Product People

Chris Hawkins (from Chasing Product) takes over interviewing and asks Justin the questions.

Show Notes

I was recently on the Chasing Product podcast with Chris Hawkins. Chris is a good interviewer: he asked a lot of great questions about my back-story, and how I got into products.

There’s this independence and self-reliance that comes from making your own products.

Show notes

Note from Justin

Want to help the show? If you could go to  iTunes leave a nice review that would be superb. Also: if you’re listening on  Stitcher, please leave a review on there!

Cheers,
Justin Jackson
@mijustin

Music: Lethal Force by Striker, visit them at  striker-metal.com


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Creators and Guests

Host
Justin Jackson
⚡ Bootstrapping, podcasting, calm companies, business ethics. Co-founder of Transistor.fm

What is Product People?

A podcast focused on great products and the people who make them

Speaker 1:

Alright. Here we go. Oh, man. I just want that to play all the way through. How's it going, folks?

Speaker 1:

Justin Jackson here. Welcome back to another episode of Product People. Getting ready to go on a little family vacation. And I thought before I left, I should put out another episode. This episode is dedicated to Mike and Rob over at the Startups for the Rest of Us podcast who are recently wondering if I had fallen off the bandwagon.

Speaker 2:

The next one on the list is Product People, and that one's run by Justin Jackson, and you can find that over at productpeople.tv. And this one, I don't wanna say it's fallen off the wagon or anything, but it definitely comes out a lot less frequently than it has in the past.

Speaker 1:

So I thought, well, I better put on an episode. First of all, thanks, guys, for featuring me on the show. I appreciate that. I like Startups for the Rest of Us. One of my probably one of my all time favorite shows, if you haven't checked it out, startupsfortherestofus.com.

Speaker 1:

Truth is, I have been busy with other stuff. Those of you that have been following earlier this year, I did the Build and Launch podcast, which is probably the most popular podcast I've ever done in my life. That's over at buildandlaunch.net. And more recently, I I did a couple seasons of that, and then I've been focusing exclusively on writing this book, Marketing for Developers. I'm going to get it out no matter what by 08/31/2015.

Speaker 1:

I've been writing every week. Just like all writing, it's not going as fast as I would like, but I'm making progress every week, and I'm excited to get this out the door finally into the hands of all these people that keep emailing me and asking me when the books can be done. I'm excited about it. Really, there's a lot of really great stuff in there, and the early feedback from my reviewers has been positive. So look for that.

Speaker 1:

You can check that out on my website, justinjackson.ca/marketingfordevelopers. I recently did an interview with Christopher Hawkins over at the Chasing Product podcast, chasingproduct.com. And Chris was a good interviewer. He was able to get a lot of stuff out of me. And I thought, I should republish this because I think I was able to articulate some things I hadn't been able to articulate before.

Speaker 1:

And I thought all you folks would enjoy it. So without further ado, here is my chat with Christopher Hawkins.

Speaker 2:

So you, aside from being a heat lover, you are a busy guy. I was just pulling up a tab for each one of the projects that you have listed on your website. It's a little bit overwhelming. You've got, you know, four things listed under product. You've got, what, two, three things listed under podcasts, four things under podcast.

Speaker 2:

You've got you've got a lot going on. What's the current hotness in your world right now?

Speaker 1:

A lot of my work right now is doing product marketing consulting full time. And on the side, I'm building my own stuff. I've been doing that for a long time. And the current thing I'm working on is this book called Marketing for Developers that I started probably a year and a half ago, maybe even before that, I can't remember. Put it on the shelf, and it was one of those things I I took off the shelf not too long ago.

Speaker 1:

Said, you know, I I really need to finish this. If I don't finish this, I think I'll regret it forever. So I'm back in writing mode on that, kinda grinding through it.

Speaker 2:

Now purely selfish question, although I'm sure that my at least some of my listeners are gonna have the same question. Speaking as a guy who's kinda sorta kicking around the idea of doing a book myself, if a hyperproductive guy like you ended up having to put his book on the back burner for a while, What hope does a guy like me have? What happened there? What, what what caused you to hit the pause button on that?

Speaker 1:

Oh, man. It was just this stuff we all experienced. It was, you know, family stuff was getting really busy. One of the problems is that the other books I've done, and I've actually I released a little book in between, you know, putting this one on the shelf called The Product Hunt Handbook. And the the difference is that this one is just a lot bigger and requires a lot more research.

