Do you enjoy building products more than growing products?

I'm in a very similar boat. For the last 2 years I have been trying out many things and building multiple side projects. The initial excitation phase is always the best: you have many ideas how you could grow the project and how it might get big, you imagine all the features that you will code and how much fun it will be. But in reality, once you build the initial mvp that is actually usable, you need to spend much more time marketing it than you spent building it. And this is where most solopreneurs (including myself) fail. Building a project is fun, but growing it is harder than it looks at the first glance.

I prefer building products too.

It's probably because:

1. I have full control on the outcome.
2. I can immediately see the results, while in the growth process it takes days, weeks, and even months (SEO) to make progress.
3. Building has almost unlimited options, growing is more a consistent and systematic effort in leveraging the limited effective channels available. This is especially true when you have a limited marketing budget.

I think many makers do, as it's the more creative and learning step. Here's a thought - can we approach growth with the same creative mindset so we enjoy it more?

Wow, super interesting question and topic.

It's the same for me, I think that's the reason for my "failure" after 7 years in digital.
Let me explain:
I am able to create projects, ideas and bring them to a working MVP, I have never launched anything without going to profit.
The problem is that after that I stop, I don't grow the business and so it ends up that there is a great idea stopped there, I made 1k of profit and I do not continue...
I really like it but it's frustrating, because in the end you end up building a lot of things that work but you never "finish" one of them.

Yup that's me as well, although marketing and growth is a skillset just like dev. Given commitment and time you can get good at it. I'm always looking to partner or team-up with people who are builders. My project is https://www.onetapcheckin.com/

Bro..you sound like my twin brother...I absolutely do the same

Same here. Building something new is a fun adventure, maintaining something that's already built just feels like work :P once the novelty of a finished project fades it's hard to resist the urge to start something new.

Not really 😂

I'm far away from knowing definitively but I suspect I wouldn't enjoy scaling a service based on my last job, where we were building software for large corporations. I have little interest in exploring those kinds of challenges again, both technically and socially.

I'm about 6 months away from a saleable product, but my plan is to continue a slow bootstrap trajectory of getting enough customers to sustain myself minimally. Then continue to grow it over time, while building other services / products.

Once it gets to a certain scale where it's becoming a challenge to maintain and scale myself, I'll either choose to make some hires or start looking to sell. I'd rather let others do the work of scaling and focus my time on being a serial inventor who can execute to bring something people want to life.

Yup, I'm a maker. I have no clue about sales, marketing & growth. I love building, I'm good at it, I know how to execute it. Zero clue about growth, but on my recent project, the lack of knowledge is giving me anxiety and make the build process miserable. I know that if I build it, they won't come. So I'm going to have to focus on my weakness and solve the growth process.

No,
I'm good at building products
I'm bad at growing them

Therefore I tend toward the former than the latter. If you are in the same boat as me, realizing that there is a distinction between doing something because you're good at it / familiar with it, vs enjoying it more can probably help you grow.

Yes!!
All the way. I completely feel like this.

In fact, I have redesign mines a few times. Just for satisfaction and stay updated.

building.

I think this is the case for nearly everyone who has "maker" skills. This is because product building is a shorter loop between effort and reward than marketing or business building.

Marketing and business building require more patience and delayed gratification. It's riskier than simply building products.

I feel like I stick out a sore thumb here, because I prefer growing things 😅 I'm much better at hill climbing, iterating, and optimizing systems than I am creating a new one from scratch.

Yes ! I completly agree with you. I enjoy a lot building the product. Learning tons of new things, improving my skills, having new blog ideas. Instead of just wasting time behind Social Media or reading random stuffs.

Yes lol its fulfilling but definitely unfortunate for the pockets

I am the same as others here and love the idea and build phase so much - like really love it! ;-)

I am literally today finishing up the idea phase and will start plan/build tomorrow. And then aim to have it finished by end of next week.

Is there anybody who loves the growth bit and might want to help?

Yeah I think I can speak for others as a stereotypical dev focused guy who gets anxiety from all my marketing efforts and have to force myself to do it.

I do.

Building is fun. I’m a developer. So I love solving problems.

On the other hand, I’m a terrible marketer and hate doing it tbh.

That’s just what I have to live with. 🤷‍♂️

Yes, I am so bad with marketing, mainly just because I do not like it as much as building lol

Hello!

Sorry to come in here and pitch what we make, but this is really the problem we are trying to solve!

It's pretty common for people to love the building part - especially on Indie Hackers - we're a community of makers and builder at the end of the day.

I'm part of the GoSquared team and we are building up a set of tools (already there's live chat, automated messaging, analytics, and customer data) to help makers solve the 'growth' side of things easier and get back to building products.

I'd love for you to try it out and give us some feedback on whether it helps to make that growing side easier for you. Especially as you have the knowledge and the experience already -- what we've really tried to do is streamline the work to make it more of a 'well why not' than a 'woah this is a lot of effort and time'.

https://www.gosquared.com