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Imagine building a product for a whole year, and then deciding to try something new on a whim. You build it in a weekend, and in 4 days you already have your first paying customer.
Show Notes
Imagine building a product for a whole year, and then deciding to try something new on a whim. You build it in a weekend, and in 4 days you already have your first paying customer.
Find out what happens next: this is part 2 with Dan Norris of Inform.ly and WP Curve.
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Notable quotes
“I realized with my first business, that I’d built something that didn’t scale.”
“I also realized, that I don’t want to do sales. I don’t get energy from going out and doing sales.”
“My co-founder calls himself the Claff, which kind of sounds like an STD.”
“Wait a second; are you allowed to swear on your show?”
“There’s something about putting a price on something, and seeing if people will pay you.”
“I don’t know anyone who’s running a software business, who’s started in the last couple of years, who are making a lot of money. I didn’t realize that at first. It takes a long time to build up the product, to where it’s good enough. SaaS takes a long time.”
“Your mailing list is a massive leg up. When I do something now, people find out about it, which is half the battle.”
“Authority is a hugely valuable asset. Do whatever you do best, that will get people the most amount of relevant people aware of what you’re doing.”
“People won’t tell you what they want. I’ve asked people ‘would you pay for this?'”
Show notes
Creators and Guests
What is Product People?
A podcast focused on great products and the people who make them
Parodic People is sponsored by sprint.ly. If you have a team of three or more people and you're doing software development, nothing takes care of the process like Sprintly can. I want you and your team to try it out for free. Go to www.sprint.ly. Once you decide to sign up, use my product code.
Speaker 1:ProductPeopleTV 2013 will get you 10% off.
Speaker 2:That's an MVP. Doing as little as possible to work out if someone will actually pay you for this product.
Speaker 1:This week, part two with Dan Norse, the founder of WP Curve. He talks about how WP Curve in one month doubled the amount of recurring revenue he was doing with his products. You're gonna wanna hear all the lessons he learned along the way, how he chose a co founder, and what he thinks about minimum viable product. Alright. So let's go right in now to your second business, which is WP Curve.
Speaker 1:Can you explain to us what WP Curve is?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So WP Curve basically gives you access to 20 fourseven live WordPress developer for support and unlimited fixes for $69 a month or starting at $69 a month. And we have another plan for like ongoing maintenance where we proactively patch and upgrade stuff as well as the live support for I think $99 a month. And it basically came out of me just knowing this industry pretty well and knowing that like you see these marketplaces popping up all the time and it's like do people really want another marketplace? I mean like when I want a problem solved, I just want to go to someone that I trust and I want to know that they're always available.
Speaker 2:I want to know that I can do whatever I want on my side and I can actually use WordPress you know as a CMS the way I should be able to use it without fear of it breaking and without fear of getting hacked and just have someone there if something goes wrong. And there really wasn't anything like that out there. And so I basically thought of the idea on the weekend and I was racking my brain because I was facing the idea of getting a job or doing something drastic because I was just clearly running out of time. And this time I'm like, Okay, this idea sounds pretty good. I'm going post it in a few forums' which is what I did last time, which I did and everyone told me it was shit.
Speaker 2:And I thought, well fuck that, I don't care' because last time everyone told me it was good and it turned out to be shit so this time I'm just going to do it. So by Tuesday, I'd launched it and within a week I'd had 10 customers. Three weeks later I'm making more money on it than I am with InforMe and it's growing like crazy.
Speaker 1:Wow! So like you said in part one, you basically gave yourself a year to build this other product called Informly. You're running out of time. You're at the end of the year. You're thinking, I, I have got to make something work.
Speaker 1:I either go back and get a job or I'm going to make some sort of product or service work. You came up with this idea on the weekend. You posted in forums and asked people if was a good idea. They said it wasn't a good idea. You did it anyway.
Speaker 1:And how quick between the time you launched it and the first paying customer?
Speaker 2:Well, the same day. I mean, did a I thought of it on Saturday. Came home and just bought a theme, put the site up. And I think on like Wednesday, I wrote a blog post which actually did pretty well. I think it was called five things you can do right now instead of creating more content.
