Learnings 12-23 June
How to sell a product, discovering group acountability, money commitments and some Pokemon
We are back!
After a long absence, I was part of Antler, traveled for a month to Thailand, and started my last (and failed) product. Updating this substack was tricky. But now we are back.
At the moment, I am focused on building UpSpeak. I want to help people be better communicators when they need it the most—giving better presentations. So here are my learnings for this week:
1. Find when people will need your product ASAP
After finishing building the MVP, I sent it to at least 20 people to test it. I received words of encouragement and congratulations for finally launching. But guess how many people test it? Just one.
The reason?
My product is long to test, 10 minutes at least. You need a PDF and record yourself explaining this PDF to get feedback. Not everybody has this problem or the time.
The fix: Create user personas to understand when people will need your product and approach those people. For me: I am contacting this week people who need to give conferences the next day. (urgent need). So I can understand them better and iterate my product faster.
2. If you want to do something new, pay upfront.
I am always looking for new and interesting people. So I've been signing up for events around my city (Paris) to meet new people. Do you know how many of these events I've gone to? Zero. Why? Too busy, too tired, too X…
The fix: Book an event that requires you to pay upfront to go. I am sure there is a psychological trick that messes up your mind, but it works. For me, I found TimeLeft and it does the trick.
3. Group accountability is the key when you are low on motivation
Imagine this:
Waking up on a Monday morning and say: Hell yes, I love to work.
This is something that would never happen to me. Even if I want to work and be productive on the inside, my lizard brain wants to play Pokemon and chill.
The fix: Coworking with people. Another psychological hack that does the trick. Showing up at a particular time and saying to another person you will work on something just helps you do it. If you don't have anyone to do this session, try FocusMate
And speaking about Pokemon, I am on a quest to catch all the 1025 Pokemon that exist by playing all the games from GameBoy, DS, Mobile, and Switch.
I am using Pokemon Home (DropBox for Pokemon) to store them all. I will post weekly updates on how is it going here as well:
911 to go!
Thanks for reading and until next week!