Today, I had a customer who was trying out Pigeon.
They had a bug so they messaged me through the app - we got to talking and we couldn't solve the issue. So I offered to jump on a screen share and look into the problem.
We got on screen share and then solved the issue.
Getting to talk to a customer organically like this is awesome, so I asked him why he was checking out Pigeon and what he did for work.
He started talking and telling me why, but for some reason, I got "spooked" - we started talking about competitors but I didn't want to come of like a "sales guy" so I just told him to let me know which product he ends up going with.
I wish I just kept talking, kept selling, kept asking questions about him, but I didn't.
And then, when the call ended, I immediately regretted not doing this. FUCK.
It was like when you see a cute girl, contemplate talking to her, you hesitate, and then it's over - and you think "what if" for the rest of the day...
I've found that removing distractions from my everyday life is a guaranteed way to become a tiny bit happier.
And it sort of boggles my mind that not everybody does this.
You know that notification that you keep getting from XYZ app? Maybe it's iCloud letting you know your phone isn't backed up, or a new "like" on Instagram.
Or maybe it's MyFitnessPal sending you the same message every day.
IMG_4988.png9.42 MB
Well, here's a guaranteed way to improve your day:
Figure out how to turn that notification off
Live your life for a couple more days
Look back and realize how much better your life is without that thing
An example
I used to get email notifications whenever someone signed up for a free trial to Pigeon.
These notifications "felt" important - probably because they gave me a mini rush of adrenaline.
At best, I could see the email who signed up, and at worst it would put me on a 10-15 minute bullshit sidequest of distraction.
One day, I accidentally removed these notifications because I made changes to how free trials worked.
For the next couple of days, there were people signing up for the product and I had no idea.
But guess what? It didn't matter. Someone signing up to Pigeon does not (and should not) require any attention from me.
This may seem like a simple example, but you can apply it to everything:
Turn off Stripe email notifications for when you make a sale
Delete Instagram from your phone
Mute everyone on Twitter
Put on Do not disturb on your phone
Put your phone in another room
Don't leave Slack open on your computer
Unsubscribe from all emails
Filter out unimportant transactional emails
The list could go on forever.
From my corporate days
I remember when I started my first job in corporate America, there was this internal chat/IM program called Microsoft Lync (before the days of Slack).
99% of the company would be online ALL THE TIME on this. You could IM anyone in the company and interrupt them, anytime, and it was a big company (300k+ employees across the world).
After I started working there, I found that conversations on Lync tended to go on for way too long, and the majority of conversation was about nothing / complaining about your bosses or clients.
So, I decided to uninstall Lync from my work computer. Life was so much better without it, and I got so much more work done.
However, people at the company thought I was crazy. Everyone asked about it. And because I was never "online", many people thought I was fired.
It still doesn't make sense to me why people wanted this distraction in their lives.
I think that maybe people are just different. Some people enjoy chatting on IM and being distracted and complaining about their boss and generally dilly-dallying through their day... I'm just not one of those people.
A lot of people will try to give you advice in life.
Whether indirectly (a tweet you read), or directly (a phone conversation), I think it's important to understand that all advice is contextual, meaning it worked for them but it won't work the same for you.
I think as a founder you should be especially skeptical of advice from:
someone who works at a marketing agency
someone who does "consulting"
Instagram entrepreneurs
someone who sells courses
podcasts
forums
Reddit
Twitter
everything you read on LinkedIn
etc
^^ Because on all of these mediums, there is usually something to gain from you - whether it's your money, your time, or your attention.
Maybe I'm being pessimistic, but it's hard to remember a time where I took advice from a podcast and it worked really well. Sure, I've learned a lot from podcasts - but it's more "fundamentals" stuff (which is obviously important).
The biggest breakthroughs for me have usually been when I figured out something myself, or discovered a new "thing" through trial and error and hours of focused work honing it in.
The only exception I've found where advice is mostly solid is from other founders who are also currently building a company.