Speaker 2:And it was kind of just talking about how everyone's focused on doing more content, but you need to really actually promote your content or improve it, which is actually gonna help people see it rather than creating more of it. And that post did quite well. That's the sort of post I would normally put on Informly, but I put it up on this and just tweeted it to see like I didn't actually launch the product yet but I had a buy now button up on the homepage and then a day later I sent it out to my list. So one thing I have built over the last year is a list of about 5,000 people which is nice. And I sent it out to my list and I had signups straight away.
Speaker 1:I love this. This is so interesting. You know, one thought I had about your list, because I think I've been on your list for, I don't know, probably six months or something like that. And you send these regular updates just talking. And you've really transparent about, with Informly, your other product, just how sign ups were going.
Speaker 1:And you would explain when you were frustrated, just really kind of honest, no bullshit. This is what's going on with my experiment here trying to build this thing. And I think a lot of us were rooting for you. We kind of built this relationship with you over the time of you just emailing your list. And then all of sudden you've got kind of the right service for people on that list.
Speaker 1:I could see some people saying, yeah, I know Dan. I respect Dan. I like Dan. I'm going to do this because, you know, I just kind of like him as a person.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think so. That's the thing with content marketing. I had a guy sign up for Informa yesterday and I went back and looked through his history because I use Infusionsoft now. And I went back and looked through his history of what he'd done on my site and I'd never heard of this guy before. I'd never had a reply from him or I haven't seen him comment on any of my posts.
Speaker 2:But you look back over what he's done on my emails and on my posts, he's signed up to all of my free email courses, he's downloaded my ebooks, he's read all my emails and clicked on all my links over a long period of time. And that's what content marketing is, it works but it takes a long time. And sometimes you don't know how valuable it is. I've also found a co founder this week who
Speaker 1:This week? Yeah. Found a co founder this week. Take me through, how did this happen?
Speaker 2:Well, again, same, he's been on my list for a long time. He actually commented on that post, that is startup validation bullshit post. And he's just really proactive. He basically just said, Okay, I'm going to call you and talk to you about this. And he happened to be over in America and he's just moved there.
Speaker 2:He's in Aussie and he's still waiting for his stuff to come through. He's basically like, I want to do some free work for you. And we basically just agreed that we're just going to go in for this together. We're going to do it for a couple of months and he's going to do all the sales type stuff and I'm going to basically do everything that I've currently been doing and if we can hit certain goals then we're going basically yeah, it's going to basically be a partnership.
Speaker 1:And why were you even interested? Like some random guy comments on your stuff? Is he buying?
Speaker 2:He's very good looking. He's very good looking. So one of the things I was thinking was I just wasn't good looking enough. I went to Facebook and I started looking for people that looked like the guy from Twilight and this guy came up, which was weird.
Speaker 1:This guy, Fifth and Bill. Yeah,
Speaker 2:it's a well balanced partnership. I do the content marketing, finance strategy planning, web stuff, sales, pretty much everything. And he just sends people memes.
Speaker 1:But why even bother? You've been doing it yourself forever, who cares? Like why do you even need someone, a partner?
Speaker 2:Well, I think like in my last business, I kind of came to the conclusion that A, I designed my business so it couldn't scale and I wanted a business that could scale because I just get bored as shit. If I had to do the same thing for another year I would go crazy. I need something that's improving and growing and that I can be excited about. So this time I wanted to build something that scaled. The other thing I realised is that I don't really want to do sales and I just don't really get energy from going out and doing that sales stuff.
Speaker 2:I've sort of tried to build my businesses around the content so that I don't need to do the sales side but you do need to do sales and you can't really get around that. So it's either I find a way to do that myself which I tried or I get the guy from Twilight in who can smooze people and get all the chicks on board. I call him my minimum viable co founder.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. Well, how you gonna like, is that like, does he have to make sales in order to make the partnership? Like, is that part of the deal?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm pushing him hard, man. I like sending him text messages at 11:30 at night when he's asleep. I'm like, dude, you haven't hit your target. You've to make more sales.
