As a community of mostly developers I see you guys focusing too much on adding features instead of focusing on the things that might get your side business grow.
Technician vs Entrepreneur mindset
Probably the #1 mistake covered in the E-myth a super influential book on how most small businesses fail is related to this mindset. The technician is defined by someone who is able to do the technical work, the same knowledge that got him to build the product but won’t get them to sell it. The technician subconsciously keeps focusing on more technical work (what comes more natural to him) that might mean fixing some bugs, doing some support work, adding more features instead of the other tasks that might generate more revenue.
The entrepreneur, on the other hand, focuses on promoting and selling the product he believes is already good enough to be sold and with that approach is focuses 80% of his time growing the business and 20% on improving it (not the other way around).
How can I avoid this trap?
This is something anyone technical will struggle with (I definitely have this problem too) and will have to keep themselves in check, here is what I do (learned from a lot of other entrepreneurs):
- Divide the day into profit vs non-profit tasks.
- Divide those tasks into $10, $100, $1,000, $10,000 tasks to see what can get you the most impact and you can also see what you call delegate.
- Everyday track the task you have done + the results you got so you can learn what can be the most effective.
- Try to get big tasks with big impact done first instead of smaller ones that might seem simple but take up a lot of time and don’t get that much done.
HOW the F*CK does this apply to my website?
Great point, thought you wouldn’t ask! Just think about it, if you keep thinking and doing this as a technician how does that subconsciously affect the other are:
- It affects how you describe and sell the business (features vs benefits)
- What you end up displaying on the website as you might not end up putting the points and the website that might convince people to buy.
- The feedback you ask for, instead of asking what features they want in the future, understanding why they bought and what really can serve them better so you can also use that to target new customers and update the website to translate that.
- Because you love adding features you mind end up fall in love with them and remove a bit too much of the outside validation the product still needs.
Features vs Benefits
People don’t want to buy a product full of features they want to get the RIGHT features so they can get the RIGHT benefits for them and that’s what they really want to buy.
Examples of benefits worth paying for (benefit and the features to get there):
- Less stress - achieved through simplicity, automation of tasks, better management and so on...
- Reduced costs - achieved through optimization, automation, better inventory management, fewer employees needed and so on...
- Increased revenue - achieved through letting them learn about their customers, optimize their sales process, improve CR’s, get more traffic and so on…
How to get this right
The easiest way would be to showcase a benefit and then explaining how the product/service can get them there, here is a great example from Twist that explains they are a remote team and know what they need to solve problems other messaging apps for teams don’t solve.
Pssht…Hungry for more?👇
This article was a deep dive on one of my weekly snippets where I get you actionable things to try and learn so you can get better results.
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Let me know your thoughts below 👇
I definitely struggle with this too and I am sure a lot of you can relate, feel free to add your questions and or feedback in the comments so you can help each other out!
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