And it's usually not advice I want from these people - it's more just someone to talk to who also knows what I'm going through.
About 10 days ago, I was in a discouraged state - one of those states where you question a lot of the things that you're doing.
I had some of my first real thoughts of shutting down Pigeon.
Usually, I push those thoughts away - what's the point right?
But this time, I just decided to run that situation through my head, such as:
What that process would look like
How would I let people know it was over
What would I work on next?
Is there anything else I want to work on?
It wasn't a "giving up" moment, but rather a conscious exercise of "what if?".
After running all of the scenarios I started to feel a lot better. The vision went from "I'm doomed" to "here's where I can improve, and how".
The funny thing is that I often have moments like this, where everything feels doomed, but no matter what, it always gets better and I always get over it. In the moment, it feels like I won't get over it. But 100% of the time, I do!
What gets me excited about this is that it basically confirms you can do anything you want to do in life, as long as you don't quit!!
This also reminds me that it's pointless to think about quitting. If I wanted to quit, I would have done it already. I've quit other projects because I wanted to quit them.
It's pointless to think about quitting because I know, deep down, I literally cannot quit. I can quit for an hour, or a day, or a week, but I can't quit permanently.
You don’t set out to build a wall. You don’t say ‘I’m going to build the biggest, baddest, greatest wall that’s ever been built.’ You don’t start there. You say, ‘I’m going to lay this brick as perfectly as a brick can be laid. You do that every single day. And soon you have a wall.
Lately, I've been thinking a lot more about the second sentence, specifically "laying a brick as perfectly as a brick can be laid".
I'm very critical of myself on this - I know that, deep down, I don't lay my bricks perfectly. I cut corners, I'm sloppy, and I'm not very calculated.
This is part of my nature, but it's also because I'm simply doing too many things at once.
The stress of doing too many things is unavoidable as a founder, but I also know that with more focus, and more critical thinking, I can lay my bricks a bit more eloquently.
But, to do this, I need to:
"say no" to more things.
I need to delegate way more.
And I need to stop thinking I can do everything myself.
The "How To Say No" project is a great example where I'm proud of my execution. I was "calculated" with that project. I was able to let go of my ego and ask for feedback from really smart people. I put in the extra work to make it great.
I kept stripping it down to the "essentials", which made it so simple and easy to understand. And that wasn't by accident - that was me sitting down, and staring at the page, ripping it apart and putting it back together again.
This is how I'm treating projects now. Instead of throwing a million things at the wall, I'm going to be more laser-focused. I'm going to execute on it and finish what I start, before I start anything else. Instead of doing 90% and knowing I'll add the 10% later (which I never do), I'm now doing 100% on the spot, even if that takes 8 more hours.
I came across this Hacker News post the other day - a guy is asking for books he should read before starting his own business.
He prefaces this post with this:
My goal in life (as of right now at least) is to start my own SaaS business so that I can eventually quit my 40 hour work week and have more time for things I enjoy doing.
At least from personal experience, starting a SaaS business will not give you any time back for things you enjoy doing. A 40-hour workweek at BigCo is nothing compared to the hours you will work building your own company.
You might spend 40 hours/week "writing code" but you will spend almost every other waking minute thinking about your startup, which will probably just lead to working more anyways.
So what's it actually like to be a founder?
Here's what they don't tell you:
Constantly thinking about your startup
Wake up every day thinking about your startup in some way
Go to bed thinking about your startup in some way
Constantly thinking about your startup on the weekends
Chatting with a friend/family? Your mind wanders into something about your startup
Sometimes 10-12 hour days in front of your computer screen - and always "maximizing" your time
Tracking down and fixing the craziest bugs at 1AM
Worried about cash, paying rent, or stressed about your next "big deal"
Living with your mom at 29 years old
Checking your email hundreds of times per day
Nobody to vent to / understands what you're going through (and it's not healthy or smart to vent to employees, customers, social media, etc)
Nobody to fall back on (you always have to take ownership)
Rejection
Self-doubt
"it's never good enough" / always wanting the next thing
Nasty customers & people saying hateful things on the internet
I don't mean to sound negative, it's just the truth. And obviously, it's not always like this. If you want the freedom and fulfillment that comes with being a founder, you will probably have to deal with some of this.