Speaker 1:And is that how you structured the deal? Like you said, listen, you can be my partner, but you're going to have to kind of reach these benchmarks?
Speaker 2:More or less. Yeah. I mean, he's pretty funny. He calls himself the Claff. His name's Alex McClafferty.
Speaker 2:So if anyone's listening, go and follow him on Twitter and expect to be trolled. But yeah, he calls himself the Claff which kind of sounds like an STD but he's just a serial pest so he's kind of just out there stalking people anyway so he's just got to do more of that.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's hilarious. Know, would you think you would recommend that to to other people that are because there's a lot of people that do not like sales that are trying to build their own products. I guess we'll know in a little bit. But do you think this could be an avenue for those kinds of people?
Speaker 2:It's interesting. I've chatted to two people this week about the same thing. Being a solo founder is hard. Whether it's sales or whether it's something else or if it's just like the mindshare of your business, like not having someone to bounce ideas off. Every entrepreneur has that problem especially if they're a solo founder.
Speaker 2:And actually, was talking to another guy last week about this who wants to build something to actually help entrepreneurs deal with that exact issue of basically just having no one to talk to about their business that really understands business. And that's probably almost as big a thing for founders as the skill thing. Like most skills you can probably work out how to get in if you can work out how to make a profit. Most things you can do early on, like if I wanted to do sales right now, I probably could bust my ass and try to do like a couple of months of sales and get profitable. That model is there and it's possible to do it that way, but being a solo founder is hard.
Speaker 2:I think I've always thought about a partner and I've always, I have made attempts before to do it, but I've never really found someone who I thought was suitable. And once I caught the clap, I couldn't get rid of
Speaker 1:funny thing is I've heard a similar story. I mean, I've never heard anyone describe their co founder as an STD, but I've heard a similar story from other founders. They say, you know, there's a guy that came to me and he was just really excited about making sales. And that's basically how he earned his place in the partnership is that
Speaker 2:Well, this is thing, is I put content out there all the time and everyone reads it and people, like the more proactive of people comment on it, no one has ever picked up the phone and said, I can actually help you sell this thing and if I do that, you should give me money. Goes hard and I think you have to. Especially if you're going to play that role in a business where you have to go out and get people to pay for shit, then you can't be the sort of person who's sitting back and kind of commenting and fluffing around, you know? I think that kind of direct action works really well.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So now let's say you're giving advice to someone else. And I mean, you're still early on, but you do have experience in the sense that you were kind of aggressively pursuing this for a year. You built this product. You built a mailing list.
Speaker 1:You did all the content marketing. You did all that stuff. And so you've had that experience. And now in the last couple of weeks, you've got this new experience. So based on all of that, if someone came to you and said, know, I'm thinking about this product.
Speaker 1:I want to try to validate it before I build it. What would you say to them?
Speaker 2:Well, depends what the product is. If it's a software product, let's then say it's not a software product. Actually, I'll go back. Regardless of what sort of product it is, go out and work out how to solve it for someone and get them to pay you for it. So I probably could have done this with Informally.
Speaker 2:I could have gone out and said, look, you've got a whole bunch of complicated analytics, I'll come to your business one day a week and I'll pull it all together and I'll give you a report and you can pay me $50 or $500 or something. And that's 100x better than asking someone if the idea is good. So I think incubators and coworking spaces have to have a rule where you can't get in there unless you've got a customer and they say, okay, I want to work there? Well, if you've a customer, no, all right, we'll go get a customer, come back and then you can work here. Because I mean, there's just so much time wasted and I see this all the time with other businesses kind of chatting about decisions they should make and thinking about the way they should design their pages or whatever.
Speaker 2:It's like, just fucking do it. Make the change and look at how people use it and then make a decision. Millions of people have done this already. You don't have to be debating where to put stuff on the page. This stuff is all dealt with.
