The system I use to be consistent
Stick to this system and you will see impressive results.
Let’s be honest, being a solopreneur on the side of a full-time job, is not easy at all.
Life is overwhelming. We struggle for 9 hours (from 9 to 18 here in Italy, with an hour lunch break), and out of that, we want to work on our side projects.
That’s overwhelming.
You know, consistency is key in this game.
But consistency is not enough.
Consistency without focus brings to waste of time, or working on the wrong things.
Throughout my journey, I’ve learned many things, and if I had to start over with a new project, this is what I would do.
Let’s say you already picked up a product idea, you validated it with a waitlist, pre-order page, or by talking to enough people to understand that it’s a painful problem. Amazing, it’s time to build the MVP.
If you’re a coder, I suggest you use one of the many boilerplates to save a huge amount of time working on the boring stuff (landing pages, authentication, collect payments on so on). You could use Shipped.club if you’re into the Next.js and React world or you can pick up another one. Just save time on coding.
If you’re not a coder, you can always try a no-code product like Bubble. Those are platforms to build full-stack applications via their (quite complex) platform.
Alright, let’s say you have the MVP, until now you focused on validation and building.
The first lesson I’ve learned is that you need to do both marketing and building (especially if your product is a SaaS) in a balanced way. You can’t skip any of the two.
Coding/Marketing Week
A great way to be consistent with both of them is to alternate the weeks, one week of marketing, and one week of building.
Use this website to decide what you’re going to work on this week:
https://codingweekmarketingweek.com/
and stick to it.
Coding/Marketing Boards
Create two boards using Notion, Trello, or whatever you prefer.
One product board, and one marketing board. Keep them separated.
This way when you’re on one of the two weeks, you open the specific board and you know exactly what to work on.
You might add new tasks within the weeks when you receive a feature request or you have an idea. remember to immediately write it down on the right board to avoid forgetting it.
At the beginning of every week, it’s a good idea to look at the board and reorganize and prioritize the activities.
This way you’ll start with a clean board, and work on the most impactful tasks.
With this simple system, you’ll be able to proceed with both activities and don’t find yourself only coding. Remember, your product might be great, but if no one knows about it, you’ll not get new customers.
Stick to this process for as long as possible, you’ll see the results 💪
Personal updates
Last week I was freaking out.
After 2 months of constant sales of Shipped.club, they suddenly stopped.
That happened when I added the email course, increased the price by $10, and changed a bit the copy/positioning, from “Launch your product” to “Launch your Micro SaaS”.
So I decided to write a product journal, to keep track of all the changes (I update the website quite often).
In the meantime, I worked on a new feature, a React Chrome Extension Boilerplate.
I launched it yesterday with a bundle deal, and I was finally able to unlock new sales after 5 days of zero sales 😮💨
As I developed a Chrome Extension in the past for iterspace and OmniWrite, I wanted people to take advantage of it. It includes:
authentication
push UI into web pages
read content from web pages
React, JavaScript, and TypeScript
Background, and content script, Pop-up
installation welcome page
And by the way, I want you to leverage this deal as well.
You can get 50% off the bundle price ($98.5 instead of $197) with this coupon code G5MDMZNQ at the checkout. Valid until Monday the 4th of March. Get it today.
That’s all for today.
See you next Sunday
Luca
Whenever you are ready, I have a couple of ways to help your solopreneurial journey.
Shipped.club is the Next.js Startup Boilerplate for busy developers, that allows you to build, ship, and make money with your product quickly.
92 makers are already shipping faster.
The second is Userdesk, the AI Assistants platform to automate your leads collection and customer support for your digital business.
Hey Luca, this was a good read.