Speaker 1:

And in retrospect, I actually wish I'd I hadn't committed to this. If I had if I could do it all over again, I would have turned this thing into maybe four or five smaller things. But because I committed to doing this big, what I think will probably be, you know, at least a 150, 200, maybe 300 pages, I wish I'd committed to doing maybe five smaller books that were 40 pages. But, yeah, it was just life. You know, I'd just taken on a big consulting client.

Speaker 1:

I was, you know, still recording podcasts at the time. And, yeah, I just had to I just got overwhelmed. And every time I went to write, it was just like, I just couldn't. I just couldn't, you know, get there. And part of it was, I think, it's just too big of a project.

Speaker 2:

Wow.

Speaker 1:

So one of the things, like, I covered a lot in this I just wrapped up two seasons of this podcast called Build and Launch. And the whole idea was that I was gonna build a new product every seven days. So announce it on Friday and ship it on Thursday. One of the motivations to do that show was I wanted to focus on starting now and starting small. So keeping it really small, something I could only finish in a week, and having this idea of like, I'm gonna ship this no matter what.

Speaker 1:

And that was very, very healthy in a lot of ways, just to have this feeling of always having momentum and always knowing that I have to keep this small enough that I could get it out the door in seven days. But I think bigger books, I don't think people realize how much work they are. It's a lot of work, and almost everybody I know that has done it or is doing it ends up hating the actual writing process. Feels amazing when you get it done, but yeah, the actual process of writing it is super hard.

Speaker 2:

So what I'm hearing is family commitments, work commitments, scope issues. So in other words, you hit the pause button for the same reason all the rest of us hit the pause button. You're human after all. Right?

Speaker 1:

Totally.

Speaker 2:

Nice. Nice. I like it. I you know, I'm I'm I'm really happy with that answer because that makes me feel a lot better about all the stuff I've put on pause and the reasons why. Because like I said, you see a hyperproductive guy doing this and you go, oh, wait a minute.

Speaker 2:

What's going on? So that's good. He's human, folks. He's human, I assure you. So so that's your that's your new hotness.

Speaker 2:

Let let's back up just a little bit. Can you kinda give us the view from 30,000 feet regarding how you got in the game? You know, you're involved in marketing. You're involved in podcasting. You're involved in the startup scene.

Speaker 2:

Mhmm. Where did it all begin for you?

Speaker 1:

I always try to be careful here because I think, you know, a lot of people say, you know, in their past, they had, you you know, all this past and childhood that led up to where they are right now. And that's certainly true for me. Like, there's there's things in the past that that led to where I'm at right now. As soon as I got a computer, I was really interested in what I could make with it. And so, you know, I've been making things with computers since I was five years old and I got a VIC-twenty, you know.

Speaker 1:

You know, the first thing I probably built and sold was I I made this CRM software for nonprofits when I

Speaker 2:

was

Speaker 1:

probably, I don't know, maybe 20 or something like that, 21. So I was always into computers and always into business. My objective from the time I was in junior high was to be an entrepreneur. And I had a little web development and video production company in college, that's how I worked my way through college. So I always loved business.

Speaker 1:

And then I kind of took this side trip in that from the time I was out of college to 28, I was working in the nonprofit sector. And so, while I was in the nonprofit sector, I built a few things. That's kinda like, I I don't know a good way to describe it, but in some ways I felt like those are, like, my dry years. Like, in terms of, like, making stuff and building stuff, I was doing it, but not in the sense that, you know, you would know about anything I built. It was all, like, just kind of stuff for the nonprofit sector or stuff for the organization I was working for.

Speaker 1:

That seemed like a lot of time to me. And then when I was 28, I decided I needed to get back into computer stuff. And I was lucky that this fellow that was on one of the boards for this nonprofit, he had a software company and asked me to come work for him. So at 28, I started working for this software company and worked my way up, from doing customer support all the way up to being product manager. And the first day I got there, he linked me to a copy of Getting Real by 37 Signals, And I read that in a day, and it blew my mind.

Speaker 1:

And I just like, from that point there, when I was 28, I felt like, okay, I gotta do this. I I wanna build stuff, specifically software, digital products. This is what I wanna do. So since I'm 34 now, so that was how many years ago was that?

Speaker 2:

That would be six years.

Speaker 1:

Six years. So, yeah, that was six years ago, and, I've been kinda just slowly doing stuff since then, since since I switched to the software industry.