Speaker 2:Someone's already solved that problem. Just do the best practice and implement it. Stop talking about it and then decide based on what people's actions are. Yeah. You allowed to swear on your show?
Speaker 1:Sorry?
Speaker 2:Are you allowed to swear on your show? Oh, yeah. Okay. Sorry.
Speaker 1:Well, it's too late for that
Speaker 2:now, Dan. Sorry. I just lost
Speaker 1:my whole audience of five year olds and 10 year olds. And now you're talking about STDs. What am I going to do?
Speaker 2:Yeah, sorry about that.
Speaker 1:You know, well, this reminds me of Derek Sivers has this great video called Start Now, No Funding Needed. And he kind of describes that exact process you just described, which is, if you have an idea for something, go to one person and see if you can convince them to pay you for it. And if they pay you for it and you can get another person to pay you for it and another person, keep doing that until it's so painful that you need to write software to automate those manual things that you're doing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, which funnily enough is more or less what I did with Informly. With the agency version of it, that's exactly what I did. I started doing everything manually. Eventually it became too much of a pain and then I built the software. If I had have just kind of scrapped the last year and just went back to that, which really was a validated idea because I was paying for it, was solving a problem.
Speaker 2:And if I just focused on that, then I probably would have been better off than if I went out and tried to create like the world's most exciting startup.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. So you feel kind of like with Informally now, you're at the place you should have been, you know, maybe when you launched.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah, that's it.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And I think about this a lot and I think it is challenging because especially as people that like to build things, we want to get in and actually start building things and solving technical overcoming technical challenges and all of that. But there is something about putting a price on something and seeing who pays for it. It's almost like if you can close that gap, the sooner you can close that gap to seeing if someone will pay you, the better off you are.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it takes a long time as well. I think you get a bit caught up in all of the whole startup buzz stuff and thinking, I'm going to grow at 30% a month paid revenue from day one and by the end of the year, I'll be rich kind of thing. But I mean, I don't really know anyone who's running a software business who started it within the last couple of years who is making a good amount of money, other than the success stories you see on Mixergy and stuff, which to me are one offs. Like I know a lot of people running software companies and it takes a long time to build a SaaS business. And I I think probably didn't realise that at first and I think other people probably don't realise that either is that it takes a long time to build up that momentum to get known, to get the product even good enough, like to actually work out what people want and make it polished and get all the sequences and everything working well and the pricing well.
Speaker 2:It just takes a long time to get that stuff right.
Speaker 1:And what about this idea that you can kind of put up an MVP? I think the hard part is understanding what is actually viable for a customer, because it sounds like part of your experience was saying, you you put out these MVPs, people weren't with Informly but it wasn't enough to have people pay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, honestly, think a lot of the lean startup stuff is really misunderstood. I think the terminology has become the focus and all the acronyms and people use all of those words, I think they're like 90% of the time they're misused. And I think like MVP is basically like what I did with WP Curve was an MVP. Like it was, I was offering 20 fourseven live support and I didn't have anyone. It was just me.
Speaker 2:I had my mobile phone and I had it next to me in bed at nighttime. And if the live chat went off, it was buzzing like crazy loud in my ear so I could respond. That's an MVP. That's doing as little as possible to work out if someone will actually pay you for this product. But like yesterday I was sent an email from an investor who was working on a product and he built like an MVP version of it and he wanted my feedback.
Speaker 2:I'm like, well, I mean, it looks all right, but what am I gonna say? I mean, I don't know. I don't know if I would pay for it. It looks okay. It really needs to be more polished.
Speaker 2:I'm used to using Gmail and Xero and all of this amazing software like that. And I would expect if I'm going to pay for something, it would be as polished as that. So I I can give you feedback on how it looks, but I don't really know if that's going to help your business. It doesn't help you know whether or not you need to go to the next stage.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And do you think like, is there ways you can with software specifically, like, you think there are other things people can try to close that gap to try to see if someone will pay you right away?
