk, and I was going to make a joke about “When Irish eyes are crying,” so yeah, that talk is not actually going to happen.

This talk, however, is actually about, “Shut up and take my money,” which is pretty good, right? Not as good as karaoke. Pretty good.

Hi, by the way. I’m Amy, as you may have already guessed. I teach a class called 30×500. I call myself a Product Crusader. Product-wise, my husband and I started a business. This was our first Software as a Service, Freckle Time Tracking.

Since we launched it, at the end of December 2008, we have grossed $461,000 and, in March, it was $27,655. [UPDATE: As of today, the total lifetime revenue is $735,090. January was $34,980.]

When I tell people this they say, “On time tracking? Honestly, can you think of anything more boring?” Well, yes, I could. Sorry? Was that a hiccup, or was someone going to say something more boring than time tracking?

Yes, you can make this kind of money on time tracking. That is what this talk is all about, because there is a secret which a lot of us…It’s out there staring us in the face, but we don’t see it. That’s what this talk is about.

(By the way, the secret is secret. I will reveal it at the very end of the talk. I’m hoping that if you pay attention, you will guess it beforehand, in which case I will buy you a free drink at the party later.)

This talk actually isn’t about me, even though I’ve been talking about myself up to this point. This talk is actually about you.

Could I see a show of hands of you folks who already have a business, who already have a product out in the wild? Awesome. That’s so great. I am so glad to hear that. Is it profitable? Looks like our hands went down by about half. Is it now your main source of income? Looks like we went down by half again. We have a…I forget the mathematical term for that. I’m a girl. When in doubt, insult your gender. Always good for laughs. [The word I was looking for was 'trend,' of course, or 'geometric progression.' Sometimes my brain freezes up and I can't remember the names of things… or even people I know really well! Derp derp derp.]

You folks who have businesses who raised your hands, “Yes, I have a product out in the wild,” are you worried about marketing? By worried I mean does it make you uneasy? When you sit down to do it, does it make you uncomfortable? Do you feel like you’re searching about for ideas? Do you feel like you’re not doing it just right? Can I see a show of hands?

All right, that’s a good portion about you. I think the rest of you are probably lying, right? Do you worry about your prices? Are you charging too little? Are you charging too much? When people say your prices are too high, is that really why they’re not buying all that stuff? Do you worry about pricing? Can I see? All right, lots of people. Fantastic.

Finally, all these things together. Are you concerned that you’re not making as many sales as you should or ought to be? All right, that’s pretty much everybody. Awesome. That was more to the fact that you took the effort to raise your arms than that you’re concerned about stuff, just so you know.

Those of you who have not got a product out in the wild yet, do you actually have something in the works already? Show your hands. Awesome. Or are you still looking for the right idea? OK, just a few of you. Wow, hope you’re not bored. Are you guys worried about marketing, you guys who haven’t launched a product yet? Yeah? Are you freaking out that you’re going to build something and then no one will buy it? OK.

The laughter means I just hit on a real nerve, even more awesome.

Everybody, would you like to feel more certain that you’re doing the right thing everyday in your business? I know I would. I screw up all the time. If you don’t raise your hand for this, you’re either not paying attention, or dead, or a liar. Would you like to make more money with less stress, less effort, and less waste? OK? All right, good. That’s why you’re here, right? That or the drinks, again.

So… shut up and take my money. How do we get to this point? This quote, by the way, is something that one of my students said to one of the other students, who kept talking on the mailing list about his product. Everyone was so revved up to buy it, one guy actually said, “Shut up and take my money.” [I recently learned this was a Futurama reference. Duh. But! That makes it no less genuine! People did, in fact, throw money at the student in question as soon as he launched.]

He wanted to buy it. It wasn’t launched yet. That’s the kind of response we could all do with a little bit more of in our lives, right? The secret that we’re going to talk about today or talk around is about making that happen. The secret is really obvious once you see it. It’s easy to understand and difficult to master. No, the secret is not Go, or chess.

It is the key to the universe, at least the universe made of people.

But first, we’re going to take a little trip down Experience Lane.

Has this ever happened to you? This is a recruiter’s email that I got. What’s really irritating about this recruiter’s email is it came from somebody whose company I was aware of in Philadelphia.

Now, I was so pissed at this, I tweeted about how they’re lying scumbags, and then they got into a Twitter conversation with me, and it ended up with an apology in my inbox, as so many of my Twitter conversations do.

It made me so mad that I couldn’t control myself, and I just tweeted. Why the hell is this email so irritating? I know that if you’re here and you’re a designer or developer, that you’ve received emails just as infuriating, right, from recruiters. Has anyone not received an irritating recruiter email? OK, fantastic.

The first reason this was really irritating was because “I came across your resume today” is a total lie. Right off the bat, they lied to me. Whatever, but why normal recruiter emails, such as they are, are irritating is because of things like this.

I’ve highlighted in pink all the phrases where the recruiter is talking about himself and the company. This is a lot of pink in this slide!

I highlighted all the sentences that began with them. That is most of them. There is no room for me in this email. It’s like a giant gaping maw appeared in my inbox “me, me, me!” Can you tell I feel kind of emotional about it? I hope that didn’t hurt anybody’s ears. Sorry!

If only everybody in the world would read one book…If I could force everyone in the world to read one book…Perhaps in their native language…It would be this one, “How to Win Friends and Influence People,” which is a terrible talk title. Could I see a show of hands? Who has read this book?

Oh, wow! You are people after my own heart. Most people, especially most of us intellectual types, would be like, “I don’t know, that sounds like sleazy marketing and manipulation, I won’t read it!” But this book is fantastic, and the author of the book didn’t get to title it.

In this book, Dale Carnegie rips apart…He did some teardowns of some real letters he and his students have received. He says things like,

“In other words, that in which we are most interested is mentioned last, and the whole effect is one of raising a spirit of antagonism, rather than of cooperation,”

…AKA the email I just took down for you.

