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Episode 28 of Morning Maker Show: The Perils and pleasures of product launching
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- Morning Maker Show
Summary
Dan and Sandra share their experiences and emotions from their recent Product Hunt launch. They discuss the pressure to succeed and the impact of social media on their mental health. They also talk about the value of community support and the importance of taking breaks. Tune in for an honest and relatable conversation.
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Transcript
Dan: Good morning, Sandra.
Sandra: Good morning, Dan.
Sandra: We have a responsibility. We have, also the delight of seeing what people have been doing. We have these lovely updates and no one else going to go through them, Sandra, it's just me and you.
It's me, you and our mics that are working perfectly today.
Dan: We will have to talk about that at the end of the show. It's the first time that things are actually working. Don't jinx it.
Sandra: Okay. So we go. Um, Olive.
Pretty sure I could subsit, subsit, oh, interesting word, subsist, like, that's like replace.
Dan: It's like survive maybe.
Sandra: Oh, interesting. Pretty sure I could subsist of a dopamine diet. Hashtag build in public. And there is a lovely LemonSqueezy. You made a sale email. Ah, I love lemon squeezes. You made sales email. And I fully agree with Olive. Olive has been doing such a good job and I, I, congratulations, Olive. You deserve everything.
Dan: It's a love and hate thing with this dopamine thing. I think I'm broken because of it. And because of social media and X, like it, it became a problem this week. We tried to do 12 hours where we don't even open X.
Sandra: Yeah.
Dan: How did that go for you?
Sandra: Very bad. Like I was, I had to go to, to the bar
Dan: that bad.
Sandra: Yeah. Yeah. Because I had to forget it's such a habit actually. And, um, keep in mind, I keep all of my notifications all the time on, because I just want to be present. It's a stupid habit. So I took, um, Twitter notifications off and, uh, it was super hard. Just to paint for the people that are listening, like the next day I was calling Dan to see where he is because we agreed at 11 a.m., um, we gonna come back to Twitter and see what is happening. And I was calling him and he decided at that moment to hit the coffee shop and to walk through beautiful Copenhagen and take his time. time. Um, and I was shaking pretty much. I had to talk with him and about stupid things that are not related to Twitter just to forget about it.
It's sick. I agree with you.
Dan: I think, I think we have an issue. Yeah. So love and hate with the dopamine. I don't think at this point I need to go through a program. To be in a normal state again, where I don't need to check for like, if I don't check X, then I check emails. If I don't check emails, then I check analytics.
You know, I go on Posthog. Oh, what are the charts looking at now? Like I just crave these dopamine hits and it's a big problem. Maybe we should get a psychiatrist or something on the show that can help us.
Sandra: Explain to us how to deal with all of this. I don't know. Like, I think we work really hard and I think it's, it's pleasurable situation when you can see any type of like, either it's LemonSqueezy or it's like pass hog charts going up or, you know, anything that can kind of validate the work that we are putting in.
Dan: So. Exactly. We need to get this extra bit of motivation to keep going and to tell us, okay, you're, you're doing fine. You're on the right track. Don't, don't panic. Look at the analytics. Come on. Look at the email. Go, go do some more.
Sandra: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. That's not healthy as well. We need sport, maybe hiking.
I don't know. Maybe something like that. Oh, don't
Dan: get me, uh, Urban Dan does not agree. Want to take the next one?
Sandra: Um, Sarwech.
Just woke up with a bunch of cool ideas for bird banner. I'm excited to share more soon and see what people think. Sleep is the best. Um, I have to tell you something interesting. I, okay, but I get also ideas during the night.
I dream about certain things. Um, I also have these weird dreams where I wake up in the morning and I'm like, this was a whole full movie.
Dan: But explain to me, is it clear when you wake up? Like, do you remember everything? Because I don't remember.
Sandra: I, some dreams, like, of course, you have dreams, but some of these particular detailed dreams, I can remember everything.
And it's so good. So good, but BirdBanner.
Dan: Yes. It's, it's a tool to, with templates and whatnot to create a banners for, for Twitter, lots of customization, gradients, text elements, and so on and so forth. And I don't know what ideas he got, um, but. I can, I can relate to the work in your sleep that happens very often.
And especially if you have a programming issue where you just can't let it go. And you try to say, okay, enough work for today. I need to take a break. Your brain never stops thinking about a solution. And then in your sleep, it's so often that you get the solution. And then when you're in the morning, you try something out.
And I think. It's like the dopamine thing on one hand, it's, it's very, I don't know if I wouldn't even say productive, but you do solve the issue, right? Your, your brain's working, but on the other hand, your brain's working like to 24, seven, like, do you even, Get a rest while you sleep. If you still think about that problem.
Sandra: Yeah. Yeah. You are right. We were just talking about that. We can't slow down during the day and now the same transition happens during the night.
Dan: Yeah. We should really get that. So I addressed them. We worked too much, but yeah, looking forward to see the idea for bird banner. If you haven't seen it, please check it out on birdbanner.
com. It looks very cool.
Sandra: I actually tried it. I, I made and I wrote. Put the link in your tweets and I wanted to have it on my banner, but then I thought people will actually hate me with this tweet link. So I
Dan: actually have. I looked at analytics and I have four tweets where I put links and they're like thousands of clicks.
