Justin Jackson's Blog, page 20

Your business isn’t about finding a great idea

My friend Adam Wathan and I had a good chat on his podcast. Here’s a bit of our conversation.

[image error] Justin Jackson:

Tell me about this thing you said on Twitter:

“Racking my brain for ideas is always unproductive, stressful, and makes me feel terrible.”

[image error] Adam Wathan:

Yeah, so I work for myself, and I can kind of spend my time doing whatever I want to do as long as it pays off down the road. I’ve done a bunch of different stuff:

I wrote the “Refactoring to collections” book I did the Test-Driven L...

Maybe you shouldn’t be a solopreneur

I was born in Edmonton, and every once in awhile, I go back for a visit.

When I’m in town, I almost always go for coffee with my buddy Tim. He’s about my age, and he’s just incredible at sales. Over the years, he’s pushed himself to build relationships with big brands. He thinks big, and that’s what I like about him.

I like to meet with Tim because he gets me to think outside my box. In business, we need people like this: folks who are a few steps ahead of us, who push us to get better.

Here’...

Optimize for usage, not just sales

Do any of these sound familiar?

“I ordered the book, but never read it.” “I bought this app, but I never logged in.” “I backed it on Kickstarter, but it just sat in its box.” “I got the upgrade, but I kept using the old version.”

As product people, we make things so people will use them.

And yet, we optimize a lot of our marketing around merely getting the sale.

But “getting the sale” isn’t enough.

You can’t build a sustainable business on one sale. You need customers to come back; otherwis...

Don’t sell to beginners

Jon Buda and I are getting closer to launching our SaaS, and that means we need to figure out pricing. We realized a lot of pricing depends on who you’re selling to. Should we sell to startups? Should we aim at the enterprise? Hobbyists?

We reached out to Patrick at Price Intelligently to help walk us through the pricing process.

During our chat, Patrick said, “In your early stage two things are essential; if you can nail these two things (even if you get everything else wrong) you’re typical...

Don’t sell to startups

Jon Buda and I are getting closer to launching our SaaS.

But that means we need to figure out pricing. We reached out to Patrick at Price Intelligently to help us figure out our tiers.

During our chat, Patrick said, “In your early stage two things are essential; if you can nail these two things (even if you get everything else wrong) you’re typically fine.” According to him, the two things to focus on are:

Your customer focus Your value metric (I’ll talk about this in a future post)

Choosin...

When you’re building a product, whose opinion should you listen to?

This blog post is coming soon!

You can listen to an initial draft on the MegaMaker podcast.

Or, subscribe to my newsletter to get it when I hit publish:

The post When you’re building a product, whose opinion should you listen to? appeared first on Justin Jackson.

Why I’m building a new SaaS in 2018

Back in the Spring of 2015, I was chatting with Nathan Barry.

He’d recently decided to leave his info-product business behind, and double-down on his SaaS (ConvertKit).

At the time, the decision seemed ridiculous to me.

I was working as a Product Manager for Sprintly but had just published Marketing for Developers. I was eagerly anticipating a time where I’d be able to quit my job and go independent.

To me, Nathan was living the dream. The year previously he’d done nearly $300,000 in revenue...

What would you do differently?

Adam Clark recently asked me this question on his podcast:

If you woke up tomorrow, and you had to start all over again, what would you do?

It’s a good question. If I didn’t have Transistor.fm or my existing audience, how would I build a business knowing what I know now? What would I change?

Here’s what I said:

First, get a therapist

I struggled with depression this past year. I’ve seen firsthand how mental health affects every part of your life, including your business!

My first step as a ne...

What affects customer motivation?

Typically, when I’m at Safeway, you’ll find me in the cereal aisle, checking to see if Cheerios are on sale. I have four kids, and cereal is pretty expensive, so I almost always buy what’s on sale.

If I get to the checkout and I’ve saved $5, I feel like I’ve succeeded.

But today was different.

It was the night before Valentine’s Day, and like twenty other men, I was in the floral section looking for the perfect bouquet.

I’ve made a special trip. I’m walking around with intensity. It’s crowded...

I spent $30,000 to get product-market fit

It was 10pm on a Friday night. I was sitting at my kitchen table with my laptop open.

I was watching hundreds of Stripe payment notifications come through:

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Thousands of dollars were pouring into my account.

And I was miserable.

A year previous, I’d launched a new subscription product called Tiny Marketing Wins.

People loved it. I’d received tons of good reviews.

But now it was renewal time. And I started getting emails:

Due to circumstances, I wasn’t able to take full advantage of TMW last y...