Justin Jackson – The Freedom Ladder: Financial Independence through Products – MicroConf 2017

Shai Schechter • 2017

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  • First – I love you guys
    • Vegas: the first 48 hours are amazing. Then there’s a cliff
    • Went to MicroConf Growth. After 2 days, I’m exhausted
      • Then all you guys show up. So much energy
  • Today – 5 tactics and 4 principles for achieving independence through products
  • Say “hi” on Twitter
    • @mijustin
  • Bio
    • I’m just an idiot that Mike and Rob found on the internet
    • Want you to think: “If this guy can make it work, anyone can make it work!”
  • I understand where you’re at right now
    • You’re not satisfied with the way things are
    • Want your life to be better
    • For me: was tired of sitting in traffic every morning. I hate it. “How could my life be better?”
    • We know it can be better, but have little imagination for what that looks like
    • You discovered someone who’s making an independent income from digital products
      • My heroes!
      • Jason Fried
      • “How did they get up there?”
      • “How do you get from no audience, no idea, and no revenue to quitting your job?”
  • My journey
    • Started in software in late 2008. 28 years old
      • Had to start at the bottom. Customer support answering phones
      • Discovered 2 things that would change my life
        • Read “Getting Real” by 37signals
          • You can build something that helps people, deliver it through the internet, and they’ll pay you for it
        • Startups For The Rest Of Us
          • For the first time in my life, I realized it could be different
    • I have 4 kids
      • What my schedule looked like: Get kids to school 7am. Drive to office 8am. Work 9-5 Eat dinner 6-7. Etc. Collapse in an exhausted heap @ 10pm.
    • Two things to overcome:
      • Find more time
      • Make enough $$$ to support my family
    • Things I tried to find more time:
      • Waking up early
      • Staying up late
        • Tried Gary Vee’s advice “JUST STAY UP TIL YOUR EYEBALLS BLEEEED!”
          • Terrible advice.
      • Working on the bus
      • Working during my lunch hour
    • Got a remote job
    • Started a podcast with my friend Kyle Fox
      • ProductPeople.tv
      • Focused on “people who build digital products”
    • Started a newsletter at the same time. “Get my newsletter for product people”
      • People were asking me the same questions over and over again
        • “How can I keep motivated as a solo founder?”
        • Reached out to patio11 and Rob Walling
          • They both said they had support groups of likeminded solo founders
          • Noticed a trend
        • Hypothesis: “Give me a support group so that I can stay motivated as a solo-founder”
      • Built “Just Fucking Do It” Campfire chat (2013)
        • My first spots sold out in an hour
        • Mistake: didn’t think any more would sell, didn’t shut off signups. Meant to limit it to 10 people. Woke up – 35 people.
        • Wife: “it needs an appropriate name…”
        • Earned over $70k
        • Just a small side product, but provided real value
          • Samuel Hulick
          • Rob Williams
      • Built a LOT of products. Two got traction
      • January 1, 2016, was able to go full time on these products
      • Indie income
        • $10k a few years ago, up to $150k
      • I now make a full time independent income from the things I make with computers
  • How can you do this?
    • First: find more time
      • Ideas
        • Take a 1-week sabbatical from work to focus on your project
        • Wake up early (put in 1 hour before work)
        • Work from home one day a week
        • Negotiate shorter work hours
        • Get a remote job
    • 5 tactics
        1. Choose your audience
          • #1 mistake: Don’t start with an idea. Start with people.
          • e.g.
          • Parents with kids in diapers
          • Folks starting a podcast
          • Freelance designers
          • F# developers
          • 40+ joggers
          • Commuters - Good markets:
          • Easy to reach
          • Highly motivated to solve their own problems
          • Ability and willingness to pay
          • A group you’re EXCITED to serve
          • A group you’re personally connect to - “Where am I already being paid for my skills and expertise?”
          • Example: Darian Rosebrook. Designer in the banking industry
            • Could go…
              • Vertical (banking; your industry)
              • Designers (horizontal; your peers)
              • A group you’re already connected to.
          • Case study: Francois had a consulting business where he helped Shopify store owners
            • Noticed people kept coming to him with request
              • “We have an Instagram page. We want that sucked into Shopify, create a gallery, then make each of those images a product they can buy”
              • Sounds totally clunky
              • He built a solution (a web app)
              • It’s now his full time income
          • Freelancers / consultants are already being paid for skills and expertise. Can see the patterns and problems
            • Can turn that into a product
        1. Research your audience
          • Most important thing! No one wants to do it
          • How do you find good product ideas?
          • You want to hit a nerve that makes people say SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY
            • ONLY way to do this is to listen. Understand the progress customers are trying to make and what struggles stand in their way
  • People buy products for one reason only: to make their lives better