This was the way that that email closed. This is the first time they really talked about me, other than me as something that they wanted. “If you are curious or interested in speaking with us further, please feel free to let me know a few good days and times that you are available to speak.”

First of all, “If you are curious”? Worst pitch ever, right? Las Vegas’ tagline isn’t “If you’re curious.”

“Please feel free to let me know.” Douchebag right? They can’t even come out and say what they want. They have to sort of dance around it.

And that is why this kind of email is so irritating.

What I did, as I analyzed, is I realized that fully 70 percent of words in this email are inside sentences that start with “I,” or “we.” Oh, my gosh! It’s all about what they want.

This is actually my favorite line from “How to Win Friends and Influence People.” I’m going to dramatize it for you right now.

“You desire? YOU desire? You. Unmitigated. Ass!”

Keep in mind, this guy was writing in, like, 1920s. He’s my hero!

“I’m not interested in what you desire, or what Mussolini desires, or what Bing Crosby desires. Let me tell you once and for all, I am only interested in what I desire, and you haven’t said a word about that in this absurd letter of yours.”

Isn’t that awesome?

Now, if someone else was on the stage, presenting this to me right now, I would be thinking, “Oh. I’m doing way better than they are. That is truly obnoxious, that email. For one, I don’t lie. My sales page is yada, yada, yada.” It’s so easy to look at this and think, “I’m not that bad. I’m not a recruiter. Therefore, I’m not evil.”

But the sad fact is that we are all guilty as hell… or guilty as recruiters. Same thing.

I have some examples for you. Microsoft. There is actually a box on this page that says, “I want to…” But, if you look at the headlines, “Find the perfect gift.” No one goes to Microsoft.com looking for a gift. This is what the marketer wants you to want, which could be a good Cheap Trick song. But it is not a good landing page.

You think, “All right. Microsoft is totally socially boneheaded. Nobody looks to Microsoft for how to talk to people.” Well, then there are the other people.

Content streaming, content marketing…There is our favorite phrase. If you’ll notice this paragraph, not a single word about it is about their customers, not even indirectly. There is no word ‘you’. There is no indication of what you can actually do.

It’s all blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. “Let’s talk about us now. The composed content marketing platform enables brands to efficiently produce compelling content to grow traffic and revenue.” Sad trombone. Wah. Wah.

You think, “Startups are better, right?” Well, no. Not so much. I looked up a list of YCombinator startups. These are their one sentence pitches.

You’ll notice that every single one of these is about them. Only one of them even contains the word you. This is kind of sad. It’s a sickness, which I call Verbal I-arrhea. (I was going to make that brown, but I decided that I would protect your delicate sensibilities and make it red instead.)

I am not immune.

Patrick McKenzie and Keith Perhac had me on their podcast a few weeks ago. Patrick said basically, “Why don’t you take this opportunity to pitch us on 30×500?” What did I do? I was not prepared and I went, “I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I.”

Then Dale Carnegie bitch slapped me from the past and said, “You unmitigated ass.”

I love him. I want to hug him from the grave. I don’t know.

Diagnosis: Only Human. I make this mistake. I am intimately aware of this problem and I fight it every day. But I still make this mistake. It takes preparation to avoid. But we all start off with me, me, me, me, me. We are natural narcissists.

(Have you figured out the secret yet?)

If you look at these elevator pitches and you think, “All right. All right. They do all start with the company name. But they think pitching their company is about them. That’s just a copywriting problem.”

We know that there are these copywriting tools that we can use to fix these copywriting problems. They exist for a reason:

• Show, don’t tell.
• Benefits, not features.
• USP.
• Focus on the reader.

It’s true that there are companies, which do a vastly superior job. Hi, guys. Postmark is an excellent service, which solves your problems. They have benefits and USP right in the very first paragraph. It’s way, way better than anything I have shown you thus far.

Jump Chart. Having a plan feels good. That is a benefit. We say, “Feels good.” That is definitely benefit-speak.

Apple is not usually a good model to follow, because they are Apple and we can’t be Apple. But they are perhaps the best example of showing, don’t tell:

Until Steve Jobs passed away, all Apple commercials had no speaking. Or they had speaking only from an invisible person using Siri. Up to that point, it was like you were the star of the ad, video chatting with your baby across the ocean, or zooming and pinching pictures, or rocking out with your iPod, in silhouette.

Is better copywriting enough? I’m guessing that, by the fact that I ask this question, you know that the answer is “No,” but let me prove it to you.

I was looking for anti-examples the other day, when I was preparing my talk, and it’s like, you can’t search for “bad landing pages” and expect to get anything. My husband had the fantastic idea of looking up project management apps, of which there are like 8.3 billion, right?

There’s one project management app for every man, woman, and child on Earth, it seems like, and they all look like this:

“It’s the best project management in the cloud. Your people, projects, clients, files, and budgets, managed at last.” This sounds like benefits, doesn’t it?

Oh, well, so does this. It’s “made easy.” You can “stay on track.” “Share and collaborate.” Oh, this is project management “for the rest of us.” Rest of us, who? Who don’t already have a project management app? “Collaborate with your team to project success.”

These are all benefits, but they’re not actually doing anything for us. I don’t know, do these make you want to sign up? Anybody? Anybody go, “Ooh, I want that?” Exactly. No one wants that, even though they are benefits. They appear to be doing things right. Here are benefits. It’s focused on the user. So is this, “Deliver on time.” “Never miss a milestone again.” These are benefits, but something is not right.

If you’ve been paying attention, you probably think USP, right? They don’t have a USP. In fact, they all look the same. Well, a USP is the Unique Selling Proposition. As Entrepreneur Magazine writes,

“Unless you can pinpoint what makes your business unique in a world of homogeneous competitors, you cannot target your sales efforts successfully.”