But just like anything these "bad things" actually are good things, because you have to experience them to grow.
"There is no such thing as change without pain, no growth without discomfort." - Mark Manson
It really bothers me when I see/hear of people that are not social distancing, or they are making "exceptions" like still meeting up with friends.
I don't know why it bothers me so much - but it actually really personally offends me.
I feel like people that do this are selfish and self-serving and not living with good principles.
It actually caused a really big fight with my family today because I expressed this about one of my family members.
I have to realize that not everyone thinks the same way I do. I am very passionate about social distancing, and for me, it's very black and white what it means to social distance.
But I have to realize that people probably see it differently and I can't project my beliefs on others.
I can only speak my piece and need to just accept things for the way they are as opposed to trying to change people.
The way I acted today was kind of like a Twitter SJW - acting like my opinion was the only one that matters and not seeing the other side of the story.
Or I acted like that person that freaks out about politics every day even though they have no influence or control in the situation.
I'm in a weird place right now - I feel like I don't have much to do these days.
Most of the day to day of my business is outsourced.
Most of the daily tasks are handled by the team.
There doesn't seem to be any "big projects" I need to complete.
I'm stuck thinking more about "big picture".
I had big goals last month to "get Pigeon to freemium". That's done now.
It's not that I'm fully content with where my business is at, it's just that I just know that to grow and evolve and make money, it's really just doing more of the same thing.
In other words, I don't think I should be switching things up because I'm bored, or complacent, or whatever.
I remember early last year I was in a similar place - where I had this problem of "not having much to do" - I went and started another business... Honestly, that was a bit of a hasty decision looking back.
That's a common theme for me - jumping into things too quickly. I've done it with a lot of careers, and I did it with the nomad thing, I've done it moving to new cities too.
Let's give this a name... "switchup mode" - where I think that switching things up will solve my problems. They never do.
I need to focus on going deeper, and being more focused on some of my accomplishments.
Building a modest lifestyle business? Ok let's figure out how to "turn the knobs" to make it more successful, and more impactful.
I'm a "tinkerer" - I like to discover things and learn how they work. But I also need to be an "optimizer" - instead of just learning how things work - master them - get better than 95% of people at that thing.
So that's what I'm trying to focus on these days.
I need to be more calculated about things. I need to focus on "less is more".
Focus on the bottom of the funnel, instead of the top.
For example, with my business, instead of focusing on "new projects" and "new todos", I am setting goals to focus on improvements. Improvements to product, improvements to sales, improvements to traffic, everything.
I put together this new dashboard with 4 key metrics for Pigeon, and I will start tracking things a lot closer, making tweaks, and really getting into the nitty gritty. I'm excited. More to come on this.
What I've noticed about the most successful people in my life is that they move things forward, and quickly.
A story
Out of college, I worked at a startup, and I started there with a guy (my good friend) who was also right out of college.
We started at the same level, but he moved up a lot faster than me. He's now one of the biggest executives at that company, and people are always surprised when they hear how young he is.
Since I worked so closely with him, I had an "inside look" at why he rose up so quickly.
What I always remember is how he moved things forward quickly and took action.
For example, back then:
when I got an email from a customer, I would "sit on it" for a little bit. Procrastinate it. Think on it. Dilly dally. Wait until I got to my computer to respond.
when he got emails, he would immediately respond, delegate, call the right people, reply from his phone, etc.
All told, he was a very effective leader and manager. When something needed to get done, he would get it done. The company could rely on him, and over time, put a lot of trust in him.
I try to take these learnings from my startup days into my own business now. I genuinely feel like I've gotten better at taking action and making decisions - when you have your own business there's nobody to fall back on - but I think there's still a lot of room for improvement.
