Going full time indie

First month of being a full time indie creator + a model for understanding user motivations and using them to your advantage.

May 7, 2023

Welcome to this week’s edition of What The Product, where I share actionable insights on building and growing products.

1. Personal Update

Don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and then go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive."
- Howard Thurman

April’s been my first month of being a full-time indie creator.

Here’s what I’ve been up to:

Launched FlowGo, a Webflow productized service. I’m building this together with my wife, whose an avid Webflow developer. The landing page is done and I’m now building distribution (more on that below). We’re focused on helping marketing agencies and startup marketing teams scale their web development operations.
My User Interview Toolkit has made it to the official Notion template page. I’ve done 2 sales so far. Nothing to write home about, so at least I’ll write you 😀
NUUK, our handmade lamps business is picking up. We’ve made 7 sales this month. All this without any social media ads. We’re going to start testing some targeted ads in the next weeks. I’ll let you know how that’s going.

2. Actionable Insight

What if you could understand what motivates your users to do the things they do?

What if you could spot solutions that are hard to use?

What if you could use all this to find business opportunities?

Roll the BJ Fogg behavior model.

BJ what? Ok, imagine you want to help your friend start exercising regularly.

The BJ Fogg Model helps you understand how to make that happen.

It has three parts: motivation, ability, and triggers.

Motivation: This is the reason your friend wants to do something. Maybe they want to improve their health, lose weight, or relieve stress. You need to find what makes them excited about exercising regularly.
Action for you: look for user motivations. What is the reason your future user wants to solve a problem? What do they hope to achieve? What do they hope to gain?
Ability: This is how easy or hard it is for your friend to start exercising. If they have a busy schedule, limited access to a gym, or lack knowledge about fitness, it might be difficult for them. So, you need to help them identify convenient workout options or share useful resources to make it easier for them to start.
Action for you: How easy or difficult is it for them to use the current solution?
If it’s easy you probably don’t have a lot to go on with.
But if it’s hard, you’ve just discovered a pain point worth exploring.
Triggers: This is a reminder or signal that tells your friend it's time to exercise. It could be setting a regular calendar reminder, receiving a motivational text message, or having a workout buddy to keep them accountable.
Action for you: When do they have this problem? What’s the trigger? Can you tap into this trigger and use it for your benefit?

You are looking for problems with high motivation, but solutions with a low abe.g.ty (e.g. they are hard to employ). If you can build a solution that’s easier to employ, it’s more likely users will employ it instead of the incumbent.

3. Resources & Templates

13 places other than Product Hunt to launch your next product:

4. Recommendations

📗 How to tell if your landing page copy is not working (and how to fix it)

I build landing pages all the time. To validate an idea, to launch a campaign or just for fun, to stay in the game.

This guide helped me identify common issues with landing pages. For example – do you have a high bounce rate and a low scroll depth? Your need to rework the hook in your hero section.

📗 This is NOT your value prop

“Time savings” may be a benefit of your product. In fact, it probably is. But it shouldn’t be your central value proposition. You need to connect your value prop to the customer’s actual priorities and hard ROI business outcomes.

That’s it for this week.

Share this with a friend building something ❤️

Whenever you are ready

Do you feel like you’re not getting enough from your user interviews?
The User Interview Toolkit will help you ask the right questions and uncover real insights.