Like, I don't know together how many, but like thousands and thousands of clicks. And I'm going, I'm going to write this because you know, getting thousands of clicks, imagine you're doing ads, for example, right.
Sandra: Yeah. You could
Dan: easily pay. One, 2 per click, depending on the keyword. Yeah. So one post with a link in it could be worth one, 2, 000 for your business.
Sandra: Just.
Dan: It's such a crazy, if you just think of the math, such a crazy thing. So it's an ongoing battle, but I know there are people taking the scientifically doing spreadsheets. Here's 20 with links, 20 without links. Here's this and that, and so on. I'm, I'm just thinking what is easier for the reader, right?
Sandra: Yeah, for sure. For sure. I went like, I think we had this discussion, like what is happening with our engagement and the discussion was like during the night and then, um, the whole week I had like the same similar problem and then it went wild and crazy this week. Did I change anything in my way of like writing and putting the links and engagement?
I didn't, you know, so like I feel If you form your image online and your way of expressing it and, and in the same time, um, having a right engagement with the people, I think it's just going to work. I wouldn't build a Twitter profile or your own brand based on like, I wanted to say upwards because I'm in the brotherhood on the followers and based on followers and likes, I would build like a storytelling thing.
And I think the issue that we got in this week with all of these, um, scammers and things like that was particularly that like this fast way of growing and trying to reach people and sell and blah, blah, blah. Like, so.
Dan: Yeah. And the problem with that is it does work and it's very frustrating because it does.
And then you, you try it sometimes and you see, okay, this, this worked a lot better than the usual stuff where you're, as you say, you're yourself. And when you're not yourself and you do these things, they work. And then some people take this to the extreme and only do that. And they get a lot of reach, but not all of the people are well intentioned.
It used to be. You know, a lot more trust. And I think after this week, the trust in the community is all time low. Like we always had issues with, you know, does people copy this app or whatever, right? Yeah. That's the common thing. And then we always have these discussions. What if someone copies your business?
And we kind of agreed that's fine because building the thing is not equal to. Marketing the thing to supporting the thing, to building a community around the thing and so on and so forth. But for the past week, we got this sense of mistrust because we're so trustworthy with everyone and helpful. And, you know, when there's a new member in the community, what do you do?
Sandra: I support, I supported last week and then my dreams got crushed.
It's, but you are absolutely right. Maybe we need to kind of like step back a little bit. Yeah. And not jump on a wagon as well.
Dan: Yeah. So anyway, what were we talking about, Sander? We were talking about the
Sandra: therapist on the, on the morning maker show.
Yeah, exactly.
Dan: That, yeah, exactly. Yes, yes, yes, yes. I'm, I'm so on one hand, I'm so happy with the community we have, but on the other hand, Let's protect it. Let's, let's keep it nice. Let's keep it welcoming, but also be careful with people getting in that don't have good intentions.
Sandra: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Try
Dan: to, I, I, I really don't, I'm not the type of person that can call someone out and say, this is looking strange, but usually when people abuse these strategies of growth, there's two things, either they're not going to do it for long.
Like they're going to try to make a big win and, and kind of, Um, see, okay, there's not going as fast, you know, it's a lot of time. So they give up or the cases that we have here where they only do this as long as they can, and maybe they hook some people, maybe they get some sales or, or, or someone, and then they're gone.
With apparently other people's money as well, which is so sad.
Sandra: Yeah. It is very, very troubling week, very, very troubling week.
Dan: Yeah. And it's also, I want to ask you this thing. So someone said that we had the morning maker show community called this week. And someone said in the community hall called that also this, this is a.
Symptom of taking shipping to the extreme where you ship with a preorder link and then you don't have the product and you also never build the product, right? Yeah. And we somehow took it that that is a good way to do things. Do you think it's a good way to do things by the way?
Sandra: You know, there is a process of validating a product and I think we all should go through that before, um, jumping full on. Building the product, but validating a product from someone who is coming from like a startup community, um, would be building a simple MVP, um, where in kind of indie community, it's seen as a landing page with the link, or I could be wrong.
Dan: You know,
Sandra: but this, this, this is like what validation meant for me before. And also, putting a landing page and promising too much with the product that will not be, or the first version of the product will not be there. It's very troubling. So it depends off what type of the landing page you are building and what link you are putting and what type of a product we are talking about as well.
Like, is this something that is complex? Is this, and then you are like charging people on top of that. And there is very high, high, um, possibility that you're not being, that you will not be able to pull it off. And maybe you will feel ashamed and disappeared, which is called fraud. I mean, I don't,
Dan: I don't In other, yeah.
Yeah. Uh, I actually, I want to say something because you said it very well. Um, the validation part is very important, but if you take a step back, what is this? This is a tool to validate, right? And you cannot blame the tool on the result. So imagine we have this negative connotation for crypto and blockchain.
And whenever you hear that you associate it with scam, but there's nothing in her in, in blockchain or crypto that is, uh, Related to a scam. It's technology. It's a tool. It's like the internet, right? It's just a different time. You don't blame the internet for, for scams. And this is also a tool. So you cannot say that people validating with the link, using this tool to validate their product should be associated with a, with a scam inherently.