Actually, I think all three of those apps make pretty decent money, but 100 percent of their copywriting can be swapped out from one to the other, and you would never know the difference.

Also the phrase, “Easy to use” is no longer credible. I’ve seen it applied to Microsoft Project. No, no, no. “Buy a quantum supercollider, it’s easy to use.”

Where do USPs come from? We tend to focus on the first aspect of this acronym, “UNIQUE Selling Proposition.” As I flossed my teeth this morning, I thought, “I know. Floss made from diamond razor blades. That is 100 percent unique.” But would you buy it? No.

Where we should be focusing on is the Unique SELLING Proposition. This is the actual reality of what makes a USP a USP. This is a phrase you’ve heard all weekend, and by “weekend” I mean Monday and Tuesday. (Wait. Where am I? What day is it? What country am I in?)

Be sure you’re solving a real pain. Talk about the customer’s pain. In the case of diamond razor floss, the pain would be in my gums. Diamond razor floss: unique. Selling, maybe not so much.

The only conclusion is that uniqueness, at least in terms of a Unique Selling Proposition, is quantum. Schrödinger asks us, “Who is the observer?” (Have you guessed the secret yet?) [Note: Here I meant to say SELLABILITY is quantum. Erps!]

What makes bad copywriting bad? What leads to the atrocious recruiter emails and the atrocious project management app landing pages, which nevertheless seem to hit all the bullets?

Well, first of all, of course, a lack of skill or knowledge. If you don’t know how to write copy, chances are the copy you write will be bad.

Or you are distracted or lazy. You don’t prepare. You don’t sit down and practice. You don’t get all your materials. You don’t talk to customers.

Finally, a fuzzy picture of your audience, which I’m going to highlight, because it’s important.

This is what makes up bad copywriting. These are the three diseases that cause bad copywriting. Funnily enough, they are also the three diseases that make bad software.

If we look at these project management apps, which seem to hit all the checkmarks you need to check off to have good copywriting…Benefits focused, focus on the customer, use action words, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you think, “All right. Fine. Let’s add a USP. Let’s make it better.”

Can you? Where does the USP come from? Can you add one to these project management apps, which is a phrase I hope to never utter again? Can you add a USP? Well, USP is another term for killing real pain. It either has to be baked into the product or you are screwed. These apps…I overshot there on the arrow key. I got a little too excited.

These apps don’t appear to have a USP, probably because they don’t have a USP. (Have you guessed the secret yet?)

Let’s review our argument:

• We all want easier selling and less doubt. Who likes doubt? Pretty much nobody.
• We are all natural narcissists, especially me.
• Good selling revolves around the audience and good copywriting techniques.

Yet, so do good products.

We have these bumper sticker bits of advice that we use when we try to make products and try to write about products: Be sure you are solving a real pain. Focus on them, not you. Schrödinger should have said this, but he didn’t: “Sellability is in the eye of the beholder or observer.”

Have you guessed the secret yet?

Here it comes. This seems pretty obvious, right?

Product + Customer = Business

Product plus customer equals business.

What can you take away [from this equation] here?

If you take away the customer, you have no business.

In my class I teach people that the fundamental truth of business is that it is to “create and serve a customer,” as Peter Drucker wrote, which means that if you have no customer, you have no business, which means that if you speculatively create a product and then say, “Who will buy this?”, you don’t have a business and you are not going to.

The customer is the MVP, not the product. We should perhaps call it “minimum viable customer.” Someone probably already said that, but I’m going to pretend that I came up with it.

If you look at the customer, the customer will tell you what real pain is. They will tell you what value is to them, which will let you create a USP.

It will help you position your product, and of course it will help you price it and sell it. Without the customer, you’re just sort of flapping around in the wind, throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks. And spaghetti is the G-rated version.

I’m going to quote Dale Carnegie again, because I am a total fangirl. And this is just a fantastic little story. He wrote,

“I go fishing up in Maine every summer. Personally, I am very fond of strawberries and cream, but I find that for some strange reason, fish prefer worms. So when I go fishing, I don’t think about what I want. I think about what they want. I don’t bait the hook with strawberries and cream. Rather, I dangle a worm or grasshopper in front of the fish and say, ‘Wouldn’t you like to have that?’”

That’s what we all need to do.

We need to bait the hook to suit the fish.

But what most of us end up doing is we bait the hook with something that we’re interested in, and then we sort of cast around, hoping that we’re going to find a fish or maybe three or four different types of fish. Then we’re going to craft different value propositions for each one of those fish, instead of just giving them what they want to start with.

Products like this come from what I call Ego-First Development. We think, “I want a project management tool. Therefore, I will build one.” Then we think it’s special, because it’s ours. Maybe there’s this one tiny little difference, but instead of building on that and talking to customers, we think, all right, well, it’s special because it’s mine.

That’s why these [pm apps] are so interchangeable… Because the message, the benefits, and the USP of all these products is, “It’s mine.” It’s not this solves your problem differently than those other tools. The only USP they have is, “I did it.”

So if you start with your customer first, before you do anything, before you set down a single line of code, a single chapter in your e-book, before you write that outline…If you look at the customer first, you will answer these questions, and you will remove doubt:

• What should I build, or write, or film?
• Who will buy it?
• What do they want?
• What will they pay?
• How can I make sales?

That is how my husband and I were able to build a very, very, very part-time business, selling something very, very, very boring with no SEO. We do no search ads, we do content marketing. We’ve done a couple banner ads, ever…Wasn’t really impressed by it. But we’ve built a business that’s nearly $30,000 a month on time tracking, something nobody cares about. Because we solve a real pain.

I know that this is probably hard to read, so I just pulled out a couple of the bits of text here. What do people who use time tracking hate? They hate tracking their time. So we went right up and acknowledged it. We said, “our software is super fast, so you don’t have to use it,” basically.