Speaker 2:I think if you're a good salesperson, you can pre sale. And that's kind of the answer that people give you, but that answer is often given to you by people who are natural salespeople. And I'm not a natural salesperson and I need to get better at this, but I would feel bad going to someone and asking them to pay me for a year for something that doesn't exist. And I think that is one answer. Know, if you are a good salesperson, you do have an idea that you think will take off, then that could be one way to do it.
Speaker 2:But a lot of the people who do this as well are people with big lists and the list is a massive leg up. Like if I didn't have my list after that year, then I probably wouldn't have any customers. I mean, how would I have gotten these customers? So people tend to take advice from these big name internet marketers, oh I've created this business from scratch' but they've been building this list for ten years and you can't put a value on that. If you're literally starting something from scratch and no one knows about you, then maybe the way I did it isn't so bad in that at least people know about me now.
Speaker 2:And when I do something, people find out about it, is half of the battle as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Do you think that's part of the idea? If you're someone interested in building products, you need to just start creating content and writing about things that people care about? Like, is that part of the process?
Speaker 2:I don't think so. I think I choose content because that's what I'm good at and that's what I know how to do. That's how I do my marketing. But sales was the way I'd if face to face sales or like running workshops or something was the way that I did my marketing, I can't say that that would be any less effective. Getting out and talking to people is probably going to be as effective if not more than creating a whole bunch of content but that's just the way I do things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but it seems like one thing you're saying is that building the list was important. So someone is starting from ground zero. They're like you. They've got their own Web consultancy business. They just they don't like it anymore.
Speaker 1:They really have a desire to build a product. They don't know what it is yet. Do you think they should just start doing, you know, whatever takes workshops, content, sales, whatever it is, but start building up a mailing list? Like, is that the key in this?
Speaker 2:I think authority authority is a hugely valuable asset. It's not the only way to sell something but building authority is very, very valuable and people in one way or another are gonna need to know about your product. And I mean, I think the best advice I could give is do whatever it is that you do best that will get the most people knowing about your product. And I mean, I could go and do sales but I'm shit at it and I would get more people knowing about my product if I go and create a bunch of content so that's what I did. I know people doing videos who are really good at videos so that's what they do.
Speaker 2:I know people who do podcasts because they're really good at podcasts because that's what they do. I think you do what the best thing you can do to get the most amount of people, the most amount of relevant people aware of what you're working on. And I think content can be a powerful way to do it because it's just a natural trust builder and a natural kind of relationship builder without you even knowing. But it's also very slow and it takes a long time to build up that kind of goodwill. You need to be prepared to think about it as a long term thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I'm just kind of going back to something you just said about how you don't know very many people who have built software in the last couple of years that are making a significant amount of money on software.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Do you think like and a lot of the people that we think of that have been successful, you know, a lot of them have been doing this for a long time. Do you think that's the thing that most folks just don't realize is that a lot of these successful products actually it can take years and years and years to actually get that right.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, yeah. Mean if you look at some of the email marketing ones, AWeb has been around for fifteen years, Infusionsoft's been around for twelve years. I mean these are companies that started with a tiny idea. Like you hear the Aweber story and it's like, I just built some tiny little thing in my garage and it was just year after year of growth and eventually, you know, it it comes good. And it's also timing as well.
Speaker 2:Mean, if you start Aweber today then you're screwed. You got no chance. But you start Aweber fifteen years ago, it's a totally different story. So there's so many factors in success. I think people want to quantify it but there's just so many factors.
Speaker 2:There's luck. There's always luck. There's timing. There's so many things and I don't think it really can be quantified.
Speaker 1:Maybe in the last little bit we have here, something I've been thinking about a lot lately is desperation and how sometimes desperation can be a good thing. And sometimes it can be a really counterproductive thing. So like if you if you're trying to build a product and you're just desperate for it to work, sometimes that seems like it is counterproductive, like you end up not getting anywhere. Can you talk to any of that about, you know, how maybe desperation helped you or didn't help you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it did both, to be honest. I mean, I like before I decided to basically go back to just the agency version of Informly, I released a totally different app that was a content marketing analytics app. I worked on it for six weeks and put it out there and I validated as far as in inverted commas validated it. At that point, I like, I have to make something that's going to grow crazy fast or else I'm screwed. So I think that kind of desperation led me to making some very fast decisions and maybe as time goes on I'll look back and think that I made those decisions too quickly.