Now, the other, the other thing that you said. And I think it's completely true, and I think everyone should do it. You should have at least a POC, if not some, something working before you do that. You need to know that thing is possible and you can pull it off.
Sandra: Yeah., you can't promise too much put the link because people might actually pay and you fail.
Like you really have to be quite careful on how you're going to validate the product, especially if you're using the landing page with the link. It's very tricky. It's very tricky because I don't want people to feel the pressure of building something and then need it to validate because that's also a wrong approach.
Losing time on something that it's not going to work.
Dan: So of course, cause the best way to, to actually validate what's the most a user can do is to pay for the product. Right. Putting your email is not equal to, I'm actually going to buy this product at some point. Yeah.
Sandra: Yeah.
Dan: And that's why you also say that the wait list approach is maybe not as good of validation.
Sandra: No, no, no, for sure.
Dan: Yeah. So my, my take is, or even my approach, if you want, because I've also done, one product for sure, where I had the payment link, um, for MRRArt and I didn't have the. And the product, I had a very small script, basically you could call that a POC, but I knew it was possible.
And okay, technically speaking, it wasn't something that you cannot overcome. Like it, you know, it's done. It's, it's not like this huge ideas. So I had that and then I validated it and then I built it and shipped it, but that also creates. Some sort of reputation that, you know, if, if this is the, if you find the person and this is the first thing that they do, and they have a pre order link and there's nothing to show for, because this was a discussion.
Have you ever shipped something? Yeah. How can we trust this pre order link? And if the answer is no, maybe do your due diligence and see, you know.
Sandra: Yeah.
Dan: Yeah.
Sandra: I mean, I'm doing, I've, I've did, I've, I've done that with TakoTreba guides. I mean, it's not a product, but it's a guide and it's a very expensive one.
So in order for me and these guides to make a really good guide, I believe that it requires time and effort. In my case, it also requires like videos, which is like, you know, so I put the pre order link and I put all of this to validate for myself that that's my time. Like the time. That I'm going to put into making this is, um, worth it, you know, so do people need like POSCO guide?
Do people need product guides? Do people need like this whole process of, you know, from targeting your audience to, to looping them in the emails, to follow the growth, to pushing your product, you know, all of these things. Do they understand that? Like I needed validation and I got the validation. So, so.
I'm trying, I'm just trying to say, and agree with you, if you are paying for the product that is not out yet, check who is the maker, do these people have knowledge about that, um, have they done something before, are they able to push it, what is the policy, refund policy as well, like, check these multiple, these things.
Dan: You can't disappear. Also like people will find you, Sandra.
Sandra: I mean there when I send the newsletter somehow accidentally on morning making show there is my home address. ?
Dan: No. Why did you say that? No, not everyone knows unsafe. Oh no, Sandra, this is bad. Okay, you need to move.
Sandra: JK, joking, it's just a joke.
Dan: Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, let's move on. Let's see what people are doing and forget we talked about this topic. Do you wanna, do you wanna read what Bart's been doing?
Sandra: Yes, Bart, um.
Saturday, taking it slow, going to reflect, write, plan and rest. Do you take a step back in the weekends too?
Come on Dan. Tell us , how do you slow down? I just, I'm
Dan: having, I'm having difficulties going Well, I did the morning make show, so that's taking it slow. I'm having difficulties overcoming the previous topic. Uh, , I can't believe it. I can't believe you said that. Um, yeah, I, I do try to reserve weekend for not doing work.
And most weekends I fail miserably at it.
Sandra: And
Dan: you?
Sandra: And there is one thing I try during the weekends after we finish the Morning Maker show. I mean, we usually do it on Friday. So I try to do the newsletter and that's kind of enjoyable part for me. Um, Yeah, I fail. I was just going through my mind what I have to do today, and I was like, you're
Dan: gonna fail, so there's no point.
Sandra: I think It's one of
Dan: those where you don't have any advice, really, yeah.
Sandra: But one thing that That differentiates, differentiates. Oh, look at me. Fancy words. Oh my God. Um, it's not a fancy word. It's just a hard word to pronounce. And I was quite happy about myself anyway. One thing that, um, makes a difference of working on the weekend and working like, During the week is that I feel a little bit more relaxed and I tend to enjoy a work a little bit more during the weekends than the week.
Because no one's
Dan: bothering you.
Sandra: No one is bothering me. No one is like putting a pressure that this needs to be out or this needs to be done or what is the situation with this or that. So there is this kind of like slow mode of maybe enjoying the thing a little bit more.
Dan: People say. I slept for 12 hours. Another person says I do this on Sunday, not Saturday. Fair enough. I tried to get some morning code before the kids wake up. Oh, that's something to discuss, you know, family time. Weekend is reflection time. It's also a chance to take a break from coding and family weekend.
All valid. The rest is super important. Um, I think I fail at this. I think taking a break would actually help me in the, in the long run, but there's always some stuff I need to do that I think it's like you, um, I'm maybe even excited to do last week. I was really excited to, to publish a few episodes. Uh, I was a couple of episodes behind and I was really excited to put them on Spotify because I thought the discussions we had were generally good.