And it's not just this guy - when I think about other really successful people that I've worked with - this quality is always there.
If you can move things forward every day and not let fear pile things up, it's crazy how far you can get in a month, year, 5 years, and 10.
I remember the Web 2.0 days - I was way younger at the time - and I didn't know how to code, but it was such an exciting time.
People were building things just to build them - and building a "cool website" was all the rage.
Years later, there is basically no more novelty in building something cool or fun. Most APIs are limited, and the internet is filled with bad actors and profiteers.
"Building something cool" was the M.O. of Silicon Valley 10 years ago.
Now, building something cool is completely uncool.
What's cool now seems to be "business", profits, and attention.
I don't have a problem with that - it makes sense.
It's like when we went to the moon. We went to the moon because it was fucking cool. But we don't go to the moon anymore - probably because it doesn't make much business sense.
Why did I get into programming and building products? It was because I wanted to build something cool. Of course, the money that is attached to tech companies is great too.
I have this "rush" when I'm building a new thing, coding an exciting feature, or the moment my code "works" - I've always had it since I built my first web app.
It's hard to explain but it's almost a "childlike" feeling - it's similar to the feeling of opening presents on Christmas morning or being in a toy store.
It's a feeling that I chase to some degree.
It makes me think though - if deep down - that's my true passion - maybe I'm not cut out to be a "businessman"? Maybe I'm better as an engineer, a builder, or a tinkerer...
That's a scary thought.
But I don't believe that people are born "some way" - we all have strengths and weaknesses and some of the best CEOs are engineers at heart.
Anyways, going back to that video - the idea is that we should build stuff because we can - even though it is a guarantee it will break and die.
Because it's not about what you build, it's about the ideas you're putting in to the world and the story you tell.
My code is not interesting. It's the words I'm writing right now that are interesting. Without the code, there is no story. Without code, there is no daily blog!
I came up with an idea for “side project marketing” on Saturday morning, coded it in a few hours, and quickly launched Sunday night (about 36 hours from idea to launch, 36 hours total, about 6-8 hours to build).
Here is the project. It's a collection of email templates to help you say "no" in many situations.
The end result was about 35k visitors to the project in 24 hours, about 200 signups to Pigeon, and 3 paying customers (so far). Although slowing a bit now, traffic keeps coming in.
“Side project marketing” means building fun or interesting apps / websites that also market your project in some way.
If successful, it can generate sales and awareness about your business, as well as build strong backlinks to your domain. Harry Dry wrote a great piece on it.
I’ve also heard of successful companies like Hubspot and Buffer talk about "side projects" like these being integral to their early success. For example, Hubspot's website grader has analyzed over 2M sites - that's 2M potential customers.
Sometimes these projects are a bit "silly" - so founders don't talk about them as much (just a theory of mine). However, if you look closer, you'll hear founders talk about them as a big part of the "early days".
So this got me excited - I wanted to try something!
It’s pretty easy to build something interesting around “email” - everyone has and uses email.
So I started looking up email projects that performed well on Product Hunt. I found this one and this one.
I started thinking about how I could do something similar, but still unique. I wanted to build something for more “everyday people” - not something like sales or marketing emails…
And then it hit me - I shot a message to my friend who I was brainstorming with:
“maybe something like 'everyday emails' where we just show off nice templates you can use in everyday life like “turn down meeting” or “how to say no template” (seen this by Tim Ferriss)”
Then I knew it. “Email templates for how to say no!”
Lately, I've been thinking a lot about how I can get more done - and the biggest thing for me is to be working on the right things. And that means saying no to a lot of things.
Building the app
Once it 'clicked', I got really excited about the idea so I put together a quick checklist in 5 minutes and started building it on the spot.
I started with a few examples, like the Tim Ferriss and Casey Neistat one.
I used no tooling. The “data” is hardcoded into the ruby files, and the filtering and stuff is about 20 lines of jQuery + a bunch of CSS (much of it recycled Starter Story styling).