Speaker 2:

Nice. So you said you've had the itch, the entrepreneurial itch since junior high, really. So so you didn't have that thing a lot of people have where they have this big dramatic early career, you know, to hell with this moment where they, you know, changed their life in an instant. It it sounds like it was always just kind of there.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I always kinda get jealous of, like, Jason Fried's childhood. One of the first things he built was because I was exactly that kid. Like, I was super into computers and into making stuff, but he had the forethought to, you know, he made this database in FileMaker Pro for keeping track of music.

Speaker 2:

Oh, god. I remember that. I read about that.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. So, like, I think it was even tapes at the time, like, so you could keep track of your tapes. And he put it out as shareware and charged $20 apiece for it. That to me is like, oh, man. I wish I'd thought of that when I was a kid.

Speaker 1:

Because, you know, I was I totally knew what shareware was, and I was using it and buying it, and But I never had that thought of like, oh, I should do something.

Speaker 2:

Right.

Speaker 1:

But yeah, it's always been there. I've always been super interested in business, always wanted to start my own business. The other thing I did in my early twenties is a friend and I started a couple snowboard shops. So I think I was interested in all sorts of business, and I was trying different things out. But when I started working for this SaaS company when I was 28, that was where I really got this picture of like, oh my god, there's this whole world here of specifically bootstrappers who are building stuff on the side and, you know, eventually some of that stuff turns into, you know, much bigger companies.

Speaker 1:

Right?

Speaker 2:

Sure.

Speaker 1:

And to me, that was super interesting. But also just interesting, this idea of, like, I'm not even I'm not opposed to working at a job. I'm not opposed to right now, I'm doing a lot of consulting. I'm not opposed to all that. But I I really like this idea of earning some of your income, at least, by selling products.

Speaker 1:

I think there's something about that that gives us there's like this independence that comes from that. There's this feeling of self reliance. There's all sorts of kind of feelings that come from making something, putting it out on the web, and having people, like just anonymous people on the internet buy it. I think there's something really healthy about that that a lot of people could benefit from. Even for me, as I've kind of slowly grown things over time, I have this almost feeling like, even with consulting, I don't really need this client.

Speaker 1:

If I lost this client, I could go and do something else. Or when I was working full time, always felt like, oh, I've got this little nugget of the world that's kind of my own thing that I've built and is making income. There's something about that that was kind of reassuring, I think. And when I tell people about making products, one thing I focus on is just build something really tiny on the side, and even if you just make $1 that's incredible. The fact that you could you know, be in Vernon, British Columbia, and put something up on Gumroad and have someone buy it and use it, and then you get, you know, the money in your bank account.

Speaker 1:

That's unreal that we we live in a world where that's possible.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. We live in the future, my friend. We live in the future. Yeah. You know, that's that's interesting what you were saying about how you you you used the word healthy to describe the whole process of, hey.

Speaker 2:

You know, I I do my thing as a maker. I put it out on the web. Somebody completely anonymously buys it. That's healthy. And I I find that appropriate because I've gotta say the the attitude that you were just describing, the the sense of I don't really need this client.

Speaker 2:

You want them and appreciate them, I'm sure, but you don't need them. This job, you like it. You might appreciate it, but you don't need it. I like the way you put that because that stands in in really, really stark contrast to what a lot of folks are doing, at least in my business, in the freelancing business. There's tons of desperation and neediness and fear and people bending over backwards to appease, you know, Peanuts clients or, you know, just just being too locked into fear to actually launch a product.

Speaker 2:

I have no idea what that might be like. That's that's a really healthy attitude, man. How did you how did you come by that?

Speaker 1:

I should also I should also have a disclaimer here to say that there I have moments of desperation as well. Oh. Like, I'm just like everyone else in that sense. Like, are times where I'm like, oh, jeez. Like, if I lost this client, like, that would be hard.

Speaker 1:

You know?

Speaker 2:

Right.

Speaker 1:

Right. Just because I have that feeling sometimes of, you know, every time I make a product sale, I feel a bit more self reliant, and I feel a little bit more independent, and I feel a little bit more, you know, whatever. Those those are good feelings to have. Sure. Doesn't mean I don't have the flip side of that, which is sometimes like, oh god, like, if I lost this client, what would, you know, what would that mean?