And I said, but don't, don't do any work. I'm like, I couldn't because I was excited to publish them. So, uh, bring in that, that psychiatrist.
Sandra: Yeah. Therapist. I think we are still for the therapist. We are not that far away, but, um, therapists would have a great value in, in the community.
Dan: Let's take the next one by Shubham Jain.
He says, after 10 years of constant failures with side projects, the first internet dollar made through a product does feel pretty special. Oh, it does. Oh, it does. Congratulations. And it's the first 37, to be honest.
Sandra: Very nice. Very nice. There's nothing better than after 10 years making, making it, um,
talking about the validation, huh?
Well, it's not, it's not
Dan: that Shubham worked for 10 years, I think.
Sandra: No, he's talking about a side project, so he definitely has its own way of working. But, um, I think I was also really excited when we started the Morningmaker show and when I could see that, wait a minute, this side project of ours or our small love story is actually like making money.
Um, so it's, it's a really nice feeling. I'm trying to find him on Twitter to follow the journey.
Dan: Yeah, it's, oh, well. Um, at Shubham ko, SHUB, bu I am probably butchering this as all the names so far. But very cool. Everyone in the comment is saying, you know, some, that's some resilience. Jean saying that Then, um, you know.
First, the first one does it different, that's for sure. Ten years and you didn't give, give up. It's. And then he clarifies, you know, I wasn't full time indie hacking, but just tried a lot of ideas for example, dieting ebook, um, and other things and never made money off of it. And, and maybe that's also a lesson here is that a lot of the people that do side projects, they think.
I'm going to do a free version or something that's, that's fun. And then if people are interested at some point, I'm maybe going to add some sort of monetization to it,
Sandra: right? Yeah. Yeah.
Dan: And I, I used to, I, that's how I did my things as well. And guess what? Those things never really get to the monetization part.
And maybe it's fine. Maybe not everything has to be monetized, but if you want to make your first dollar, we're back to, Putting that payment link, right?
Sandra: Yeah, I agree with you. Um, there is also one more option. I think I saw it with Greg when, um, Greg Gilbert, um, sure. Sure. Yes. Um, when he pushed his Product and product content launched it there.
Um, the app was totally free, but there was, um, this small section, um, sponsor for coffee or something like that. And I love that it was kind of like, I think he acknowledges that the product itself, maybe it's very hard to monetize, but also he, you know, if someone, you know, appreciates the work and if someone put the time and effort into building something and I love.
So, you know, it's this very straight and honest thing to do. So it could be, it can be something like that as well.
Dan: But that's also Greg's, he's a serial entrepreneur type of person. He has all sorts of things that he built. So what he can do is make something for free. To sort of send people to his other ventures or, you know, blog or, or so on.
So he's, that's fine. And maybe that's the better way to do it. You have like your main thing that you think, okay, this one I make to monetize and then you can do side projects around, you know, the side project marketing. Those could be free. And then you, you bring people to your main project and you still have fun.
You don't have, like what you said about working in the weekend and not having the same pressure.
Sandra: I know
Dan: this is why people sometimes do the free things because then you don't have this pressure, you do it for fun, you do it because you actually enjoy building that thing. But it's so good idea to have a main product that you do monetize and then all the fun stuff hopefully convert some of the users to your main thing.
And then you get the best of both worlds, hopefully
Sandra: also talking about Greg. He has a great, I love his blog. Um, he's, he has a different way of like doing blogs or like his personal blogs. He see it, sees it as notes. And I highly, highly recommend reading it because the last blog, um, Or no, he posted. I read it and I was like, Oh my God, he's reading like, like I felt like he's scanning my thinking or like he's has ability to go in my head and like a little bit plays around it.
Um, and he was talking about not being able to let go of your own thoughts. In the sense that, um, we all the time need to, um, either listen to something when you're walking to the store, are you able to walk to the store without like actually listening to a podcast? Or when you're cleaning home, are you able to do it without like having any type of a content?
Getting to you and just like staying with your own thoughts. And I was like, Oh, I'm not able to go to the store without like listening to something.
Dan: Or fall asleep even.
Sandra: Yeah. Like, like, just like these stupid things, even when, you know, we tend to let's, let's read the book, even that's a type of a content that you need to absorb in the, that sense.
So it's kind of like, Whoa, this was. That, yeah, that, that,
Dan: oh, yeah, that, that hits hard. And I also recognize this that. It's not only that you can't be alone with your thoughts, but it feels also because of the dopamine, it feels a bit boring to do that, you know, like you, you know, what is there to do now, like, at least you need some music or, or something is just the silence.
So that's why we need to bring. the therapist on the show, because we have some things to deal with here. I've, I've linked Greg's blog and then his, his article that, that is called, can you hear yourself? No. Um, when can you hear yourself think, sorry. And I just made up a title. Uh, that's, that's what the title should have been.
He got it wrong, but that's fine.
Sandra: Yeah. Very, very good way of writing a blog. I think,
Dan: yeah, I think he's an example, but not only the blog, but in general, he's an example for the community. And I had many calls with him. We used to have calls quite often and he's just a, he's just a very nice person and very experienced as well.