Instead of building it on a whole new domain, I thought it would make more sense as a "project" on Starter Story - with all the styling wiped out. So it still "feels" like a new site, but I don't have to manage a new domain and pay for more hosting, configure analytics, etc etc.
I also want Starter Story to gain domain authority with things like this.
To build the initial prototype took me about 2 hours.
Getting feedback
I then shot it off to 5 or 6 people to get early feedback.
I will be honest, the first prototype was shit - getting this feedback is what made the project successful.
After getting feedback:
I redid the entire messaging, made it simpler and more succinct
I can’t stress how important this step was. To be honest, I'm really bad at asking for feedback and asking for help in general. I’m trying to get better.
Getting this feedback was the fastest and most effective way to get this project done quickly and get it done right!
Thank you to Harry, Steph, Andrey, Pieter, Fabrizio, Armin & Melanie for their feedback over the weekend.
Launch
Honestly, I didn’t want a side project like this to interfere with “more important” things, so I wanted to get the thing launched right away - I decided to “launch” on Monday.
I had very low expectations for it, which I think is important for anything like this. We should have low expectations so we don’t spend weeks something that will likely flop. I thought this one had a good chance of flopping.
I scheduled it on Product Hunt for Monday morning, woke up early, tweeted about it - and then BOOM it took off!
Once it started “taking off” I made more changes that needed to be made and started sharing around other places like Hacker News.
And that’s pretty much it.
Lesson learned: If you have a cool idea, just build it and have fun!
One thing that I see time and time again from successful bootstrapped startups is the power of side project marketing, or "engineering as marketing", or PR / publicity stunts.
These are fun little side projects or ideas that don't always work, but when they do, they can be really big.
I'm going against a lot of advice from people I know. A lot of people are telling me it's a bad idea.
If I didn't go freemium, then my MRR would probably not have dropped in the last couple of weeks.
It's a bit scary - I haven't had an upgrade in over a week now.
I have a whole new set of problems to figure out, like better onboarding, figuring out how to convert free users, and loads of more problems that I don't even know I have yet.
The reality is that I don't know what I don't know.
So why go freemium? After working on the project for a year and seeing a lot of things (customers, acquisition, competitors, the market), I honestly just have a "gut feeling" it's the right move. That's it. I wish I had a better answer.
There is a very good chance that I'm wrong.
I find it exciting though - I feel that it is a big step for my growth as a founder and how to build a software company.
I listened to a podcast with Ajay Goel - founder of Gmass - and one of the reasons he has done what he's done is because of his aspirations to have an impact on the world, and how that shows through his businesses.
I very much relate to that.
You can build a successful company that has 10 customers. You can also build an unsuccessful company that has 1M customers. Which one is better? I'm not saying one of them is, but I know that I personally would prefer the latter.
Why? One reason is that I get excited about what I would learn while building a business for 1M customers. It sounds like the "unknown" - maybe I won't like it? I don't know, but I have to find out.
It's a bit hard for me to put into words why all of this, and it helps to write it, but maybe it comes down to my ego. I want to have that "impact", I want to be "known".
It's just that I'm not really all that interested in building an indie business, getting successful, and then going on autopilot and sitting by the beach.
I see what I'm doing now as a vehicle/"experience" for my future - when I'm 35, and when I'm 40, and when I'm 50.
-
(these are developing thoughts, more to come soon hopefully)
(this is an excerpt from my monthly open startup email)
March 2020, tldr:
The elephant in the room is, obviously, coronavirus - with markets crashing and the entire world distracted, it felt like the end for a minute there... In early March, organic traffic plunged down 40% and there were many days with no sales at all.
But as the month went by things started to "normalize" for us and we tried our best to stay focused. Overall, March was a very productive month and we kept our focus on increasing the value of the Starter Story membership and moving Pigeon to a freemium model.
We hit all of our goals for the month.