Speaker 1:

And I wrote about this on my blog. I think it's just Justin Jackson dot c a slash desperation because I think it is an important topic. Desperation. I talk a lot about context with people, because I think sometimes we look up to successful people and we ignore the the context. Again, there's this tension here of, on the one hand, yeah, you've gotta make risks, you've gotta work hard, you've gotta focus on the right things, those are all important.

Speaker 1:

But on the other hand, we can't completely ignore our context, and one example I use is if you were blind and deaf and had no ability to type on a keyboard, that would severely limit your ability to create things with computers. That would be your context. That's kind of an extreme example, but if you've got 20 kids and your wife is sick, that's going to impact your ability to make things. So I think it's important to sometimes talk about context, and desperation is one of those things. They've done all these studies.

Speaker 1:

I think one reason freelancers feel, or consultants, however you're calling yourself, feel desperation is that if you lose a client and you don't know where the next client's gonna come from, start to get stressed out. And they've done all these studies on people that show that when we're stressed out, we do not make very good decisions, And that can become a cascading effect. If lost a client one month, maybe that's not a big deal. But then if you weren't able to get something the next month, that starts to become a big deal. And these things all kind of add, kind of stack up on each other.

Speaker 1:

So my solution is, start making an independent income, especially when things are good, that's the best time. Like if you've got a bunch of clients and you want maybe start making a product, that's a great time when things are good to start working on stuff, because it usually takes some time. If you do lose a client one day, and you've got maybe a couple thousand dollars in side income coming in, you might have this feeling of, okay. Well, I this won't pay my bills, but this will pay some of my bills. You know?

Speaker 2:

Right. Right. That's good stuff. I I agree wholeheartedly about context. I'm a huge context guy myself.

Speaker 2:

In a way, everything in life is context, I think. I absolutely agree with your your conclusions there, and I I like your segue. You started talking about, you know, one of the ways to combat that kind of desperation is to to create opportunities for yourself, to start working on things while while things are good. And I wanna drill down on that a little bit. There are a lot of folks who are either you know, they're working in a day job or they're they're essentially working, you know, a workday as a freelancer.

Speaker 2:

They're kind of eyeballing this whole product business. Gee. It it sure would be nice if I could do, like Justin said, put something on the web and have anonymous people send me money. You were just talking a little bit about starting to get that built up while things are going well. What kind of a strategy what kind of steps would you tell somebody to follow if they were looking to start transitioning, not necessarily out of their day job, but maybe just diversify into getting that side thing started?

Speaker 1:

The first thing is to choose an audience. And that basically is what groups out there do I know a lot about, are accessible, and do I know pay money for things? And so the example I always give is I get so much email from people that are telling me about their product ideas and basically want me to give them validation, like validate that it's a good thing.

Speaker 2:

Right.

Speaker 1:

And because I'm getting all this email, I can see patterns. And one of the patterns is that there's a lot of people that want to build products for real estate agents.

Speaker 2:

Oh, no.

Speaker 1:

And I think I think it's because everyone kind of looks around their hometown and goes, okay. Well, what business people do I know? Everybody knows a real estate agent. It looks like there's lots of inefficiencies in their work. I think that's the first thing that comes to people's minds are, Okay, well, who am I going to build it for?

Speaker 1:

Oh, it should be real estate agents. That's one of the reasons I say, You know, you should really choose a group that you already belong to or that you already know a lot about. I think if you knew a lot about real estate agents, you'd know that they're not a very good market to go after. And also, there's also this idea that people don't think about, which is if you do build a product for them and you get some real estate agents to buy it, you're gonna have to support those people for as long as your product exists. So if you don't particularly real estate agents or wanna hang out with them, they're probably not a great market.

Speaker 2:

Right. That that makes total sense. I who wants to spend their career servicing customers who send you screenshots embedded in a Word document. Right?

Speaker 1:

Exactly. And if you like that kind of stuff, that's fine. I I mean, I joke about this because I go, I think I actually have the personality that I would be fine servicing real estate agents. I'm pretty gregarious. I'm really extroverted.

Speaker 1:

You know, I can talk to almost anybody for a long time. But, you know, if you're if you're not that way, you know, if the idea of going to a a real estate agent trade show just, like, you know, makes you shudder, that is probably not the best market for you. So usually I say, you know, if you're a software developer, like, just choose software developers and maybe even a specific niche within that. So if you're you know, I have a friend who's really into Go right now, and so he's choosing to focus on Go developers. I know another fellow that is really into pair programming, and so he built a product around pair programming.

