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24 Comments

**Tuesday Edition: Daily Stand Up!**

Tuesday Edition: Daily Stand Up!

#daily-stand-up

Why?

That extra nudge of accountability to achieve even a small step on your IH journey each day.

To join in:

01 Share your epic (a big chunk of work with a meaty objective) you'd like to complete by the end of February.

02 Share what you accomplished yesterday.

03 Share what you commit to accomplishing today.

04 Comment on at least one fellow hacker's progress and give them an IH Point for their check in.

Optional:

05 Share your Work In Progress to underscore your accomplishments.

Then tune in the tomorrow to share how you did on your own tasks!

on February 26, 2019
  1. 5

    Turns out scheduling client calls is less predictable than a checklist might suggest, this is gonna be about regular contact that drip feeds clients until they hit me with a request.

    EPIC
    [Project]Q1 AutomatedApi in alpha
    [Personal/Professional] Feb/Mar >50% income replaced with freelance work that leverages AutomatedApi

    YESTERDAY

    • [Project] Project board reoriented. I think I've found a way to prioritize the input pipeline and generated code retention and download. Client download of code is something I'd planned as a later feature.
    • [Agency] Submit 2 more work proposals, this is far simpler than I feared it might be. Probably helps that I've got in demand skills so I can be picky in what I bid on. Helps me to stay authentic and be enthusiastic in a bid.
    • [Agency] Go through 1 client call. Call complete, went very well. Expecting to get work details from client for a short term contract that is already likely to lead to more work thereafter.
    • BONUS : Also had contact from a local newspaper, they have reach in an industry that was my bread and butter for years, so that could be lucrative.

    TODAY

    • [Agency] Schedule one client call. This is going to turn into a dripfeed target I think, so might not be suitable for a daily goal at the moment. Gonna try leaving it here for a couple days to see how it feels.
    • [Project] Break out service creation to generate archivable folders that aren't reused for service deployments.

    KUDOS
    @marianneciara - welcome to the best show in town :) Can't wait to see what your're building.

    WIP
    AutomatedApi.com
    [also a pending consulting oriented personal page redesign]

    1. 1

      Thanks for the warm welcome! I look forward to following your projects as well :)

  2. 5

    EPIC

    [2019] 24 Product challenge

    [Product] Launch Markdown beta (Feb)

    [Product] Launch Investor Intelligence (Feb)

    I'm actively shipping products to find traction, fit and affinity. So far it's been a win. Each of the 4 I've released to date has been top #1 or top #2 PH of the day!

    YESTERDAY

    Prepare PH launch for tomorrow, hopeful for Product of the day

    Moved launch to Wednesday, got surprised one of my team members is back to NYC from India! s/o Santhosh!

    ~Write an article for PushToStart blog~

    ~Code payment workflow for I.I. project~

    TODAY

    • Call/email most active users on my https://slides.ai project, get feedback. Current MRR is $650, want to get to $700. Project is only few weeks old.

    • Prep monthly newsletter

    • Read and edit submissions made to my blog

    Thanks again!

    1. 2

      Congrats on that awesome MMR! What techniques did you use to capture your first sales?

      1. 1

        I've built a LOT of products over the years. Customers create success, features kill it. When I stopped focusing on my great ideas and more on customers understanding of the value I was presenting it began creating revs.

        In the case of slides... we launched on PH with a digital street team. The street team crew was extremely crucial in helping with the launch. That drove amazing traffic. By landing #1 product of the day, you end up getting even more traffic on the following days as other independent sites cover your PH success.

        Further PH features you in their daily newsletter which brings more traffic to your page. Even after launch day, we continue campaigning to get votes on PH because there are more traffic surges and cross-marketing opportunities for the product of the week and product of the day. Those spikes improve your discovery surface.

        While we're live we use intercom to connect directly with our audience. We try to get as much feedback as we can. While PH traffic is very positive and motivating it can be a false positive. So we took the most common themes customers were saying to us (which was notably different than our perspective of value) and crafted a sticky headline to post on HN on day 2 or 3 depending on day of week to Hacker News, if you know how to use it can be INSANELY GOOD for launch traffic.

        With HN it's all about quality and karma and knowing the right story prefix to use. HN drove is 2000 people in a few short hours. Unlike PH, HN's comments are very strongly opinionated. However, there is revenue on the other side if the value in your product is very clear.

        Early into the second week after launch, betalist and betapage are also good resources. We publish there because it continues this wave of traffic.

        Having top positions on these launch sites since Jan 2019 have personally driven 13k on the low side and 30k on the higher side of users.

        Transactional email is important. If you can't automate it, please don't bypass it. We get notifications on slack for every sign up and copy the email address and manually write personal follow up for users. We learn things, look to help users and try to deliver the best customer experience.

        Twitter DM's are your friend. It really does go down in the DM. 😉

        Don't downplay SEO/SEM. Take real backlinks seriously. Publish thoughtfully on sites and track your backlinks and domain authority with ahrefs. It's an amazing tool. Use google search console. Your best users are going to come from search. Those are peoeple looking for you!

        @Harlem -- I should have TL;DR'd this reply 😉and to think, I've had medium-writers-block. Couldn't think of any good stories. Perhaps I turn this into my next medium post! Thanks for that!

  3. 4

    2019 Goals for Magnus Rush

    • 50 Augmented Podcasts: (0/50)
    • 12k MAU for the App: (0/12k)

    February Epics

    • SaaS Beta signups: (10 of 5) (200%)
    • Mobile App Beta signups: (35 of 25) (136%)
    • Prepare for beta launch: 100% complete

    Yesterday

    • Day job
    • Kept my paws off the mobile app, went through some logs for new user activity instead, all looking OK functionally from what I can see
    • Took note that a competitor went through the app pretty thoroughly
    • Created new Epics and began to organize tasks for public launch
    • Identified a couple things I still need to do before launching the SaaS beta

    Today

    • Make minor change to signup page

    Kudos
    @RyanHickman and @marianneciara joining the madness

    WIP
    https://magnusrush.com/beta

    1. 1

      How did you know that a competitor checked out your app?