Like, and always offers to help people. So, um, just to shout out to Greg, thank you so much for what you do in the community.
Sandra: Very nice, very nice. Um, Miguel, Miguel.
Glad I'm on this platform. It's the best community I've been part of. Long live hashtag built in public community. It is. It is. We had a hard week.
Um, we've learned a lesson. Now we can move on.
Dan: It's, it's a good community, it's a good community. I also feel a bit, yeah, this brings me back like when you say it was hard. Like I, I really had a hard time this week at some point. Like a deep sadness for what, what people have done. And then for the people that got, you know, you know, at the wrong side of, uh, of the events, but I don't even want to talk about it.
I want to be in my bubble where people are helpful. They're loving, they, they motivate each other. They, they build things. They, you know, that's, that's my world. I don't, I don't want another word to, to even acknowledge that it exists. You know what I mean?
Sandra: I totally agree with you. And, um, even when we do acknowledge.
It's important to talk about it. It's important to spread the message. It's important to find these patterns with these type of people and then kind of learn from there and continue supporting and bringing value and building things. And, you know, so I think I can see also that, like, even when we have a discord, I can see how much people can help each other.
Um, Just like with different expertise and different views and shape the product and shape you, shape you. And, you know, like Norbert is my, in my head right now with his, um, duckling.
Dan: Ugly duckling, yeah.
Sandra: Ugly duckling, where we are fighting all. I think it was like, Brilliant to see what he was able to do in the past two weeks and how much he, he have improved the product based on the feedback that was coming from the community.
And I think we, we are all becoming addicted a little bit now to, to ugly duckling.
Dan: Yeah. Yeah. Well, just missing one more addiction and now, now it's complete. Now bring on the, oh
Sandra: no. But what I'm trying to say is that Your feedback is important and time and effort you put just to, um, check some other products from other makers is so important and valuable for them.
So that's kind of like how this or how I see this community working.
Dan: Yeah, it's lovely. So it is, but he, he also listened to what people had to say, and that's, that's important. But every time you get feedback, you know, you need to, to kind of mold it and twisted to your vision of the product. It's important, but it was so lovely to see all the members of Morning Maker Show saying, you know, this, this is missing, or this could be a very nice way to get people engaged more or have better retention and so on.
And he implemented these beautifully now. All I do is check these leaderboards. So he made leaderboards for it. It's so ugly duckling is a, is a tool to track your consistency on, on X and also to kind of get some, some ranking on your growth or on your effort and so on. And he made it so that leaderboards are essentially all, all the members of ugly duckling.
Automatically compete in this leaderboard and it's very addictive to, to actually check those. And it's such a good hook because I think it's something in our human simple or monkey, I would say brain, where you. You have this need to compete somehow, and I ended up taking that more than I should. And it's such a beautiful product.
I'm so happy. I'm so happy that Norbert did this in the community. And, uh, I, I just hope, hope to see this ugly duckling as a, you know, sort of a foundation of Of people that use X, not only to, you know, build, but also to have a community around and to be accountable for the growth and so on.
Sandra: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
He did a brilliant job.
Dan: Alright. Should we take one last, one
Sandra: last,
Dan: one last, one last, and then we go back to sleep. .
Sandra: I go back to cleaning. Um, Khrish, Gohil. I hope it's good.
I'm I'm not unproductive. It's just that good things take time. My new coping mechanism.
Dan: Do you agree with good things take time? When you're looking at these charts with revenue and conversion and user growth, like what's the battle that's going on there?
Sandra: Oh, dear, Dan.
Um, let's take an example of Hunted.Space. Um, We launched it, it won on Product Hunt, we are super proud and I see, like, my vision of Hunted.Space is the epicenter for everyone who is going to launch, is in the process of launching, it's his day of the launch, and how to keep it on Hunted.Space. You know, so if I would, um, start thinking of a solution right now and start, um, breaking my own brain about figuring out the product right now, it would be extremely hard.
And I think, you know, this is where this example of good things come, you know, you need, it takes time to figure it out and to see it. I think with Hunted.Space, you manage to figure it out. one part of it. Now you are in the process of figuring out the second part of it. And it's beautiful.
Dan: Yeah. In some parts you can't figure out until you put it out there and talk to people.
So you also have to, if you, if you do this and you have this approach, which I think is fine, not. All things have to be fast and some things can't, they just can't. And then you're just going to feel bad about yourself because you didn't do them fast enough. I do this all the time, but you still need to have some goal to stop yourself.
Good things take time, but the time is one month, right? Or good things take time. But if I have this and this, then it's ready to put it out there and see what people think.
Sandra: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Fully agree. There needs to be cool setup and timeline and something that you can actually measure.
Dan: Yeah, exactly.
And I, I had, and you had so many more things that didn't make it into Hunted.Space yet. We have all these ideas and so on, but we don't even have a clear vision on how to do them. And. It didn't mean we cannot launch and we cannot make progress like there's been so many changes that so many good things that we've added that would have been a shame to postpone this because we have a bigger vision that that that's going to come eventually doesn't have to come all at once, right?
Oh,
Sandra: for sure. For sure. Just launch it and build from there. You can launch as many times as you want.