Thank you to the whole team for an awesome month - it's so impressive how much we are getting done together. Because we run such a lean operation, we we will be able to make it through a darker period and come out even stronger.
the good
- Seeing really nice Starter Story MRR increases (+$300 MRR) from adding value to the premium membership and showing readers that it actually exists (i.e. including it in our newsletter).
- The Starter Story community is launched and rolling - lots to learn here but the future looks good (100+ members as of now).
- We launched the Start page and over 8 how-to guides - with the goal to provide readers with something more similar to a "course".
- We launched Pigeon freemium - I believe this is the next step for growth (through Chrome Web Store, G Suite Marketplace, content marketing channels, etc).
- Although traffic was down, it's looking better in the last couple of days (see below image).
the bad
- Significantly less traffic, email signups, and new memberships
- A few big cancellations / "putting subscriptions on pause" for Pigeon - MRR is lower than last month
Numbers:
- Total Revenue: $8,661 (88% Starter Story / 12% Pigeon) (-$237) - Starter Story Traffic: 492k pageviews (traffic down 10% MoM) - Pieces of content published: 110! (highest all-time) - Email List: 12,511 total subscribers (+500 net subscribers) - Starter Story Premium MRR: $1.5K (highest all time) (+$300 MRR) - Pigeon MRR: $1.05K (-$50 MRR)
(I'm no longer tracking traffic in GA, as I've discovered it's not very accurate because so many users have the script blocked!)
- Created automated outreach system that allows us to input in a type of business (i.e. dog walking business) and get loads of leads that we can reach out to for interview
I'm trying a "less is more" approach to goals this month:
- Fully deploy Pigeon content marketing (hire someone, plan the content, let them go) - Launch Pigeon as a G Suite Add On - Launch Pigeon for Teams / Shared Inbox features
- 100+ pieces of content on starter story
- Finish the how-to guides, continue to push out more "roundup-type" content
- Continue experimentation with the community and find what works
- Continue experimenting with the Starter Story paywall and possibly some AB tests
Unlike February's skill, this one was a big success! Here's what I learned and some examples of how I applied this knowledge:
I learned how to be more consistent
I learned about color palettes, well, I learned that it's a whole lot easier to use a scale for each color, this is how I have my CSS files set up now:
In my code, I'm not concerned with hex, I just use the variable "blue3", it makes things so much easier and consistent
Also works great for padding and font sizes.
I redid the entire landing page for Pigeon:
Old
New
More screenshots from the new Pigeon landing page:
Screen Shot 2020-03-31 at 6.46.17 PM.png799 KBScreen Shot 2020-03-31 at 6.45.30 PM.png491 KB
I added more color to the spreadsheet view, which makes things look sooooooo much nicer:
It's almost April, and I had big plans for April, May, & June.
I was going to live in New York City and have a blast. That's not happening anymore.
I'm predicting that this virus thing won't be over for at least two months.
This brand new month of April coming up? We will all be quarantined. May? Likely same thing.
It's time to get used to this way of life and seize the opportunity. These next two months are going to be huge for me.
Luckily, I'm in a spot where I have some money, some businesses, and some TIME to work on them. These next two months are a time to push everything forward - to take advantage of a moment where I have nothing else to do!!
This is fucking exciting!! I'm pumping my fists in the air right now.
A clear schedule. No social obligations. No commitments. No pressure.
We will look back at this time and be nostalgic. There will be memes about this - "Take me back to 2020 when it was socially acceptable to not leave the house for weeks."
I like to think of the other businesses (like my competitors) where their employees are sitting around with nothing to do, "WFH life", their projects falling apart, productivity going down, nonchalant attitude, and everyone just "waiting" for this to be over.
Well, it ain't gonna be over anytime soon, and they might also lose their job in the meantime.
I need to be the antithesis of that.
If I can have this mentality, it will all go by faster, and I'll be way happier, too.
I got a really nice email from a reader, which I'd love to show, as well as my own response.