We eliminate your use of the product as much as possible. We help you get rid of the guilt that you feel because you don’t track your time, and that nasty feeling you get that you’re losing money, because you’re actually just guesstimating your hours weeks later.

We make it super easy to keep a watchful eye on your budget, but you’ll notice that I just, up here, said we make it easy. When I wrote the copy, and rewrote it, and edited it, I cut out as many references to us as possible. If we hadn’t actually designed the software around specific pains we already knew people had, this wouldn’t have worked. This wouldn’t have saved it. This wouldn’t have helped us makes sales.

Here’s another example. I like that Peldi said earlier that he had Second Product Syndrome, because I had actually written that in my notes the day before to talk about Charm. Charm is our white whale. Charm is a customer support tool.

[Note: For all kinds of reasons, we shut down Charm. Read about it here.]

Here I’m talking about the product [Charm is… etc], but this is the sales page that I wrote:

“You didn’t ever want to hate hearing from your customers.” Does that grab anybody? Anybody here hate opening their email client because they cannot stand dealing with the email? Not that they mind what’s in the emails, but that the whole process is just so irritating?

You set out trying to make a business that was customer-responsive. You want to talk to your customers. You want to feel involved in their lives, and yet you really find yourself avoiding and cursing at your support inbox.

Now, this is just a sales page. All this does is collect an email address at the bottom, and it goes on, and on, and on. It’s a long sales page, and it has one screenshot. It doesn’t really talk about features, but over time we’ve gotten nearly 3500 people on our announcement list because of the strength of the pains that I outlined.

People were tweeting that sales page, people I didn’t know were going, “Oh, my God. This is so true.” Just the sales page made them feel like they weren’t a bad person, and they weren’t alone, and they were super excited about it.

The 37signals guys aren’t our friends [I meant best buddies… they don't hate us or anything]. In fact, we set out to compete with them. It hasn’t really materialized, but Ryan Singer tweeted our sales page. Not because we asked him, but because he found it organically, and was impressed by it.

But, this is not the “All Amy, All the Time” show. You here, Brennan? Brennan is one of my 30×500 students, and he runs a consultancy in Virginia. His new product is Planscope, and it’s doing awesome.

If you look at Planscope and compare it to those other project management tools you’re looking at, there is no doubt in your mind “Who is this for, what does it do, why should I give a fuck?” — right?

“The days of ‘I have some concerns’ calls are over.” That is so specific. Did anyone think, “OK, I use project management, but I don’t care about I have concerns calls? That doesn’t appeal to me.” — but it appeals to his audience. He worked backwards from the audience to determine what problems they have, and then he wrote the sales page, and wrote the software to solve them directly.

Brennan, How long have you been out? Like six weeks?

Brennan: A little less than two months.

Amy: A little less than two months. Brennan is not famous. I did tweet about it a few times, but he’s already got his revenues up to just under $1,000 a month, which is just a little bit below where we started with Freckle, and now it’s a $340,000 a year business.

[UPDATE: This talk was last spring, and now Planscope's revenue has crossed $6,000/mo. Freckle's crested $420k/yr.]

He has achieved this, not through fame, not through connections, but because he investigated the customer. He figured out what hurts, and then he solved that pain for them, and then he communicated that. The copywriting was the last step. If he hadn’t designed his app that way, the copywriting could have been the best in the world, and it wouldn’t have mattered.

One example’s not enough. Has anyone seen this e-book, “Bootstrapping Design?” All right, fantastic. It’s written by a great guy named Jarrod Drysdale. I hope I’m saying that right, Jarrod. Another 30×500 alumni, and another person who investigated the audience, figured out what they needed, and then crafted a product, and then a sales page to make them feel better, to help them solve a specific problem, a specific pain they had.

Now, “Bootstrapping Design” is still in beta. [EDIT: Final now!] I think he launched it just about a month ago, and he’s made $26,625 in sales, as of when I tweeted him about two hours ago. [EDIT: As of now, over $60k.]

Anyone ever hear, “Don’t write a book for the money?” Yeah? Everybody’s heard that, right? No one? Are you alive? That’s what publishers tell you. They’re like, “Come write a book for us. PS, don’t do it for the money.”

First of all, conflict of interest, right? [It's in the interest of the publishing company to keep more of the profits for themselves.] Second of all, you can absolutely write a book for the money, if you solve a real problem and don’t set out to write “Everything About XML,” for example. Don’t write a Wrox book. Write a book like this.

Jarrod said to me that his first product was about him, and his idea, and it failed. He created a website for teachers that let you do…Let teachers…Here I’m doing it again, see? It’s just natural. It comes out that way.

He created a website for teachers, to help them manage grade books and do all these fun statistical things, and track trends and identify problem students so they could help them, and all sorts of really cool stuff, and it was really, really beautiful. Over the year, he had about 120 free trial signups, 100 of which he bought with AdWords, and totaled exactly 10 users who paid for at least one month.

This was a year of his work.

When I met Jarrod, he said to me…The first time we met on the Internet, he said, “There are some funded startups copying my idea. I’m just a little bootstrapper. What do I do?” I said, “What’s your idea?” and he pointed me at Knack for Teachers. I said, “Let them have it. Let them discover, and waste the money on this white whale. You’re never going to make money off teachers, for this reason.”

You might think, “Well, Patrick makes money off teachers.” Patrick, are you here?

Patrick: Hi.

Amy: Would you recommend trying to make money off teachers?

Patrick: No.

Amy: No. Patrick was able to make money off teachers because he’s a genius at optimization, at marketing, at conversion…Or he became one…Because he went up against this white whale, and he had to figure out ways to trap the damn thing. You don’t trap whales. Spear. That’s the thing. You spear whales. You heard it here. Patrick spears whales.