Speaker 1:

So choose an audience that you're part of, that you like, that spends money on things, and that's accessible. And by accessible, I mean people that congregate online in identifiable groups are really great because they're generally cheap and easy to find and market to, as opposed to plumbers. I don't know if there's a subreddit for plumbers or if there's a really big Facebook group for plumbers. They might not be a great target market. It's hard to reach them online.

Speaker 1:

Right?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. Exactly. You know, I I just went to, Reddit and, looked for a plumber subreddit, and it's there, and it's giving me an age gate. I don't know if I wanna click through on this.

Speaker 1:

So it's it's maybe, yeah. There's lots of not safe for work, links in there.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

I that's just the kind of research I would do. And I would try a bunch of things out too. And the way you try things out is you choose a group, and then you just start writing for them. So or producing some sort of content for them. It just gives you a sense of, first of all, do I like this group?

Speaker 1:

Do I have anything to say to this group? Can I help this group? And am I getting any traction with this group? It kinda answers all of those questions for you. So step two is for at least for me, this might not work for you, but step two for me was to start focusing on, you know, these groups of people and seeing what happened.

Speaker 1:

And one of the reasons I decided to write a marketing book for developers is I looked at my audience, and 50 to 60% of my mailing list is software developers. And when I asked them, Why are you on my list? Why are you interested in what I have to say? They all came back with this idea of they wanted to learn how to market their own apps, and I was giving them some value there. So that's the the kind of advantage of choosing a group, starting to talk to them, and then, getting their feedback, seeing what resonates, why are they there, that kind of thing.

Speaker 1:

And then, based on the patterns you're seeing, based on the pain points you're picking up, you can start to build really tiny products. Like, tiny, tiny. The the first thing I would focus on is just doing a webinar, and seeing if you can get 10 people to sign up for a webinar on a Saturday morning at 10AM. You know, like, hey, I'm I'm gonna do a marketing for developers webinar this Saturday, 10AM, and see if you can get 10 people to sign up. And if you can do that, why don't you do the same thing the next weekend, but then charge for it?

Speaker 1:

See if you can get people to pay to show up on a Saturday morning and charge them some money to be there. That is a great introduction into the world of of building products, because you've shown that, you know, you can attract an audience, you've shown that you can offer them something that has value, and you've shown that they'll pay money for things.

Speaker 2:

Very nice. And and those are things that somebody who's working a day job or or freelancing all day, these are things that they can do, it sounds like. It's this does not sound like a, you know, a scale up and outsource type proposition at all.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, you could do it yourself, and it'll take some time. It's not building an audience or attracting people to even getting those people that you could invite to a webinar, that's going to take some time. But once you kind of have that focus of, okay, I'm going to focus on designers who are learning Sketch. Okay, that's my focus. I'm just gonna start hanging out in forums, I'm gonna start figuring out what these people are into, what their struggles everybody's having a hard time looking for good Sketch plugins.

Speaker 1:

I'm just making this up off the top of my head. Okay, I'm gonna write a blog post on Medium about the best Sketch plugins, and I'm gonna share it on Designer News, I'm gonna see what traction it gets, I'm gonna see what people, you know, what they comment, all that kind of stuff. I'm gonna ask them to sign up for my email list. It's a slow process, but once you have some people on that mailing list, once you have ten, twenty, 30 people, you you can email them right away and say, hey. Like, I'm thinking about doing, a sketch workshop on Saturday morning that's gonna cover these topics.

Speaker 1:

Do you wanna sign up? That's within everybody's ability to do something like that.

Speaker 2:

Now to do something like this, you've gotta have a, you know, you've gotta have a mailing list to hit people up, or or you've gotta have a a landing page or have a something. Do you have, particularly for people who are very early in the process of getting their own product, you know, little mini empire together. Do you have a go to tactic for them to drive traffic or or to attract traffic to a to a, you know, a landing page, get them on their mailing list so that they can then pitch them on something like a webinar?

Speaker 1:

Totally. And I wrote about I have a a book about this called amplification. But, basically, what you do is is you hang out with your audience every day. So, again, let's just use designers as an example. If designers were my audience, I would log in to designer news every single day.

Speaker 1:

I would go to the designer subreddit every single day, and I would just hang out and listen. And just over time, after you log in every single day and you're reading the top threads and you're seeing what people are commenting, you start to pull out patterns. So let me give you an example of one pattern I've noticed with designers. Lately, especially within the last year, and this has always kind of been a thing with designers, but designers are, especially independent designers, are worried. There's this feeling of, on one side you've got big agencies like, is it T HAN and LACS, getting acquihired?