Dan: And maybe that's even better because instead of doing a big launch where people, if you have 10 things that you want to talk about in that launch, and people have a certain attention span, they're maybe going to notice one or two, you're going to get a lot less from your launch than doing 10 launches with one thing.
Sandra: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Dan: You're going to keep the momentum that way. So I would even say. Are
Sandra: you saying to
Dan: me
Sandra: that you're launching Hunted.Space by the end of this month again? I feel like this
Dan: conversation is going in that direction. How many things did we launch this year? I can't even remember. It's maybe the fifth.
I think I need to slow down with the launches. There's also a thing is launching too much. And I, I think I told this before, but I'm very close to a limit of how many things I can have at once. And I want to have some space for, you know, uh, this idea that comes in my sleep. And I want to have space to build that and not be, Oh, well, I can't build anything else.
Cause my time is, is used up. So, yeah.
Sandra: But I think you're doing a really good job. I think you are right now digging more into the products you already have and kind of figuring out like how to go from there. And I think that's a great approach, even if in Dan case, when he has multiple different products and each product is totally different than you have to like have a different way of thinking.
I'm talking about marketing perspective in this case. Um, But
Dan: yeah, yeah, yeah. You, you, you actually saw that. That's interesting. I don't think I ever said it, but that is intentional that I don't, you know, it's, it's easy to, I said one thing, it's easy to launch and then get the initial traction and then very hard to grow and launch is really, it, it helps it and it's great, but.
It's just a bit of the work. And this year I've took the decision to focus more on what I have and try to do marketing and grow those things, even though that's the hard work. And maybe not even as fun for me. I have to recognize that it's always more fun to build something new and exciting. After the initial hype has died down, but I'm resisting that and I'm, I'm building up on, on what I have.
And I think that's, that's going great. Those are some surprises like beginning of the year, uh, Clobbr got a lot of sales. And then I thought, well, okay, it's, it's worth investing in that and improving it. And a lot of people like it. And then this month, for some reason, Crontap is doing well. I'm getting a lot of.
And I, I did even before this, I did have a plan laid out on how to like a grand plan on how to consolidate this. Because what you can do is these products are related to each other and that you can bring value. By connecting them by not even doing a bundle, but connecting them to create new solutions for problems that you have.
Right. So that, that's exactly my plan. I, I should lay it down also for myself. Like I just have some bullet points of what I want. The problem is, and going back to, to the tweet, which is good things take time. Achieving this plan takes time because the steps in it are quite large. So talking about cramped up, you know, I have some very important things that I want to do for it.
And that's probably going to take one month and there's just no way to do it quicker. There's just no way it is going to take one month. And then this plan starts to become heavy for you because. You want to reach it, but you cannot just skip to that. You need to go through these steps. And maybe there's five steps that each take one month.
And at the end of it, you ask yourself, you didn't make a new product. So you don't have this, the same excitement, the same momentum that you do. And you've ended up making a huge investment in these ideas that might or might not work. You, you don't know if what you did. Is going to actually be more successful as opposed to making a new product.
You never know, even if you have a good idea, you can rely on it.
Sandra: Yeah, but then you have marketing and you have data and you have analytics and you have, I mean, you need to follow these things. Otherwise you're going to get lost.
Dan: Yes.
Sandra: Like people really need to take this seriously. And I'm not talking about like stupid way of marketing.
Like, I don't know, like, Like marketing of a stupid word, we hate it. I get it. I hate it as well, but there is this brilliant thing that data and analytic can bring to you. And then you understand the point of this stupid marketing word.
Dan: Yes.
Sandra: And that gives you kind of like a boost to test and see which feature and which product.
Are working and where you need to push more. I mean, just taking a whole product and seeing what people or users are using for this product, you could have 10 feature and only one is working perfectly, or people are paying for just one. Maybe that's the, that's where the, the, the conversation, when you are talking with the user needs to go and you're figuring out in depth, what more they want, I mean, this, this, this type of a thing, like going into the product to.
Deeper on the, this level of thinking that that's, that's usually like, I mean, I have that problems with as well with clue, you know, you have to figure out better workflows or use cases or it's, and it's very hard. You reach one moment where there's attraction and there's people and excitement, and that's all great and nice, but all the next steps are
what actually matters and those are really, really hard.
Dan: And you cannot find those steps if you, if you don't have the tools in place to help you, right. That's so I realized. So one of the efforts was to add post hoc to a lot of my products. I don't do it for some because the value proposition is privacy.
So for Clubber, I always. You know, it could be sensitive things that you test, so I will never add tracking to that. It's just what the product is, but for a lot of the others I do it, but it's not even to, to, you know, tracking is such a scary word to, I'm a fan of privacy and, and, you know, doing that, but it's more to do what you say to see the full picture and understand what people are actually using.
Just from, from the bird's eye view. And I, I don't usually care about zooming and I want to know exactly what I should focus on to improve traction to where, where do we go from here? Right.
Sandra: And one thing that I realized this week, which was really funny, um, so obvious, um, but what does the user do before he jumps in your app?
Dan: Where does the user come from, you mean?
Sandra: Not come from, but what, what is the workflow in which your product fits? Oh, like that. So even a step further of one step further. For my case, when I'm talking about Klu, um, people don't seem to sit in their offices and just search, you know, it's not that it's like, let's take a marketing team, like they need to write a newsletter.