And that made Patrick a smarter person, but he would never recommend you do it because it’s a mistake. And if you had sat down with a bunch of teachers or looked at what they did online, do teachers pay for stuff? You would realize, no.

And so, when Jarrod took my class, he learned the backwards way to do it. He said, “My second product was about understanding customers and I grossed $26,625 dollars since launch.” (As of: months ago!) Let me just say that again. He actually made way more money way faster than we did off our first e-book.

And that’s the power of starting with your customer first. Don’t start with your idea, don’t look for an idea, look for a customer who you could like who pays money for things and then investigate the shit out of them.

Because then you won’t have to ask yourself these questions:

• How do I get them to buy?
• How do I found them on the Internet?
• How do I market to them when I have a budget of zero?

Look for them. If you find the on the Internet, you know how to market to them with zero [capital]. If you need to know how to get them to buy, you look at their actual buying habits. Look what they talk about.

What should I make, what features should I build? What kind of product should it be? Should it be a fancy Excel spreadsheet or a stand alone web app?

I know lots of people who’ve tried to [persuade would-be customers to] replace Excel with something better, only to find out that Excel users will never quit Excel. They love Excel. They’re crazy, but they love Excel, and therefore, if you try to get them something better than Excel, they’ll be like, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. All I see is Excel everywhere.”

Stockholm Syndrome with software is a very real thing. But there’s no way you can cure that.

If you set out to cure people before they’ll give you money, you’re going to fail. Or if you need to know how much, how much should I charge? How much will they pay?

How much should you charge is a question of value and you can’t know value until you know the customer.

You know, if Bob down the street manages his multi-national with Basecamp, Basecamp’s value for him is huge. If Joe down the other street uses it to manage his Magic the Gathering playgroup, Basecamp’s value for him is essentially zero. And that’s why you need to look to your customer.

So, my recipe, in short, is to find some customers that you like. Not frat boys, OK? Unless you’re selling button down shirts with poppable collars. Lurk and study them — again, not frat boys, you’ll never be able wash the stink out of your eyes.

Identify their pain, figure out where they actually hurt, because if you’re trying to sell solutions to people who won’t admit they’re in pain, that’s the end of it already.

Address the actual pain good customers actually have, you’ll have people chomping at the bit, saying, “Shut up and take my money.”

So, the customer is the MVP, go find one. Thank you.

[applause]

Amy: I had to work my other personal hero into this presentation. Actually, I have a lot of personal heroes, but this one is one of the funniest. As in, really?

Anyone not know who this is? You don’t know? OK, fantastic, this is Ron Popeil. You might know him from such infomercials as the Ronco Pocket Fisherman, or the Ronco Showtime Rotisserie, or the Ronco this that and the other.

Man 2: incomprehensible

Amy: Sorry?

Man 2: Spray on hair.

Amy: Spray on hair. Well, not one of his prouder moments. What’s amazing about Ron Popeil is that this man has sold over $2 billion worth of product in his career, $2 billion. If you would like to know what it’s like to be a showman and to sell things, I cannot recommend more the book But, Wait! There’s More! If you read it, you’ll go, “Wow, this sounds a lot like customer development.” Anyway, that’s that. Now, questions. Sorry.

Rob Walling: Questions.

Amy: I don’t bite.

Rob Walling: Hard.

Man 4: Just in talking with Brennan, he was his own customer because he runs a consultancy business. What are your thoughts on solving your personal need, you are your own customer, all that stuff?

Amy: It could go either way. It depends on how flexible and willing to research things you are. If someone came to me and said, “Oh, I have this problem. Therefore, I’ll build a product,” I would just tell them that they’re crazy.

The first thing to do is to go and research other people, because let’s face it, you’re not going to buy your product from yourself. It’s a shortcut that sometimes works because sometimes we’re an archetype, but most of the time, we’re not. A lot of people say, “Well, I would never buy that. I’m a developer. Developers don’t buy things.” They are full of crap.

It’s nice if a problem that you’re going to solve, if a pain that you’re going to kill, is something you also feel, because it gives you extra added motivation. But you must, must, must not skip the step of finding people who pay for things, who you like, who can be persuaded to tell you their pains and then you can sell something to them.

Rob Walling: Other questions.

Man 4: I used to run a business with this guy next to me, and then I sold out. I really miss the customers. I would just like to have customers, regardless of what they need, and try to build it for them. I tried to build something that said, hey, I need customers. Tell me what you want and I’ll build it, and didn’t get really much in response. For someone who wants to be customer driven, but doesn’t have a product yet, how do they find potential customers?

Amy: Well, it would be nice if we could ask people what they wanted and they would tell us. But as anyone who is married knows, that doesn’t work. Except for me. I tell Thomas exactly what I want, and it still doesn’t happen. I’m not sure how this works out. Sorry, honey. Thomas is very gracious in being the butt of all of my jokes.

You can’t ask people. Also, if you ask people, they will lie to you. This is shown time and time again with surveys, especially about medical compliance, like taking their medicines and things that will save their lives. They’ll say they’ll do it, and then they won’t do it.

They’ll say, “Oh, I won’t pay for this,” and then they pay for it anyway. They either forgot they paid for it before, or they changed their minds, or when they speak things just don’t connect with the other part of their brain.

As a great example, Sony did a focus group on which color should they make their portable Discman. Black, or yellow. All the kids said, “Oh, I want the yellow.” Then they left a table of them outside and said, “Take one as you leave. It’s our free gift to you.” Every single kid took a black one.

Humans are duplicitous, even to ourselves, so you cannot ask. What you have to do is watch what they actually do. Don’t listen to what a person says. Watch what they actually do when they don’t think that you’re watching. Go to forums. Somebody yesterday suggested, “Go look at your competitor’s public support sites.” That’s fantastic. Look at what people blog about, what they talk about at user groups, what they tweet about. That is the goldmine.

