Happy Monday folks, and hopefully you had a good weekend.
Over here in Toronto it’s starting to warm up. Apparently it’s actually going to be a cold week ahead, but we had a nice warm weekend which was great. Because as some of you may know, spending months in the dark/indoors through a Canadian winter isn’t always that fun.
More warm weather = more sun which usually = more energy, good moods, etc.
I also got back into running outside, a routine that I don’t like during the winter. Although if you want to read about the time I was forced to train outside by running in a Canadian winter, definitely check out my blog post from last year on running my first (and only?) marathon.
I find that running, like business, and almost anything else, is about setting a plan and then staying consistent. Everything else is usually not quite as important. Consistently and hard work probably trump everything, so make sure to never forget that (even though we all do at times).
It’s one of the reasons I’m finally pulling the trigger on that Discord community I’ve been thinking about for a while, but wanted to wait for the right time and reason before doing it. The main reason is simply to keep each other accountable, because it’s so easy as an entrepreneur not to have that accountability or system in place, to keep you consistent, day in and day out.
So what I did is create a basic Discord community, and the main focus is keeping yourself accountable. All we do (mostly me for right now because it’s so new) is post once per day, about the 1-3 things we want to get done that day. And then at the end of the day, post an emoji to show it foyu got it done or not (thumbs up or down).
That’s it.
So far, even after a few days, it’s helped me stay focused and consistent because I know others are watching.
Anyway, getting back to business and recent progress, when I first got into tech I thought that building and launching products was a good chunk of the work.
What I quickly learned is that’s the easy part.
Since we all have ideas and what we think are good solutions, we think that building and launching will lead to instant riches. Maybe that’s how it happens for some – the Facebook’s of the world – but for most, it’s a much different road.
A road filled with crickets.
Meaning that you launch a product, then realize you have to actually go and sell the thing! And to add a kicker, selling software can often mean convincing people to try a new piece of technology that they’ve never used before – which I’ve found to be a bit harder than selling a traditional service.
Now I don’t want to turn everyone away from tech. Far from it.
Just trying to share from my experience, so that more people do more prep before building tech products in the future. And also realize that once you build the product, the real journey begins.
Selling, marketing, talking to users, getting their feedback and adjusting, etc.
It’s one reason we’re adding in a big new feature this week at Visto, because it’s something a lot of users, and potential users, are asking for.
A big reason I usually recommend keeping your MVP – initial product – super barebones and just getting it out into the public asap. So you can talk to users, get feedback, and only build in what they actually want, instead of spending way too much time building features they might not even use.
I’ll keep you posted as we build it in and launch it, and hopefully it leads to some good traction.
Have a great day, make sure to follow along for my daily solopreneur tips here, and keep grinding.