      • They don’t care about anything else
        • Most important thing I’ve ever discovered
        • The position of a product person is inward, not outward
      • People were asking “How do I figure out what jewelry buyers want?”
        • So I went into a jewelry store, filmed undercover
          • Observed:
            • 90% of products are for women
            • 100% of the people in the store were men
            • 100% were men buying for women
            • The men all looked REALLY nervous
        • Find the answers
          • Where are they now?
          • What do they want?
          • How could their life be better?
          • What obstacles stand in their way
        • Jewellery store
          • Who: boyfriend
          • Super power they want: impressive romantic boyfriend
          • Obstacles: they don’t know shit about jewelry. Or romance!
    1. Observe
      • Places:
      • Current consulting clients
      • Online – wherever people hang out - Hypothesis from just 10 mins in the store: “Free me from the anxiety of wondering what to get my girlfriend so I can be an “impressive” romantic boyfriend” - Mailchimp: “Send better email. Sell more stuff”
      • Sell more stuff is the superpower - Magic words to use in your hypothesis
      • Give me
      • Help me
      • Free me
      • Make the
      • Take away the
      • Equip me to - Help me [with this obstacle] so I can [achieve this dream]
    1. Create a TINY product to test your hypothesis
      • Becoming a theme at MicroConf this year!
      • Don’t go out to prove it. Go out to disprove it
      • Put something out into the world, and see if you can get conversion (dollars or email addresses)
      • Ideas
      • Workshop (online or in-person)
        • Start with this
          • Almost every human struggle can be solved manually, through teaching
        • Example: Basecamp
          • Started in 2003 doing workshops. Before they launched Basecamp
  • If you can’t get five people to show up at a workshop, how are you going to get hundreds to sign up for a software product?

          • I like doing local workshops - I want you to feel the struggles - Want you to feel the pain of no one showing up! You’re not failing enough
            • What you learn:
              • How hard is it to find customers?
              • Did I hit a nerve? Identify their #1 struggle?
              • How hard is it to get people to pay?
              • How satisfied are people?
              • Do I like them?
            1. If it works, iterate
              • E.g. Excel sheet $19 → web app
      • Principles
          1. Your personal context is important
            • Family situation
            • Career experience
            • Financial situation
            • Personality type
            • Skills and expertise
            • Personal health
          1. Where you’re at now will determine what type of product you launch. That’s OK.
            • People who stand still don’t make progress
            • Nothing happens from the sidelines
            • You gotta be in motion
            • You have to DO STUFF
            • The only reason I’ve had success – I’m stupid enough to do stuff, and tell people. Do stuff, tell people.
          1. Choose your market carefully
            • Everything starts with the group you want to serve
          1. People use products for one reason only:
            • To make their lives better.
            • If you can put something in the world that does this, people will pay you for it
  • Q&A
    • “Is the “mi” in “@mijustin”: Iron Maiden backwards?”
      • People have had a loottt of guesses. I used to work for a company called Mailout Interactive. When I started on Twitter, I thought I’d only be tweeting stuff for them
    • “Do you agree with @patio11’s advice of don’t start a software product first?”
      • Yep. That advice of start small is spot on.
      • Put on a local event that scares you.
      • I did one in Vegas: 2 people showed up. IT’S BETTER FOR YOU TO TRY THINGS AND FAIL, THAN TO SIT ON THE SIDELINES NOT DOING ANYTHIN
    • “Where do you suggest people get started with workshops?”
      • Crowdcast is a good tool for it.
      • I just use YouTube live events. Create, set to unlisted, send out a link, people can book, then I send them the unlisted link. Sat morning, 10-11. 45mins presenting. 15mins questions. After – send them link to the YouTube video.
    • “Did you have slides prepared for the workshop?”
      • Yeah. I’ll have slides. On YouTube you can share your screen, and I’ll intersperse that to moments where I wanna be a human being they can see
      • Paul Jarvis does them with just slides
      • I just follow a slide deck. And the deck becomes another resource / asset
    • “I love interacting with people, talking with them. But on the internet I’m pretty scared to expose my identity, to put stuff out there”
      • To be honest, that’s the one disadvantage. Books and courses are personality based businesses, usually.
      • A few ideas: you can still run a local workshop and get a ton of ideas. Figure out their struggles. There’s ways to be anonymous online… you can focus on SEO… Workshops – you’re getting together with 5 people in a coffee shop, you’re not building a big public brand. Meetup.com. Observe the problems, offer something technical. Or team up with a bigger personality

👈 Back to all MicroConf 2017 talks