Because, if you ask them, One, what is their motivation in telling you? That you’re going to build something for them? They won’t believe that. Two, people are terrible at coming up with solutions to problems they already have. Three, people don’t even realize most of the pains they have.

When we were building Charm, I kept telling people about how it was going to make something better, and they were like, “I don’t have a problem.” Then I laid out specific pains in great detail and they said, “Oh. I do know what you’re talking about.”

You cannot trust them to say anything useful to you. You have to research them and watch them. It’s this really annoyingly time-consuming process, but it will give you so much good data, and most people are too lazy to do it, which gives you a natural competitive advantage.

Man 5: OK, this is a total softball but I am curious. What is this class that you mentioned?

Amy: Thank you for asking. I did not plant him, actually. Not a plant. I teach a class called 30×500, which is all about helping designers and developers make their first product. This is like a condensed version of the first few lessons. I don’t mind giving it away, and I know that it will help people because we all tend to look at it the wrong way, just like we tend to write emails and talk about ourselves in the wrong way.

The class covers a lot of different things: how to do the research, how to find people, how to narrow down potential customers from people who really aren’t, how to figure out from that data that you’ve collected what to build, and how to sell it, price it, and all that good stuff. I don’t have to sell it so much when I give talks because it sells out like that. I give it twice a year. If you want information, just follow me, and there’s a link on my blog.

Question?

Man 6: If you had already invested a bunch of time and energy trying to make money off of teachers…Do you or Patrick have advice on making that succeed, or would you abort mission?

Amy: I would abort the teachers. I don’t have any experience at all in repurposing something for a different audience. This is how I do it. This is the only way I’ve ever done it. I don’t have specific advice for turning around a product. My inclination would be to stop, and start fresh the right way, but not to waste years of your life trying to micro-optimize pennies out of paupers.

If you have something, it’s possible your product could be repurposed, in which case you could pivot and do customer validation and all that good Lean Startup stuff, but I wouldn’t count on it.

Rob Walling: All right, we have time for one more.

Amy: Nobody?

Man 7: I have a comment.

Amy: Yeah? Is it a nice comment?

Man 7: I’ve got a recommendation. I also love the Dale Carnegie book, and I highly recommend the audio book, because it’s funny, because all those old fashioned languages like, “You unmitigated ass,” the way the guy narrates it, and also…what’s the one? The “drop of honey, gallon of gall” thing? I love the way he says it. Gallon of gall.

Amy: Gallon of gall.

Man 7: It’s funny, so check it out.

Amy: That quote, that it’s easier to attract flies with a drop of honey than a gallon of gall, was in my quotes to possibly work into my presentation, but nobody knows what gall is.

Man 7: So what’s gall?

Amy: Gall is the green stomach acid that you vomit up if you vomit really hard on an empty stomach. It’s secreted by your pancreas or something and it’s really, really nasty. And it burns things.

Rob Walling: That’s gross.

Amy: Sorry.

Man 7: Yeah.

Amy: Yes.

Rob Walling: And now, in just few moments, were going to go out and eat ice cream.

Amy: Woo!

Rob Walling: Thanks, Amy. Thanks a lot.

Amy: Thank you.

[applause]

A couple months ago, I found something I wrote accidentally on Hacker News. Having vitriol spewed at me. (Surprise! Some might say those two phrases are redundant!

Why?

My husband and I had shut down our second SaaS product, Charm.

Charm was beautiful & wonderful (with — dare I say it? — a revolutionary workflow) and our early-access customers loved it. We’d been working on it for two years. We hired an expert sys admin to design us a scaleable architecture, and we had arranged the servers. We’d had freelance help all along, and we paid for the best (and while the best loved us and gave us discounts, the best is never cheap!).

By October 2012, Charm was already covering its own (massive) server bills — or, in other words, bringing in the better part of $4,000 a month in revenue. That was before we even opened it up to more than just a tiny sliver of the 3,800 people who signed up to “Be the First In Line.”

While our first SaaS, Freckle, had just recently topped $400,000 in revenue a year, I was sure that Charm would grow ten times faster.

Then we killed it.

Why? Why would we shut down a product that our customers loved, that was already monthly net-neutral, that we’d spent 2 years and something like $175,000 to $200,000 on?

This is what Hacker News couldn’t understand.

I wrote an email to our beloved customers, explaining:

You probably noticed Charm had some nasty downtime a couple weeks ago.

Service quality is very important to us. If we didn’t think we could do better, we wouldn’t do it at all.

We’ve spent very generously on sysadmin services and infrastructure (nearly $100k of investment on sysadmin services/infrastructure alone). We hired the best possible, and we splurged on a redundant, powerful, and expensive server configuration from the beginning.

Now we’ve discovered that there’s some kind of base incompatibility with Ubuntu, which is giving us kernel panics which nobody can track down. Charm has been plagued by mystery technical problems from the beginning, when we had to backport from Rails 3.x to 2.x because of massive performance slowdowns which even Rails Core members couldn’t identify.

What this has really shown us is that, if we open Charm to the general public, we won’t be able to provide you with the kind of service you deserve. We are a tiny team, and so far, we’ve had zero luck in our attempts to grow by hiring developers. Problems which are small now will only get bigger.

There are a lot of things I’m willing to take risks with, but not with your ability to provide support to customers for your business.

And so it is with a very heavy heart that we will cease operating Charm from Dec 15, for the foreseeable future.

You won’t be billed again, and we’ll refund your last payments.

We will gladly help you migrate your data out of Charm. Please contact us directly (support@charmhq.com) for help.

Thank you so much for taking a chance on us, and sharing our dream for a superior email interface.

I’m truly sorry to disappoint you.

Best wishes,

Amy

That’s what ended up on HN. And all Hacker News could see was the technical issues. But I’m sure you, dear reader, have better reading comprehension than that.