Speaker 1:

And on the other hand, you've got services like the Grid are making people nervous. So when I log into Designer News and Subreddit, I notice there's this pattern, there's this simmering fear about, you know, is my job safe? And, you know, what can I do to protect myself from these kind of oncoming threats? And that would be a great topic to write about. So if I if I if designers were my audience, that would be my first blog post.

Speaker 1:

And you already have a leg up on everybody else because you're writing about something that's already a nerve. You're hitting a nerve that already exists. As opposed to sitting down and saying, well, I'm just gonna write what I feel like writing about, or I had a good idea the other day, I'm gonna write about that. If you're hitting a nerve, you're already ahead of the game, and it's gonna be more likely that people will share it because, for example, let's say you posted that blog post to designer news, the headline is why you don't need to be worried about your job, or why designers can sleep well at night, or something like that, or how designers can sleep well at night. When you if you post that there, you already know that that's been a simmering topic in the community, and so it's a lot more likely that it's going to get traction.

Speaker 1:

Right? People are already talking about it. People are already thinking about it. And one way I've had people visualize this is this idea of catching a wave, you know, if you're surfing. So you can catch all sorts of waves.

Speaker 1:

Right? You can catch little waves or big waves. And sometimes, when you're hanging out with your audience every day, you'll notice a big wave is kind of swelling up. And that's when you wanna paddle out and try to catch that wave. You know, Barometrics did a really great job of this, both with their product and their content, because they noticed that Stripe and, like, people using Stripe was this big wave that was coming.

Speaker 1:

Like, if you were early on using Stripe, you could see it already. Like, already people are talking about it, developers can't shut up about it. It's so great. You know, it's easy to use. It's like it solves all these problems, and you could kinda feel there's this big wave.

Speaker 1:

Same thing with Slack. You you saw that if you were at the beginning of that, you would you started to notice it kinda bubbling up bubbling up, and all of a sudden, there's this big wave. Everybody's on Slack. And, you know, there's a bunch of startups that jumped on that, you know, like add ons on top of Slack. There's a bunch of people that wrote content about that that did really well, you know, Slack hacks and stuff like that.

Speaker 1:

That's what I'm talking about. You kinda do your research, you do your homework, you hang out, and then you wait for those kinda big waves, and that's what you start to write content about. And that's a great way to get traction because it's going to you know, a big wave kinda drives itself. You you don't have to do as much work.

Speaker 2:

Very nice. So you're talking about capturing very, very current events. You're not talking about going away, coming back in ninety days. Oh, look, guys. I wrote a book.

Speaker 2:

No. You're talking about releasing something tiny that addresses something that's happening right now.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. Or it could be a simmering issue that's just been simmering forever.

Speaker 2:

Uh-huh.

Speaker 1:

Like like, I think designers have always felt like they were kind of they're kind of like the whipping boy of software development especially, but there seems to be this simmering feeling of like, that designers haven't gotten their due, I think. And I think that's been going on for a long time. I think these can be long running issues too, it's just like noticing what are the issues. And sometimes they're current issues, and those can be good to jump on because it's like, you know, this is hot right now, and if I kind of swim out and catch this wave, it's gonna get some traction. You know, the most popular thing I've ever written is this essay called This is a Webpage.

Speaker 1:

And it's just basically about the importance of words on the web. And it got a lot of traction because I think it was something that people a lot of people had been feeling for a long time. Like, maybe we've gotten distracted by all this other stuff, and really, at its essence, the web is still about words, words on a page. So I think you can do both. I think you can target, you know, things that have been simmering for a long time and current events, But the importance is that you target something that means something to people.

Speaker 1:

You see comedians do this all the time. What's funny, like, when you're watching a stand up comic, is that they are revealing something that's been simmering under the surface that everyone feels but has never been articulated. And to me, that's what a good blog post or even a good product is. You know? It's like, it's been kinda like simmering under the surface.

Speaker 1:

You know, like Slack, everyone's trying to diagnose diagnose why that product is so popular. And I think it was just like this idea of like Campfire and HipChat were kind of boring. And they kind of felt kind of like kind of stodgy and, you know, not very fun. And we all want more fun in our workday, and all of a sudden this thing came along that just brought in a lot more fun into the day. People always talk about the integrations and stuff, but I think a lot of that is just people like setting up the integrations because it's fun.

