This week I didn’t write a single line of code. It was not an easy task I admit. 😅 

Unfortunately, it was a non-work-related hectic week, so I did not do as much as I would have done.

Table of Contents

• Landing and video promo

• Initiatives prioritization

  • Talking to people

  • Finding leads

• Conclusion

• Appendix

  • Personal branding

    • X

    • Beehiiv newsletter

Landing and video promo

Having a landing cannot hurt right? So I spent half a day on it. Nothing fancy, but at least when talking to people when/if I reach the stage of being more concrete about the solution I have a cover to share.

In the 2 last weeks, I’ve been studying motion graphics, so I experimented once a gain to create a video presentation of HaveYouHeard. This time no more cringe vibes. 😂 

I’m quite satisfied with the outcome. It looks polished and semi-professional, but it took me 10+ hours to make. 🤯 

Initiatives prioritization

Talking to people

I could have most probably allocated those 10 hours differently. 😅 

The fact that it was interesting making it, doesn’t mean that it was the best next step at least in the current phase of HaveYouHeard.

I need to talk to more people.

Last week I reached out to 10 persons on LinkedIn for a discovery call, but nobody replied. Probably a cold outreach for a discovery call is even more annoying than a cold outreach for trying to sell a product. I guess it feels like a waste of time. 🤔 

I started reading “The Mom Test”. Wow.

Now it feels a bit like I was driving a car without a license. 🤣 

Yeah, it’s that good. I’d say it’s a must for everyone wishing to run a business. There are so many nuances that are being uncovered about how and why customers’ talks can go bad and how to fix them. I’m guilty of many of the mistakes outlined in that book:

• fear the rejection rate,

• biasing the potential customer by pitching the idea early on,

• fishing for validation rather than digging the truth,

• delegating the responsibility of judging if the current idea is good or not,

• etc.

I can continue with a very long list, just read the book. It’s being an eye-opener! Thanks to everyone who suggested it! ❤️ 

There’s an interesting section that suggests that not everything needs to be a meeting. Sometimes you can find your answers even with a casual chat. This also relates to how I reached people asking to schedule a discovery call. A call is a time commitment that not everyone wants to exchange without anything in return. But you might get your answers even without a meeting and by just reaching out and chatting more casually. Maybe after that people would be more willing to jump into a call.

I need to experiment more on this whole thing (how to avoid getting bad data from the conversations, how to get to the point of having conversations, etc.), but I’m optimistic. 💪 

Finding leads

From time to time, I bump into threads on X about people positively discussing marketing on Reddit. Those are definitely great leads to reach out!

These are the types of leads that I expect HaveYouHeard to find! 😍 

I tried using HaveYouHeard for NextCommit, but I need to do it more consistently. Dogfooding HYH will definitely give me more and more understanding about this marketing channel. The only reason why I’m still not doing it consistently is that I haven’t yet implemented the cron service that discovers the posts. 😂 

As a side effect, who knows if this could bring a spicier life to NextCommit.

I saw some success stories for using Reddit as a marketing channel, but I need to heavily experiment with it myself as well.

Conclusion

This was a short one, and it feels a bit more like a brain dump. 😅 

Lots of things to do, but this is how I’ll prioritize:

1. talk to as many people as I can to learn more,

2. reach out to those that seem already aligned with the current value proposition,

3. build what’s needed to start dogfooding (and onboarding users as part of the beta)

If you’re interested in following my journey, make sure to subscribe or follow me on X/Twitter and LinkedIn! 

Appendix

Personal branding

X

Beehiiv newsletter