It wasn’t about the technical issues. They were just the harbinger.

We shut down Charm for the best of all possible reasons:

• Feeling responsible to our customers.
• Feeling responsible to our own values.

Our company is three people: Me, my husband Thomas Fuchs, and one employee, Devon.

We’d already spent the more than 1/3 the cost of our house on development. (Our own money, in case that wasn’t clear. You know my position on funding.)

So, by the time fall 2012 rolled around, we knew it was “Now or Never” for Charm’s public launch. Cue another list:

First of all, it had been a long time coming.

Secondly, I didn’t want to keep bank-rolling it from the money we made from other projects (namely my class, 30×500). There’s no point in borrowing from Peter to pay Paul forever. I’m running a business, not a playground.

So we set a date: November 2012. This impending launch clarified a lot of things.

First, it was clear that Charm was going to be a much more demanding product to run than Freckle Time Tracking. For starters, to get great performance to grow to hundreds of customers, we needed $3k/mo of servers. Charm dealt with email; that’s a lot of backend connectivity involved, not to mention a lot of data to store, index, access, and search. We also built a totally live interface using Backbone.js and that is not without its performance costs.

Secondly, Charm, unlike Freckle, required high availability. If your time tracker goes down, it doesn’t actually prevent you from doing your work. Charm, on the other hand would be people’s work. Charm downtime could possibly cause our customers to lose customers.

That’s an awful lot of responsibility for a technical team of two (one sick).

Thirdly, we had two products to run: Freckle, and Charm. Plus my class. We’d already trimmed our sails by stopping our JavaScript Master Class for months at a time. It was still too much. Charm wasn’t moving forwards as fast as we needed, development-wise. Freckle wasn’t moving forward at all. Something had to give.

Therefore, we knew we needed either to find the right employees right away (fat chance!), or find technical partners to help us run the app.

So we took the partnership route with people we knew, respected, and trusted.

It didn’t work out.

This wasn’t anyone’s fault. We’re still friends and they’re fantastic at what they do, and we still work happily with them. But it’s been my experience, again and again, that just because you work beautifully with someone in one capacity doesn’t mean another arrangement will necessarily work, for all kinds of reasons.

(This applies equally to all permutations of consultant->partner, friend->partner, friend->freelancer, friend->employee, freelancer->employee, employee->freelancer, etc. My husband and I work together like a well-oiled, if occasionally cranky, engine. But that wouldn’t work for most people, either.)

So, while all this was coming to a head, in October… we were on a trip. We’d intermittently had weird Charm crashes, etc., for which we relied on our aforementioned expert sysadmin (to the tune of $200/hr — well worth it, by the way).

We had been at a biz conference in Scottsdale, and then rented a house for a week in Sedona, AZ. Thomas, Devon and I put our heads together for several days to work on the Charm launch. Then Devon headed home and Thomas and I had a couple days to ourselves.

Charm went down one night at 3am.

Our freelance sysadmin wasn’t available.

The servers weren’t responding at all. It wasn’t just that the app / web server had lost the thread… the whole system was unreachable. Thomas busted his ass to figure out what was wrong. We had to rely on Rackspace’s excellent service to get things back online. Nobody did anything wrong, but it still sucked the big time. My husband gets real tetchy when he is stressed out. (As do I.) We were supposed to be relaxing. It didn’t happen.

We have friends who run infrastructure products… and they thrive on it, but during this minor catastrophe, we thought back to their lives, and we had flashes of the future, of receiving server alerts in the middle of a party, of having to scrounge up a laptop to fix it (or leave)… no thank you.

Above, I broke the timeline a little — it was about a week after we returned from this trip that we decided to end our partnership. Things simply came to a head. Expectations weren’t met, words were exchanged, tears were shed (at least by me!). Stress, stress, stress.

So, there we were with:

• An unwillingness to spend more out-of-pocket
• A failed partnership and no hiring prospects
• No development momentum
• Downtime, another mystery problem, after we had already had so many
• A very real preview of what our lives would be like if we continued down this path
• Customers who were currently very understanding, but who would no doubt cease to be, the less and worse we did
• Another product with happy customers, easy to run, and profitable, which we were neglecting
• Did I mention I have a chronic illness?

Our choice was clear… there was no choice. Charm was already dead. We just called off the chest compressions.

So…

Charm is by far the best thing I’ve ever designed. I love designing software and I believe I have a unique approach; workflow, and good feelings, above all else, are my focus, and whenever I start to question my own self-regard, I use other people’s software.

Charm really is great. When people use it, they love it. And they happily give us money. (Lots of it! Charm was expensive and that didn’t deter our early customers.)

But what good does all that do me if we’re miserable? Or if we have to sacrifice everything else we’ve built trying to shove this fat baby bird out of the nest?

So of course, I love the product and I want to see it out there. We thought, we can give my baby up for adoption, maybe. I talked to some people in the industry about selling it. (Another list!)

First, I knew another bootstrapped software company just like ours that attempted to sell a (profitable) product they needed to “twilight”, for the sake of focus. They loved their customers and wanted to ensure continued service. Were they able to sell the product? No. They contacted all their competitors and a lot of other folks besides. Nobody wanted to buy it without the team, or they just wanted to buy the customer list (and shut down the product).

I asked one of the many venture capitalists who reach out to me: OK, I’ll bite. How often do product-only sales happen? Just about never, he said.

I asked around the folks I knew who were knee-deep in the more traditional startup space, where acquisitions happen. No good prospects there, either.

So, continuing the way we were going: Hell no.

Selling: Not an option.

Emergency hiring: Not an option.

Partnerships: Been there, done that, ripped up the t-shirt.

Taking investment: Hahahah. I only included this for the humor value. I’d take out a second mortgage before I took investment.

Shutting down with dignity was the only option left.