So there's one step always before outside of your app. So is he coming to Clue to find the latest product updates from the product team that he needs to take in to the newsletter? You know, so like, it's not only looking The product itself, but also what, where was the user or which app the user opened, or what was his workflow before even jumping on your app?
I mean, it's like that level of thinking to move forward with the product.
Dan: So it's even, do you work with personas and try to create some, some image of these users that, you know, who they are, not only what they do as a, as a technical workflow, but. Who they are exactly. Do you do that?
Sandra: I mean, I mean, in this position I can already do that with Glue, but if you are like one step before that, I highly, highly recommend that.
Like understanding person in total, their workflow, and what are you actually automating in their workflow?
Dan: It's also a good exercise for design. I think that that's where I know of personas. A lot of the fancy big design agencies, they would, they would work with personas to define the flows, the, the UX before they get to design and you basically have to answer this question. And we always say that, who are you building this for?
Do this exercise and maybe the personas change, I suppose, and then, or maybe you swap one for another because why would you do that? Well, maybe because you cannot account for everyone for, you know, you need to pick some personas that, that you will be great for. You cannot pick everyone and say, it's going to be average for every single persona and not great for neither of them.
Right.
Sandra: Yeah. Yeah.
Dan: I could go on Sandra. 10 days. I think doing this on a Saturday was a blessing and a curse because now I feel like we could just keep going.
Sandra: I don't know. I'm very passionate about the products. It's just like, it's, it's cracking these things and how they work. It's, it's So interesting for me, it's like a puzzle and I know we need to end the show, but I just want to say like, sorry,
Dan: no, no, nothing.
Well, I was just about to ask, is it one of these puzzles where all the pieces are white and you have 10, 000
Sandra: very problematic one. But it's, it's very interesting. Take a look at the product and then figuring out the people and where it fits in their workflow. And then you have channels and marketing and features and all of these things.
It's exciting. Okay.
Dan: That's it. They just set up a meeting with you and you tell them.
Sandra: I don't have like, they don't get me like, I, I would love to have ability to, to think that I have all the knowledge and I just like, there's few things that I'm good at it. And I try to keep that, just understand that depth of something.
And I'm excited. Like right now I'm excited to take a look at the Hunted.Space and like
Dan: figure it out. Are you kidding me? Like you're humble now. Do you know what she did? Like she, she forced me to do some things that I would otherwise not do. Let's not talk about it, but the result of it in 24 hours, we didn't have a Hunted.Space newsletter.
Okay. I just opened up EmailOctopus. We have 101 subscribers. For our newsletter in 24 hours, if you ever tried to get subscribers for your newsletter, you know how big this is.
Sandra: But imagine how many subscribers you would have to the newsletter. I'm not talking to
Dan: you sooner. Yeah. Yeah. If I knew you sooner.
Yeah. Uh, so you're, you're, stop being so humble. Okay. Just stop it. You cannot talk about this. Okay. Okay.
Sandra: We won on Prada count. Let's go celebrate. It's Saturday. Let's
Dan: do something. Let's go. It's, it's, it's time to celebrate. Thank you so much everyone for joining us on this lovely day. Thank you for being part of this community.
Thank you for helping. Every single time. And thank you for collaborating, building things. Don't stop. You're doing awesome. Thank you for listening to us. We've been telling a lot and I hope, I hope there's something that, that you've learned, but if not on morningmakershow.com, there are previous episodes and then then there's a lot of learning there.
We have covered probably. How many hundreds of topics by now, it's episode 28. Can you believe it, Sandra?
Sandra: It's crazy. It's actually crazy.
Dan: It's crazy. We're going to look back in five years and at episode 1, 203 and say we, we were just at the beginning at 28. Your past episodes on Spotify and Apple Podcasts as well, and probably a lot of other things that I don't know of 'cause I don't use.
Please make sure to check them out.
Sandra: also, um, we made TikTok, so whoever has a TikTok, it's an very interesting platform. I have to tell you, that's another, that's another. So that's another show we can't
Dan: episode 29 is just about
Sandra: to talk, but have a lovely weekend.
Pre-show
Dan: We are number one on Product Hunt!
Sandra: We did it. Whoa, um, Product Hunt, this week has been really crazy. Like, I, I'm speechless. I don't know. We are number one. Yes.
Dan: I'm also speechless. I got scolded by a friend that told me, you know, he's listening to the podcasts. One day I will reveal him, but you know, I want to do it gradually because I don't want to, and I will.
Even invite him maybe someday he's, he's actually a bootstrapped entrepreneur and he has a nice business, but he's not, he's not doing the Twitter built in public thing. But anyway, but I got scolded and he told me like, we get into these subjects and we don't explain and we don't. Say the basics at all.
So we don't say what product hunt is. We don't say what it means to get number one. We don't say what SEO is, or like he told me AB testing. Why didn't you explain what AB testing is? The super cool concept. And you think everyone knows what AB testing is.
Sandra: Yeah, he's totally right. He's totally right. I also felt weird.
I had a friend also asking me, Oh, you're doing a podcast. And I'm like, yeah, but, and she's in marketing as well. So maybe we could do a better job a little bit.
