Justin Jackson – The Freedom Ladder: Financial Independence through Products – MicroConf 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
    - Marketing for Developers (devmarketing.xyz)
      - Listened to people. Had a lot of people emailing me… “I built this app. How do I get customers?”
    - Tiny Marketing Wins
  - 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?
      - 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

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