I'm Steph. I've grown products like Trends.co to millions in ARR and sold 6 figures in my own. AMA!

@sallysbrain Hi Sally! Love meeting other Canadians on here. 🇨🇦 I'm not sure if this counts as a mental framework, but I think we (humans) overthink things. Perhaps overthinking is a form of procrastination, which is a form of self-defense so that we don't fail. With that said, I think the best thing you can do is to just get something out there and iterate from there. The longer you wait, the more you are prolonging what you really need, which is user feedback. As I said in this tweet https://twitter.com/stephsmithio... Don't spend time talking about whether you think something will work. Test it. Don't spend time asking people what they want. Create it and validate. Don't spend time asking people what they like. Look at what they use.

@stephsmith I so appreciate you taking the time to reply. Love it. Onto publishing.

@adnan_siddiqi Great question! Mindset really is the key to getting things done. I covered this in a thread I wrote recently here: https://twitter.com/stephsmithio... Some of my personal favourite takeaways... 1. As a creator, you’re at war... with yourself. Your ability to succeed hinges on your ability to craft the right habits and mindset; to show up every single day. “Life is a competition with yourself — not others. And if you want to win, you must make it easy for yourself.” 2. Everyone is an imposter. Most people at most times don't "know what they're doing". The digital world is architected to highlight our best. Self doubt is healthy, so long as it's not debilitating. "He was one of you and yet he became Abraham Lincoln." - W. E. B. DuBois 3. Perfection is an asymptote that you don’t want to chase. When my book launched, it had typos. There still are! The MOBI file didn't work. The title is mediocre. But unlike 99% of projects, it made it out there and continues to evolve. Perfect is the enemy to progress. 4. Stop asking ppl what they want. Let the market decide. I'm a fan of pre-sales bc ppl put their money where their mouth is. "Netflix learned a lesson early on in its life cycle: don’t trust what people tell you; trust what they do." - Everybody Lies 5. Unstoppable people focus on what they can control. If you orient around public opinion, anyone can stop you in your tracks. "You can define a free person precisely as someone whose fate is not centrally or directly dependent on peer assessment" - Nassim Taleb

@lassuytchristop Thank you so much! ⏳🙌

@zhamdi Hi Zied. Thanks for sharing your story. I know you're not necessarily asking for advice on your product itself, but something important to keep in mind is that all products should have a clear problem they're solving for their users. The more acute this problem is for users, the easier it will be to get a user onto the platform. I say this because I wonder whether this is more of a "vitamin" vs a "painkiller" for most people. It may not be, but if it is, it'll be very hard to get people to use the platform over time, even if you seed it with a lot of requests at the outset. For that reason, I would actually not hire an external content writer for this purpose, but instead focus on seeing if you can get users to organically contribute to the platform. If your product solves a painpoint for users already, I would try to find where they're currently filing these requests. Are they posting on other forums or subreddits? Are they posting on Trustpilot? Or are they going to the companies directly and just getting shutdown? If you haven't already, I would try to develop these organic pathways and as you acquire your first users, do user interviews to learn and iterate.

@stephsmith thanks a lot for your advice Steph, it is good to get back to the basics to check if I didn't miss the elephant in the room. I've read "the mom test" and asked a lot of people, then I launched a simplified version of the product in Tunisia with a pretty satisfying success (1300 visitors and 100+ requests or request joining the month of launch). I'm pretty convinced people are eager to file requests (and to interact with other customers of a business), a maker on PH even commented: "In India we informally discuss issues on fragmented WhatsApp groups." (https://www.producthunt.com/disc...) So today I'm more concerned about letting people know they have a new "interactive review tool" to activate a viral loop of people seeing new requests and thinking they could file one about that incident that happened to them a few months ago...

@wishu Hey James! There is absolutely room to learn from others, but caution to plan too much or over-analyze. If you look back at the early versions of products, they focused on one single core use case (ex: selling books online, sharing snippets of information, uploading videos, etc) and iterated on the rest over time: https://twitter.com/stephsmithio... Launch and let the market decide: https://twitter.com/stephsmithio...

@juan_jesus_millo Hey Juan! I responded to a similar question above that Sorin asked! I definitely work on weekends and nights, although I don't think that is *necessary*. I think the biggest thing that's stopping people from reaching their goals is not focusing in one concrete direction. Feel free to read my more in depth response below, or you may find the course doingtimeright.com helpful! It's all about how I've learned to make the most out of our most scarce resource (time) https://www.producthunt.com/disc...

@stephsmith Thank you very much for the link of the answer! I will try to balance my FT and Side Projects, consistency is key! Many thanks!!!

@ozgeerdemir Thank you so much! Love women supporting other women. If you're looking for a remote job in 2021, you're already starting from a much better place than 2016 when I started. There are endless remote jobs out there, regardless of your passion, which I think is a bit of a fairytale anyway. I got a degree in chemical engineering, but have worked in academia, consulting, marketing, product, etc, and enjoyed each one. To answer your question directly though, my first fully remote job was in digital marketing and I selected it on the important criteria that it remote, but that I also would have taken the job even if it wasn't remote. In other words, I wasn't trading anything away to be remote. You might like the responses to this thread: https://twitter.com/stephsmithio... With that said, if you're looking to go remote and travel, I would encourage you to check out the following two articles. They're both several years old now, but should still apply (and as I said, be easier than before!) The Guide to Remote Work That Isn't Trying to Sell You Anything: https://blog.stephsmith.io/the-g... A New Age: Finding Non-Tech Remote Jobs: https://blog.stephsmith.io/non-t...

Bump

@ana_lakko Hi Ana! Thank you so much. That's such a compliment. I could write a whole book about growing a newsletters (that's what Doing Content Right is), but I'll try to tease out a couple key points for you. 1. You need a differentiator. Even though I think it's a wonderful topic, there is tons of other content online about gardening. That shouldn't scare you away, because this is true about nearly every topic online. So the question becomes... why should someone read your content about gardening vs all of the other stuff out there? Is it more visual? Funny? Beginner-friendly? This differentiator will be the reason that someone spends their attention with you, but also how they share it with other people. You can learn more about this in my response to Tim here: https://www.producthunt.com/disc... 2. You'll want to test out several different channels. Given what I know about gardening (very little), I would assume your content would do well on some scalable platforms like IG, but I think if you're writing content, you likely can benefit from an SEO strategy. Have you done keyword research before? If not, make sure you understand the different types of intent and be sure to only target informational queries. 3. When you start out at the beginning, your goal should not be to go from 1 to 1000 subscribers. It should be 1 to 2 and then 3, 4, 5, etc. In other words, do things that don't scale. The easiest way is often through communities. Have you already joined any gardening communities that could support you early on? I would also encourage you to read this interview I did with the PH team about content! https://www.producthunt.com/stor...

@luke_button There are so many solid internet properties, but I think the one that has captured my attention for the longest is Wait But Why. This is my personal favourite article from Tim: https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/07/w...

@luke_button Oooh this is tough, but I think it would be either Chartr or Exponential View. Chartr is my favourite way to stay up to date on biz/tech, since it's so quick and visual, but they also tend to tease out unique data points. Exponential View is a must read to understand how technology is shaping our world, whether it be re: semiconductors, climate change, EVs, AI, etc. I think at the end of the day, I would probably choose Exponential View, since it's one of the only newsletters that I feel I genuinely learn from each week.