For anyone reading this, I invite you to email me your thoughts about anything I write, anytime. My email is [email protected]:
---
(excerpt)
In “Ask and you shall receive”, you expanded on a buffet of feelings so many of us have felt in this software/entrepenuer/whatever you want to call it space. I had a few thoughts on how you are positioning your business to yourself that I hope you’ll consider.
Identifying your desire to not feel guilty when charging your customers money, is awesome. You’re way ahead of most people in knowing you need your customers to buy in to continue to enable you providing value to them!
Invite yourself to feel guilty when you don’t charge people for value, because when you don’t sustain your business and furthermore yourself you deprive your most loyal fans of you and your business’ service.
Value is subjective. You customers aren’t paying you what your service is worth, they are paying what you your asking price because what you provide is worth more than the money they have. I’m reminded of a Jerry Seinfeld interview where Jerry was asked if he had a favorite joke. He responded to the interviewer that it was a silly question because comedy for him is like breathing and therefore his favorite joke was the joke that would get him to the next joke. The haunting reality of it all, is that this isn’t true just for Jerry Seinfeld and his jokes, but for each and every one of us along with the craft we choose to pursue. Your most valuable product or service is the one that enables you to sell the next one, and so on. What seems like snake oil to you may well be holy water for someone else. And fortunately, we live in a time and place where we get to choose what will be our holy water and what will see as snake oil.
To a community of people, you have a holy water for them. But remember, even Jesus, with a billion followers and churches from Chile to Cechnya, has more haters than followers. It should remind us that there will be more people who either hate us or are indifferent to our efforts but remember we don’t work for them. We work for the few who get value from what we bring to the table.
Starter Story to enough people is life-changing encouragement; value your holy water accordingly.
In “Silver Lining”, you gifted all of us a candid look into your life. In fact, I enjoy that we are seeing more of this from creators on the internet in the times we are in. But your blog post stopped me in my tracks for a moment. I leaned back and thought, you know what, what if all the other stuff was silver lining stripped away, and the things we are actually enjoying now is the real gold of life. You said it succinctly yourself in your fourth bullet:
Things will be fine
In fact, it is possible with less driving alone, our countries average of 40,000 vehicular deaths a year may lower this year, off setting the loss of life we are so attentive to with this virus threat. Not that any loss of life is not cause for contemplation, but it seems in this moment we have all considered what’s most important and realized maybe in our time before all this, we were mining for silver when we were already sitting on gold.
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My response (excerpt):
On the first points, you're right - value is subjective - it's crazy to think about. What seemed valuable to me years ago is no longer all that valuable to me, but I can't let my own perspective get in the way. For example, content on "how to start a business" is not worth much to me anymore but it may be worth $5,000 to someone just starting out where it does actually change their life. I need to be more cognizant of that. It helps when I hear from people that Starter Story changed their life or just get thank you emails and that kind of thing.
But even selling SaaS software, because I know how to code and automate things, I take things like that for granted. What seems dead simple to me may be a breakthrough for someone else. This goes back to even some of my corporate days when I would teach clients things, but I would assume "they knew what I knew" and then they would get confused because I skipped a step. Then I would see someone else explain XYZ in more simpler terms and then the clients had the "aha" moment and everything clicked.
I think as engineer-types we make this mistake a lot - and I'm trying to find better ways to prevent this before it happens, I guess asking more of the right questions and listening more... Maybe you have some ideas to get better at this?
As far as having haters, you are 100% right on that. I think about this a lot. We don't realize it now, but the ones with haters have the biggest impact.
Trump, Kanye, Elon Musk, Oprah, Mark Zuckerberg, etc (just examples) - personally I don't pay much attention to their policies/opinions or what they did last week - but I'm constantly enamored with their ability to "not back down" from criticism or shame or public embarrassment. They are unbreakable - nothing can affect them. Even "scandals" of the biggest proportions barely affects them in the grand scheme.
As for coronavirus - yes - once the dust settles people will look at their bank statements during this time period and realize that they got by just fine spending nothing, and hopefully will also realize they were happier during this time. I'm excited for this to be over and see what people say about it and how it changes our generation....