Speaker 1:

People like animated GIFs because it's fun. People like emojis because it's fun. So I think that's the idea, is that you're kind of like bringing this thing out that a lot of people feel but hasn't you know, kind of exposed yet.

Speaker 2:

Okay. That's good. That's a good take. And and I noticed you as you speak about this stuff, you've you've got confidence in this. Like, you've put thought into this.

Speaker 2:

It makes me wonder as you've gone along your your your product journey, your journey to to getting to where you are with your marketing knowledge and all that, what kind of things have you struggled with? What kind of stuff have you come up against that, you know, maybe didn't seem so natural or or or that maybe didn't seem so obvious or or certain when you first tried to address them?

Speaker 1:

Oh, man. Well, it's funny. Like, part of the show Build and Launch that I was doing was me recording just on my iPhone, like, real moments from my life. And some of those were, like, secret conversations between my wife and I. You know, it's interesting when I listen to those because you could hear, like, outwardly, I could be very confident and, you know, I could be outwardly very confident.

Speaker 1:

But at home with my wife, like, all my insecurities come out, you know? And so there's this one conversation where I'm like, oh, man. Like, is anyone gonna like this? I feel like a fraud. I feel like, you know, this is stupid.

Speaker 1:

You know, I've had so many conversations with my wife where I've I've released something and it hasn't gotten the response I wanted, and I'm just, like, decimated. You know? Like, my work is crap. I'm never gonna amount to anything. I'm never gonna live this down.

Speaker 1:

Whatever it is. And so I think I think that's something all creative people struggle with, is this feeling of, man, maybe I'm an impostor, or maybe my stuff's not that good, or even just like, I just want really desperately want people to like me. And those things are hard to overcome, I think. And especially like that desire to be liked, that's that's a dangerous one. Because if you're focusing on that instead of just making other people's lives better, you know, it's gonna show in what you're doing.

Speaker 2:

Sure.

Speaker 1:

Personally, I'm not as willing to expose myself to risk. I think I have gone slower than maybe some other folks, partly because I have four kids that my wife and I have four kids that we need to take care of, and I wanna be kind of a good I wanna take that responsibility seriously. Don't wanna just run off and do something silly because they're kind of the top priority. And so on the flip side, that's been frustrating because I've had this, there's always this feeling of, ah, know, if I was just single, I would've been able to really hammer on this and get this done a lot faster. But I think that's okay.

Speaker 1:

That's my context, is that I have this great family and, you know, I love taking care of them and I love, you know, being with them. And so the flip side of that is, yeah, I'm gonna go a lot slower than than some other folks.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. That's, you know, that's good though, man. That's that's that sounds solid and healthy because I I know people who, they do start thinking along the lines that that you were you were mentioning. They start thinking, well, you know, if only x you know, it's that it's that old condition x thinking. Right?

Speaker 2:

If only x hadn't happened, then my life would be better. And that just that's so toxic, dude. That just leads to, it just leads to resentments and and all sorts of just gross, toxic, bile just nothing good comes from that.

Speaker 1:

Totally. And I the other thing I've I've been thinking about a lot lately is is comparison and, you know, the comparisons we make. And I think one of the one of the hardest things for me personally is that because I started these podcasts that became really popular in the space, I'm friends with all these people that are doing amazing things. And it's difficult not to compare myself to them, to think, man, look how far ahead he is. And especially compared to when we met, we were both at about the same level, and he's just taken off, and I kinda feel left behind a bit.

Speaker 1:

And that is also toxic. It's, like, not helpful at all in terms of, you know, me moving forward with becoming better at what I do. And so one thing I've been thinking about lately is this, this James Altucher quote about how he just tries to get 1% better a week. And I love how that dissipates any comparison you would make. It no longer matters about how you stand compared to everyone else.

Speaker 1:

It just matters about how you stand compared to last week. And there's something about that that I think is really healthy of just saying, okay. This week, I'm just gonna try to get 1% better. You know? I'm gonna try to help people more.

Speaker 1:

I'm gonna try to, you know, put up better product. I'm gonna try to, make more revenue this week. But it has nothing to do with me comparing myself to other people. It's just about me comparing myself to me.

Speaker 2:

Sure. Yeah. Keep the focus on yourself is a really, really healthy way to go. That's very solid advice. Okay.