Dan: Yeah. So what is Product Hunt, Sandra? Tell me.
Sandra: I mean, I see Product Hunt as at the moment, kind of like the only place where you can make sure that your product hits off if it's done properly.
If you get in top five places. So you run for 24 hours with the whole world. The whole world is watching you. Your friend's going to love this. Um, so the whole world is watching you. You build something, you push it there and then people can try it out, see it for the first time. You get the feedback, you get the sales.
Um, Or you cry at the end of the day? I dunno what to tell you. .
Dan: Yeah, it's very hard, right? It's very hard for a few reasons. The, the first reason is this badge, the number one, I mean, it, it is big not only to you and your community, but even to the company. I don't know if it still is like this, but this number one badge used to increase your valuation.
And if you were, you know, VC backed and you wanted to like go for an exit, if you had this number one badge, you would get the better valuation because of it. So it is a huge, huge thing and everyone wants it. And some days you compete with, you know, companies that have put a million dollars into building the product or have, you know, a marketing team behind of 10 people.
And sometimes it's just, against those. So getting number one is
Sandra: better than winning them. Like there's, there's the best feeling in the world is like when you won them.
Dan: Absolutely. And it never gets easier. So I was quite stressed by the end of it. Weren't you?
Sandra: Yeah. I mean, um, yesterday when we launched, um, I saw.
Like one company and early morning, it was like we were like switching places. They were first, we were second, they were first, we were second. And that was like before you joined. So like that was in like 45 minutes after we launched. Um, and I was like, Oh no, here we go again. Because I have this Post traumatic stress from all of these launches with all of these companies seeing them and um, I was really stressed about it and then I was like, okay, there's no waiting.
I need to push because I could see that they are pushing as well. Um, so I think once you joined, it was like 40 upvotes or. Something like that. And that was only like in 45 minutes. I can,
Dan: I can kind of sense that you're telling the, our lovely audience here. Hello, everybody, that I was a little bit, if not very late to the launch. It's an honest mistake. So here's the problem. On the 10th of March, there was Daylight Savings Times in the United States, and I did not realize this, and it's always at 9am, uh, Danish time, or whatever time zone we're at, CET.
Time zone, let's not talk about time zones. I don't want to ruin my morning. And anyway, I was, I was really relaxed. I put the alarm clock at half past eight, you know, half, half an hour, make a coffee and then at nine, I'll be ready and in action. And then I wake up and I see the screenshot from you. And showing upvotes and stuff.
And I was like, what, what's going on here? Like the launch is going to start in half an hour. Like we have plenty of time. What is this thing? And you're already in panic mode. Yeah. It was already like, but I know, uh, I, I fell asleep quite early night before. Um, and I knew I, when I woke up, I saw your messages like it and it was like 1 a.
Sandra: m. So. I knew that you were working pretty much very late and I was like, okay, you know, he he he probably like Stick around and, and it was actually lovely to see how much trust you have in me. Yeah, yeah. That's what it, that's what it was. Let's, let's, let's think that that, that's the reason for all of this.
It's exactly how I planned it, yeah. Dan was super relaxed. Yeah. So, yeah. end of the day, we have 676 people that supported us, probably a million in comments and support on next. It's just, there is nothing like it. I don't even, I didn't care about the number one or not. I mean, you do care, but all of the people supporting you and saying these nice things, there's just nothing like it.
I don't know how to explain it. I mean, you can also see it by the ratio of the comments when you're looking at the product hunt launch of Hunted.Space, like there's 200 comments there, 273 sites. So that's kind of also not only that people have comment on Twitter and shared our launch, but they also make an effort to check out the platform and, um, place the comment there.
So imagine taking time from your day to write this comment and to actually it's just blowing my mind. And that's why I think this is like, not, I mean, okay, we, we worked on this, but this is a community project, right? It's not, it's not even our win at this point. Like it was just the whole community of makers that, that made this happen.
Dan: We, we couldn't have done it. So it's so beautiful. I love it. so much, everyone.
Sandra: It was a lovely day. It was really lovely day. Stressful, but lovely. So that's an answer, whoever is asking what PradaKant is. It's a great dieting tool. Like you don't need We're back to the diet talk. Yeah, I think especially after this week with all the negative News in the community.
Dan: It was so good to just turn it around and to see that people are so supportive and they're so lovely and they're so sweet with each other. And, you know, Lera, the creator of Clipwing and Momentum and some other things, she made this video for us, like a full animation, just like that. Just out of the blue, she made a whole video to support us.
How crazy is that? I can't believe it. It's it's lovely. And also I think like even though the launch was yesterday and finished this morning Um, I still haven't got actually on twitter to see all the reactions So there's going to be a lot of now things coming up on someone's timeline about the space launch all over again but yeah, I think after this All week, um, of negative negativity that we kind of figured out.
Sandra: Um, it was lovely to, to, to finish it with bringing all people together.
Dan: Absolutely.
Sandra: Everyone enjoy, um, eat good, watch a good movie.
Um,
Sandra: nothing else I can do. Oh my God. My life is empty. See you, Dan. See you people. See you. Bye. Goodbye.