And so I wrote that heartfelt email, and sent it, and our customers were all really nice about it. They knew we’d always striven to take great care of them, and people respond to that.

Finally, we helped some of them migrate their data out, gave them nearly 8 weeks to make other arrangements, and that was that.

Charm is now gone. The landing page is gone. We use it internally (on a slooooow server) and that’s that.

What have I learned?

Well, for one, making the right decision always makes you feel better afterwards. Or at least, it always makes me feel better. It sucked, but it was a huge relief.

Two, if you treat your customers right, they’ll treat you right. Unlike some services that get acquikilled, we didn’t just shut down and delete data without warning. We did the right thing… as much for their quality of service as anything else. And our customers respected us for it. The general response was, “Aww, we love Charm, but that’s so sad! But we understand.” Some of them even thanked us (!) for making the right, hard decision.

And friends asked, “Are you okay?” like it was my cat that died instead of my product. That was sweet and meant a lot to me.

Three, the loud-mouthed people “in the stands” at Hacker News are full of crap. But, no surprise there. “OMG HOW DID YOU SPEND $100K ON THAT?” “For that much, you could hire TWO sysadmins for $5k/mo.” “Nobody will ever fund you now!” “Nobody shuts down because of technical problems! There must be a conspiracy!” Lulz. Sound and fury signifying nothing, my friends.

(Don’t believe that people would really say those things? Here, go read for yourself.)

If you were to only see the HN thread, you wouldn’t know that the people who matter (our customers) were kind. I bring it up because I believe this kinda crap has a chilling effect and I like to show what it’s really like.

Those were the lessons about the shut-down itself. As for what I learned about the whole two-year process:

Just because a genuine need exists, and you can fill it, doesn’t mean you ought to. Yep, I can design a better support tool than just about anybody else before and, so far as I’ve seen, since. But that’s not good enough.

I hadn’t fully thought through the issues of running an infrastructure product. Freckle‘s a doll to run. Charm would be, by its very nature, much more demanding. If I had anticipated our difficulty in hiring-people-to-worry-about-it-for-me, I would never have embarked on the project at all.

It’s easy to assume you’ll grow by hiring, right up to the point where you actually experience hiring someone. Big “duh” there. Everybody talks about growing with bodies as if it’s straightforward, even if finding talent is a challenge. But what I’ve found is that there’s little problem finding people to hire, but hiring is such a risk because if you hire the wrong person, it can ruin everything until (and long after) you end the situation. Devon has absolutely been the ideal hire for us… but before Devon, I had hired two people I was forced to subsequently fire. The stress was terrible for my health. And my health is far more important than any kind of glory, growth, respect, or revenue. I cannot keep hiring if I keep a 33% hit rate. (And, if you’re hiring and you plan to be a kind of semi-absent owner (either due to putzing around Italy, or sick), finding the right person gets even harder.)

You can do everything right… and still have it blow up in your face. In terms of the tech, we knew what we were doing. You might say Thomas knows his way around Rails, as a Rails Core Alumnus, and we certainly know what’s what when it comes to JavaScript performance. We hired people who were top experts in their field (including Rails committers). When we had those unbearable, unmanageable Rails 3.x performance problems, members of the Rails Core team helped us to try and track them down. They couldn’t figure it out. When we had another issue with the server architecture, nobody could figure out what it was. We don’t blame our sys admin at all. He has an amazing track record and we know he did a great job (sometimes at his own expense because he, too, was frustrated with the situation).

There is nothing at all wrong with our former partners; we love them. We gladly work with them to this day. It was simply that the particular structure of relationship (partnership) wasn’t one that worked for us both.

You can be a world-class expert; you can hire world-class experts; you can do everything right… and things can still go wrong.

There is no certainty in this world. There is no protection. Sometimes there is nobody to blame.

Making decisions out of boredom is pathetic. I love a good challenge. My mother couldn’t afford to replace my ancient Centris 610 when I was an 11-year-old begging for a PowerPC. So what did I do? I made the money myself. I sold all my My Little Ponies and a bunch of my other toys at a yardsale; I did errands; I washed cars. I rise to challenge. That’s one thing that’s never changed about me.

This time, to my detriment. Charm arose partially out of rage at the shittiness of the existing products (which we had to use endure every day!), and a knowledge that there was an open space in the market, but it was also most tantalizing because Freckle, good ol’ Freckle, happy Freckle, was boring. I wanted a bigger challenge.

Duh.

Ego is stupid. We had a little bit of Second Product Syndrome, make no mistake. Launching Freckle was stressful, sure. But launching Charm was much more stressful. My actual thought process went something like this:

“OK, when we launched Freckle, we weren’t really risking anything reputation-wise. But now we have a reputation and it’s important to ship something that, even if it’s incomplete, compares favorably to what people expect from us.”

Who knows, possibly if we’d ignored that bit of stupidity, we’d have launched Charm as a Shitty First Draft, and found all this out sooner. Or perhaps attracted the perfect technical hires by serendipity & being “out there.” We’ll never know now, though, and that’s ok.

I’m smart and learn from my mistakes. By the time we shut down Charm, I had already seen, admitted, and internalized all of the above. I’ve got no problem at all admitting when I am wrong. (Psst: I was wrong.) And so I didn’t worry about how our “reputation” would suffer for shutting it down (what does that even mean?) and I didn’t really worry that our customers would hate us, because I knew we had given them no reason to.

We’ve doubled down on Freckle and it’s growing, we’re happier, our customers are happier, we’re still working with our former/would-be partners, and all is rosy in Hoy-Fuchsville.

That leads me to the present: I’m writing this essay to share what I learned with you.

Despite this all sounding like a horrible (and preventable) situation, we made the right (hard) decision, and in my opinion, I’ve come out looking pretty good to myself and to my husband and the people closest to us… and that’s all that really matters to me, in the end.