Speaker 2:

We're coming up on time here. So, usually, to start moving toward the wrap up, I'll ask my guest to provide three kind of bullet points, three action items. Hey. Aspiring founders, go do these three things. But you, you sneaky devil, you kinda jumped the gun on that, and you started giving those to us a little bit early when you mentioned choosing an audience.

Speaker 2:

Mhmm. And I like the fact that you used the word choose rather than find or attract because by choosing, it's it's intentional. It's more proactive. You're not just out there in the wilderness looking for an audience to adopt you and, you know, take pity on you and, you know, buy your goofy products. So that's cool.

Speaker 2:

You mentioned building a tiny, tiny product, preferably something that addresses some kind of ongoing issue in whatever community you've chosen. Can you throw out maybe one more kinda go to tactic that's absolutely appropriate and and high yield for somebody who's just getting started?

Speaker 1:

I think people should start with what's been kinda called info products, and those can have a negative connotation. But really, just means like any sort like a book, a webinar, a screencast, what have you. I think people should start with those because, first of all, can get to the pain point faster, easier, quicker, cheaper. And they also are way less of an investment to do one of those things than to build software. And being able to get your answer quicker is better.

Speaker 1:

And the answer you're looking for is, will people pay dollars to solve this problem? So I would say do those things, like do a webinar, do a workshop, write a book or something. But the other thing that you're gonna need to do is build trust with your audience. So, again, I've gotten a lot of emails from people that say, I followed the framework exactly. I put out this book, I had an audience, and nobody bought.

Speaker 1:

And when I've dug into those situations, what I've seen is I don't think people trusted you yet. And trust takes time to build. You have to show up a lot. And that's everything from, oh, I remember that Justin guy. He helped me on Hacker News.

Speaker 1:

He replied to my question, to that Justin Guy put out a great newsletter that really helped me, and then I replied to him, and then he spent all day helping me with that thing. Or, oh, I see this guy on Twitter all the time writing these really insightful tweets about this subject matter. You really kind of have to be visible a lot, and that takes time too. You need to build trust. You can't just put something out and expect that people are going to trust you enough to reach in their wallets and give you their money.

Speaker 1:

That takes time to build that relationship. So that would probably be my third tip, is, yeah, just over time, just keep focusing on building trust with the people you're trying to serve. You have to earn the right to, you know, to sell them something, basically.

Speaker 2:

Very nice. That's solid advice, sir. So we can find you online on Twitter, and you are, what is it? At m I Justin?

Speaker 1:

Yeah. And it's the letter m, the letter I Justin.

Speaker 2:

Right.

Speaker 1:

Some people spell it like, you know, am I Justin or

Speaker 2:

Right. Like it's a question?

Speaker 1:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. One guy said it's if you say it like it's Spanish, like me Justin

Speaker 2:

Nice.

Speaker 1:

That that works. But it actually doesn't. It's just a terrible Twitter handle, but

Speaker 2:

No.

Speaker 1:

I it's one I'm stuck with.

Speaker 2:

Hey. I I can't make fun of you, man. You're talking to a guy who named his business Cogian Systems for god's sake. What does that even mean? Nobody knows.

Speaker 2:

I don't even know. So the big clearinghouse for all things justinjackson online is justinjackson.ca. I would advise everybody to go there, read the blog, take a look at what Justin has going on. There's a lot of good stuff. You mentioned earlier, sir, that your newest hotness is your marketing for developers book.

Speaker 2:

Any word on when that's when that's gonna be popping up online someplace where we can take a look at it?

Speaker 1:

Well, I'm trying to write a chapter a week right now. I think I'm kinda aiming for a summer release, so I'm hoping maybe July or August. But, if people want more information about it and they wanna, like, download a sample chapter, it's justinjackson.ca/marketingfordevelopers. Alright, folks. That's it for this week.

Speaker 1:

Thanks for listening. Hope that was helpful in some way. Wanna thank Chris for allowing me to be on his show and then allowing me to cross post it here on Product People. Go check it out, chasingproduct.com. He also just released a book called Record and Release, Learn How to Podcast in Just One Day.

Speaker 1:

That's available at chasingproduct.com as well. As always, if you wanna get ahold of me, you can email me at words at bizbox. Ca, or you can get me on Twitter, the letter M, the letter I, that's at MI Justin. And I'm hoping to see you again soon. Hoping, I've got a few other recordings in the bag.

Speaker 1:

I just need to edit them and get them out. So watch for those, and I will talk to you soon.