Speaker 2:Like scrapping, I've worked on it for six weeks and then after a month I scrapped it. And it was probably a good idea. Like it probably is still a good idea, but I just didn't have enough time and I wasn't going to be able to grow it in the amount of time so I scrapped it. That's probably a bad side of desperation, but I've had the positive as well and just racking my brain for a new idea and coming up with this business was a good thing and it's gotten me to basically breaking even as of today. Whereas three weeks ago I was looking at maybe having to get a job.
Speaker 2:And who knows how far this is going to go? I've got me in Australia, we've got people in four countries. I've got Alex over in The US he's near LA. He might even move to Silicon Valley. I mean we've got a lot of potential and it's a huge market and we're doing something that other people aren't doing.
Speaker 2:This time in the year, this could be a very, very big business.
Speaker 1:And one thing I think, like when I get some desperation in my own life, one of the first things I've noticed, like looking back on those times is I'm often just completely self focused. Like, I'm not thinking about anyone else except by me. You know, I'm just in this little bubble thinking, Okay, I got to do this for me. I got to do this for me. I'm always like that.
Speaker 1:Looking at your new product, because this is where things kind of connect. Like with WP curve, there were some people you put that out there and there were some people that looked at that and said, that would really help me. And I wonder if there's something to that. Like, know, for whatever reason, with informally the initial version with small businesses, it just wasn't a big enough pain for small businesses to really care that much. But you released this new thing called WP Curve.
Speaker 1:And it's not about Dan Norris. It's about these people that need help with WordPress in this case. Do you think? Is there something there? Is there something there about this idea of connecting?
Speaker 1:I mean, obviously, that's what everyone talks about, validating ideas. But in this case, you were able to connect with something where people really needed help.
Speaker 2:I think so. I think I probably went a bit too much into my shell and just tried to do the whole get in your garage and build a product and then release it to the world thing. Think with this version of it and the problem is that people won't tell you what they want. I've sent out so many surveys and emails to my list and all sorts of stuff asking specifically would you pay for this? And people won't tell you what they want and what they do tell you won't be right anyway.
Speaker 2:So I think you do have to be good at working out what people's problems are. And for me, that was an easy one because I've lived and breathed that for six years. And I know the agency model has a lot of problems with it because we're working with agencies as well in that we will be the white label provider of WordPress maintenance and live support and fixes because agencies aren't structured to be able to do that kind of work. And that creates a situation where people are frustrated with the agency. I know the problems of marketplaces because every entrepreneur I know has been burnt on Odesk and Elance.
Speaker 2:And so I just intimately knew these problems already. So I think knowing the problem and then validating it by actually getting people paying for it has been the good thing. The other thing, which is maybe a bit contrary to what people think is the whole scratch your own itch thing, which is like within Formly, was trying to do that, like build a product that summarized all of my stats. I was kind of building this thing for myself. Whereas with WP curve, don't need the service because I've got a team of developers and I know enough to be dangerous myself.
Speaker 1:But
Speaker 2:I had to put it out there and I had to put it out there not just to people who are my mates in forums but put it out to people who have these problems and I had to focus on them to build the product. I think there is something in that. You get a lot of advice saying scratch your own itch but that can be damaging as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah. What was I just thinking? Oh, I just went completely blank.
Speaker 2:I told you you shouldn't drink the beer before the interview.
Speaker 1:I know, I know. That's the problem. It would have probably helped a little bit, actually. Oh, that's what I was the you had this experience. So like now in retrospect.