      1. 1

        When I posted an article about my project on Medium, their CEO put the link in the company Slack channel. Their product guy reached out and also signed up for the beta. I only have a small number of users and was up late working on the server when he came through. I track everything

  4. 4

    01: EPIC
    Design, build and deploy a small ES6 web app which helps small business owners and start-ups to respond to support queries.

    02: YESTERDAY
    Yesterday I laid out the objectives of the project, the basic functionality required for MVP, jotted down possible future implementations, started mapping out data so that I can go into the design phase with a realistic idea of the app's architecture.

    03: TODAY
    Research similar web apps for UX and design inspiration. Design at least two concepts in Sketch.

    1. 1

      Ooh. Is this a help desk of sorts? What will be your differentiator?

      1. 1

        Unfortunately it's a lot simpler than that! It's basically a tiny web app that gathers a little information from the user about their customer enquiry and helps them structure an email based off of that information. Essentially it's a pet project to practice my ES6 skills, get a real-world web app out there and hopefully offer a little bit of help to business owners who struggle with customer support along the way :)

  5. 4

    EPIC

    By end of 2019:

    100 paying customers. 5 earned to date.

    Still trying on for size. This definitely makes more instinctual sense given the lifestyle I'd like to achieve by February 2020.

    5K MMR

    By end of February:

    * 50 qualitative first chapters published by women. 19/50
    * 25 submissions and/or third chapters written. 9/25

    Still trying on for size. Have added metrics so that these epics may be measured.

    • Determine whether I've identified a problem worth solving.

    The average CTR for e-commerce is 2.69%. I'll consider anything above a win.

    • Determine whether I can rally the resources necessary to gain SEO prominence, thereby negating the need for paid advertising.

    To generate consistent content, I need buy in from 15 influencers per month. Thus far, I've 5.

    • Determine the requirements necessary to achieve 5K MMR.

    I'll figure out the math this evening. And determine whether such is achievable within a year.

    YESTERDAY

    • Started buildout for landing page #2 (desktop).
    • Created social accounts (IG, FB, Twitter, YouTube and Pinterest).
    • Researched best tools for social automation. (Went with Buffer and a plan to re-post blog posts in each realm. )
    • Determined categories and tags based upon SEO.
    • Reached out to influencers.
    • Determined my first 20 posts.

    TODAY

    • Determine requirements necessary to achieve 5K MMR.
    • Optimize landing page #1 for mobile.
    • Complete buildout for landing page #2 (desktop).
    • Reach out to influencers.
    • Develop template #1 for posts.

    KUDOS: Shout out to @RyanHickman for joining the stand up party!

    WIP: Happy Endings The strike-through hurts less than I thought.

    1. 3

      Kudos to you for keeping this going! I've enjoyed reading it for a while now! Excited to start participating a little more.

      1. 1

        Most excellent! I look forward to your updates!

    2. 3

      Checked out your WIP, love how clean and sleek the site feels. The name is genius of course. It sounds like you know your way around marketing it as well and are very methodical in your approach. Looking forward to following your progress!

      1. 1

        Thanks, Maria! And I'm excited you've joined the start-up party! Welcome

      1. 1

        I've seen 'em. They've done a brilliant job of PR! I look forward to following their progress! (Thanks for thinking of me!)

  6. 3

    EPIC
    Get a good chunk of droppingcoin.com user/site management built for new user registration and configuration.

    Yesterday
    New tweaking of the landing page and connection to MailChimp for pre-launch e-mail list.

    Today
    Finish up tweaking of landing page and get back to EPIC.

    Work In Progress
    Continue work on building out the MVP for DroppingCoin.com.

  7. 3

    01: EPIC

    By the end of Feb:
    Get feedback from at least one potential user (preferably from a larger org)
    (feel free to reach out if you're interested in the world of Technical Debt/TODOs/Agile stuff)

    02: YESTERDAY

    Added Google Analytics, and put polish on a few things, created a demo user and set up some data to let people get the basic idea without linking their own Github Account.

    03: TODAY

    • Continue to reach out to potential customers on LinkedIn/Email.
    • Maybe add a FAQ to the bottom of the landing page? It feels like it's missing something

    WIP: https://todotracker.io - Any feedback is greatly appreciated!

    1. 1

      I'll be honest, when I saw another todo app, I was skeptical. But I love the idea that you're attacking technical debt! That's definitely a unique take. I think you should change your branding to reflect such. And two, do a better job of explaining how you track and quantify such. I wasn't able to gather such from your ATF content/

      1. 1

        Thanks! I've been working to try and find the middle ground between simple/clean and tells you everything you want to know, and it's definitely been a challenge. This is something I really want to nail before showing it to more potential customers!

  8. 1

    01 - By end of Feb 2019, I'd like to complete 1 Technical TODO, 1 new feature, and 1 Marketing TODO.
    02 - Today, I submitted orders for ad images for a Facebook ad A/B test, using Fiverr.
    03 - Tomorrow, I will run the Facebook ad A/B test.
    04 - @jpusateri - very cool product, liking your agency/client calls approach
    05 - WIP - https://simplepay.link

    1. 1

      thanks :) I'm pretty proud of what dev I've accomplished on that.
      I'm always iterating on my task organization, I'm particularly enjoying that separation too. I find my mornings are better for code and after work hours are easier for me to do emails and customer contact in. That separation is helping me prioritize better.