In this week’s episode:
Leif creates a workflow for scheduling tweets using Stencil and Airtable.
Cathy on using Llamalife presets for weekly planning.
Jo shares lessons learned from selling t-shirts.
Farez publishes Part 1 of his 5-part series on defining your SaaS idea.
And some neat and cool Discoveries.
Enjoy!
Leif, Cathy, Jo and Farez.
From Leif
I just went through a moment of "a crisis of identity or direction in your business” — ChatGPT, for the last two weeks. Almost a month after the launch of Airtable Wiz.
I received a good number of requests, helping with Airtable workflows and automation.
As much as I like these gigs, it has taken a lot of my energy, and it has limited my time to work on my content.
“But Leif, wasn’t that what you wanted?”
Yes, I would love to have the financial benefits, but not doing another “agency” type of work.
So, what’s the plan?
Stop taking new gigs, and focus on completing my use-cases (3 more to go, at least).
Then, review-reflect-pivot.
In the meantime, here’s some fun stuff I did last week.
Created a fun workflow to schedule tweet quotes from famous people using Stencil and Airtable
Next is to make it Airtable Wiz’s 3rd use case blog post. Subscribe and like!👍🏼
Until then,
Leif🌾
https://twitter.com/leifjerami
https://airtablewiz.com
From Cathy
I also had a bit of an existential crisis this past week. Asking myself: what am I doing? Am I on the right path? Have I got the right focus?
I spent a few days having a deep review, connecting with my goals and vision and then creating a new massive workplan, adding all these things that I had intended to start next quarter.
It was a million things.
Fortunately, I paused before trying to put this plan into effect (it would have failed) and analysed the pattern behind my thinking.
I realised this came after 5-6 weeks of a big batch of work. So it’s basically my reaction to an end of a cycle. It’s how long I can put my head down and do focused, concentrated work before I run out of steam.
When I come out of a focused state, I suddenly see all the possibilities again - and everything is so sparkly! ✨ There are so many things I could do and make! And worst part is that I think I can…
But of course, I can’t.
I remembered my main theme for 2023 is DO LESS (then Obsess).
→ So I’m going back to the plan (“Work The Plan” should also be one of my key themes) and keeping my focus for the next few weeks on shipping the first round of Expert Methodology. First up is doing a major update of Methodology Masterclass (my mini workshop version of it).
🦙 In fun news, my tweet on using LlamaLife presets as part of my weekly planning got featured in their newsletter. Thinking of doing my first YouTube video on how I set this up because it’s pretty cool.
https://twitter.com/cathyraffaele https://brillup.podia.com/programs
From Jo
At the beginning of Feb, there was a surf festival happening right outside our door. So we decided to take advantage of the traffic of people passing by and set up a pop-up shop on the balcony.
What has this got to do with a side hustle? Well, we used the shop to sell our “Ayam Surfing” t-shirts. It’s what I’d call a side-side hustle. Or a hobby that makes some cash.
It was a busy week. In total, we sold over 100 t-shirts, with people still placing order for the next print run!
I have had some time to reflect and think about the lessons learnt from this experience and think about how they can be applied to our online side hustle sales. Here are my observations:
The sales increased only after we hung all the different coloured t-shirt designs up at the front of the shop (we started off displaying only one colour).
Lesson learnt - products need to be seen by the customers! Sounds kinda obvious but I can relate it back to creating Notion templates and expecting customers to buy even though I hadn't done any marketing!
Many customers bought the t-shirts as they had seen others wearing them around the festival.
Lesson learnt - If you have a good product that people like, then these happy customers will do the marketing for you!
At one point the shop got hectic and unorganised, we had people asking questions about the t-shirts, others trying to pay for them and some trying to order for the next print run. It was stressful trying to jungle all these requests.
Lesson learnt - Get organised! Be prepared for when your product gets an influx of customers. It's easy giving good customer service when you only have a handful of customers. How are you going to maintain this services when your customer base increases?
If anyone want to buy a t-shirt we're taking order here! https://www.instagram.com/ayamsurfing/
From Farez
A business isn’t just an idea.
It’s a system of interacting components - product, marketing, sales, distribution, payment, and the list goes on. All working together as one single machine with a single purpose - to give you the life you want.
When starting out, we only have a best guess at what those components are. And we only know if a component is the right one after testing it in the real world. By trying to get people to buy what you’re selling.
Validation is the process, and art, of testing each of those components to decide whether they work or need to be replaced with another. A typical validation example is to test whether your social media posts or direct sales are better channels for bringing in traffic.
This is why it’s important to clearly define your idea, in terms of its components. There are many tools out there to help you do this. But I find most of them too complex and too “enterprisey”. I want to keep things simple and prefer processes that I can replicate easily as a solo entrepreneur.
If you have an idea for a SaaS business, then you may find my upcoming 5-part series helpful for clearly defining your idea. It covers:
Target audience: Who is your customer?
Problem. The specific problem you’re trying to solve.
Solution. how you will solve the problem.
Market. How 'big' is your market?
Business model. Simple revenue projection.
Head over to Part 1: Defining your target audience.
Discoveries
“Hell Yeah or No” by Derek Sivers - A simple rule of thumb that will you make decisions without overwhelm.
Audienceful - A really simple way to do email marketing. It’s like if Notion had an email service.
JitBit - Helpdesk software that actually has all key features at the solo-maker level. If you’re a Star Wars fan, you’ll want to check out their product pics (they’re pretty funny).
Llamalife - Both Cathy and Leif are using this. A perfect tool for managing timeboxed working sessions. It’s not too overbearing, and it’s fun and quirky to boot.