Speaker 1:You know, you've got twenty twenty vision because you're looking behind, you're saying, you know, over the six years of experience I had in the Web development world, I see that there's this problem and that agency thing is really interesting. I could totally see that, you know, agencies are building these Web sites, but they have no kind of structure to provide support for them. Yeah. And so you looking
Speaker 2:back And at the whole, the way these websites are managed is changing. Like when I started out, there was no such things as CMS, I had to build my own. And now, like people are building their own sites left, right and center. Some people like solo entrepreneurs don't rely on agencies to build their sites. Even if they have no technical skills, they can do 90% of it themselves.
Speaker 2:So that's a whole market that's only really been serviced by these marketplaces at the moment. But the agency side as well are battling with that as well because they they have to either build recurring revenue or they have to do big dollar projects. And either one of those situations as a service like WP Curve can help them because we can help them build recurring revenue by white labeling the ongoing support and we can help them focus on the bigger projects by taking away the tasks that they don't want to do on smaller projects.
Speaker 1:And this has become actually a recurring theme. And people I've talked to you is that they have this thing that's
Speaker 2:kind of
Speaker 1:like just below the surface. It's based on their experience or Usually it's like a boring problem that they actually have a lot of perspective on. And they first they go out and build the really sexy thing and then that doesn't work. And then they come to this other thing that's always been kind of, you know, just below the surface, basically something that they hadn't thought about before. Do you think there's a secret to bringing those things out?
Speaker 1:Like I talked to a lot of our listeners and they say, well, I don't really have any experience that would be useful in building a product. But yet I keep talking to all these people that say, you know, there was this thing right in front of them that they didn't realize until a certain point.
Speaker 2:Honestly, I mean a big part of it is just executing as well. Some of the ideas that pop up that I just think are just crap ideas, the entrepreneurs just turn them into good ideas. There was a post yesterday by Paul Graham that's kind of discussed some of the stuff we talk about, which is I think it was called Do Things That Don't Scale. And it just talked about the fact that the entrepreneurs force these companies to succeed. They push through whatever the idea is.
Speaker 2:That's why it gets funny when people get all weird about their ideas and it's like the idea is nothing. I mean, everyone's got these ideas. There's nothing new about offering people support for their websites. This is not even an idea. This is a way of solving a problem and we're going to get out there and make sure that we sell the shit out of it and that we do an awesome job.
Speaker 2:We've got amazing, amazing testimonials coming through from people who've worked with other companies for months and we've solved their problem in an hour. And that kind of stuff just tells me, you know, if we're solving big problems and we're out there selling this then it's gonna work. And there's a big chunk of that. Mean, know Clarity, so you had Dan Martell on your show?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I thought that was the shittest idea. Like I saw it and I saw the app and I'm like, so what is it? You ring up and speak to an entrepreneur. But look at it now. It's like you just turned that into this amazing thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I thought the same thing actually.
Speaker 2:That's what entrepreneurs do.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Well, Dan, I really appreciate you coming on the show, especially kind of your I think your perspective that's going against the grain of a lot of the stuff that's out there. Just kind of the honesty and transparency. Where can people find you on the web if they wanted to reach out and ask you a question? Is there somewhere they could do that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, just wpcurve.com is the site and on Twitter I'm TheDanNorris, T H E Dan Norris. And it's not because I'm a wanker, it's just because some other guy took Dan Norris and I couldn't think of a better handle.
Speaker 1:Perfect. So on Twitter and then WP Curve is the site. And if you're looking for WordPress support, definitely go and check that out. And Dan, thanks again for being on the show.
Speaker 2:Awesome. Thanks so much for having me and look out for the class.
Speaker 1:My name is Justin Jackson, and I do the show every week, but I don't necessarily know who you are. I wanna hear from you. Why you're listening? What you like about the show? What you don't like about the show?
Speaker 1:You can get me on Twitter at m I Justin or you can email the show at productpeople@bizbox.ca. You can also follow the show on Twitter at product people TV. The best way to join the product people community is to join our email newsletter list. You can get there by going to productpeople.tv/newsletter. We're back next week with Spencer Fry, formerly of Carbon Made.
Speaker 1:Now he's working on a new startup called Uncover, which is all about employee rewards and perks. Take a listen next week, Wednesday, 1AM Pacific is when we'll publish.