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Friday Edition: Daily Stand Up!

It's Friday, baby!

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 April.

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!

#daily-stand-up

  1. 4

    Feels like it's been forever since I read or posted :(

    EPIC:

    By end of April:

    • Continue push to get out of beta.
    • More blog posts.

    Past however many days:

    • Released start/due/complete dates + time est (helped me quantify the beta tasks!). Comment edit/deletes.
    • Added small, atomic writes to API.
    • Worked on telling beta testers in-app when new features have been released so they can reload.
    • Added estimates for all of my beta tasks!

    Next few days:

    • Powering through the out-of-beta list. Going to use my time estimates to quantify this and track progress :)
    • Doing some work on my beta tester's app.
    • Beta List rejected me. Again. :'( A friend said he has a contact and he's going to try to find out why.

    WIP: https://brisaboards.com/

    1. 1

      Yeah it does! Where the hell have you been?

  2. 3

    End of April goal: 15 users (at 7 right now)
    Yesterday (and the day before, since they kind of melted together):

    • lots of driving hither and yon, talking to folks about customer acquisition strategies
    • got some good idea validation on a gimmick I'm planning on doing, among other things
    • had a great meeting with a potential partner for whom we'd be doing the software/management layer on top of their bulk computing hardware and nailed down some good next steps.
    • did some contacting sales leads, though not enough

    Today:

    Kudos to @mikefogg for doing customer research!

    WIP Sunshower.io

    1. 1

      Great job talking with customers. Any feedback you didn't expect?

      1. 1

        Not that we didn't expect, I'd say. We know that things still have plenty of rough edges (part of why we're doing it for free right now). However far you think you need to take the application for it to be usable, the answer is basically always take it further. 😂

  3. 3

    Happy Friday everybody!

    EPIC: Learn more about my current & potential customers :)

    Yesterday (and most of March):
    I just recently (last night around midnight haha) pushed out the new version of Applight.io that I've been working on since I quit my job in March.

    • New drag & drop builder
    • New pricing (monthly and annual)
    • New landing page

    Today (and all of April):

    • Switching to marketing mode fully. As a single founder it was tough to really focus on both at the same time, so April will be mainly focused on marketing and talking to customers & potential customers (...and bug fixes)
    • SEO
    • Performance (mainly as it relates to SEO)

    Any marketing tips are greatly appreciated :)

    Goals (by the end of April):

    • 10 paying customers
    • 5 Mobile App Growth blog posts

    WIP (Always): Applight.io

    Thanks for doing the daily standup @Harlem! Love popping in here and seeing what people are working on :)

    1. 1

      Welcome to the stand up party, @mikefogg! Love the name AppLight! (Well done!) Why did you niche down to app landing pages and what will you other that the other landing page "generators" don't?

      1. 1

        Thanks @Harlem! Took a while (and about 5 domain purchases) to settle on a name that finally fit :) Seems to be the way that always works for me... haha

        The Why question is a fun one! The short answer is that landing pages for mobile apps is a starting point that solves a problem I know exists. Tons (i mean tons) of solutions exist to the problem of quick landing pages, but as a mobile developer myself I found none really were able to make my experience so easy that I could get back to focusing on my app (and/or battling with Apple about why they’ve rejected it haha, which is more accurately where iOS devs spend their time).

        By focusing on this specific niche and making a commitment to learning everything I can about what will help mobile developers like myself and not branching into being “just another landing page creator”, I’m hoping to build a product that solves their (and my) problems with mobile app growth.

        Mobile marketing is an interesting space and soo many developers are missing out on traffic generated via the web and rely solely on app store search. I’m hoping some of the mobile-app-specific features I have in the pipeline will help them capitalize on more people looking for their apps!

        To build a better set of tools I need to talk to more developers. Landing pages are a way to get people in that I can talk to.

        So here’s to talking to more people in April!

  4. 3

    EPIC

    1. 2019
      • $50K annual revenue
    2. April
      • Get a remote sales job. 0/6 - interviews/apps
      • Do 10 customer interviews. 2/10 - interviews/requests

    YESTERDAY

    • Enjoyed my birthday 🎂 w/ mom & family. 1st vacation day in a very long time.
    • Reply to 3 customer research leads in 30 mins before my computer shut down. 😉

    TODAY

    1. Do a customer interview.
    2. Do a little misc catch-up.

    KUDOS
    Welcome back @AndrewV! Keep pushing through to find your tribe and the right problem to solve.

    WIP Mindful

    side note
    Thanks, @harlem, @jt, @RyanHickman, and everyone for all the birthday wishes. I having a ball hanging and relaxing with family. Also, it feels good to make my mom smile and not worry about me. 😉 Her health could be better but we're grateful for these moments.

  5. 3

    EPIC

    By end of May (launch):

    • Launch course
    • Make $10k+ in (pre)launch sales
    • Have 1000+ people on the prelaunch list

    By end of April:

    • Complete the first, live version of the course (with 7 participants) successfully*

    • Record 10 interviews with amazing founders/salespeople (5 confirmed, 2 already done)

    • Have 500+ people sign up for the prelaunch list (currently at ~50 but haven't pushed it yet at all)

    \*Successful completion of the live course would mean a) all participants are happy, and b) I learn exactly which bits of sales founders struggle with when they're starting out

    YESTERDAY:

    • Finish editing interview with Stephanie Hurlburt and put it live || DONE
    • 2 one-on-one calls with participants in the live version of the course || DONE

    TODAY:

    • 1 one-on-one call with a live-course participant
    • Share Stephanie Hurlburt interview
    • Plan for next week's webinar for the live course
    • Write a blog post on one of the main struggles I've noticed from the live course participants...

    KUDOS: @Harlem for keeping this going! (Wooo two day streak :P )

    WIP: SalesForFounders.com

    1. 2

      Sounds interesting - sales is obviously hard for us techies!

      Note: After the newsletter signup, there's no way to close the popup :)

      1. 2

        Thanks Andrew!

        I don't think sales is harder for developers - we just have more options available to us so there's more opportunity for mistakes.

        What would you say your biggest challenge is right now?

        Note: After the newsletter signup, there's no way to close the popup :)

        Thanks for catching that. Which popup is this?

        I'll look into it either way - thanks! :)

        1. 3

          Popup isn't the right word. The sort of perma-footer at the bottom. I signed up and then it had a sort of "Thank you" at the bottom that I couldn't dismiss. Not a big deal.

          My biggest challenge? I guess part is I'm not sure haha. I guess answering the question "How do sales people start?" Is it cold emails? Posts on popular forums? Where do they go to grow lists? Is there a simple formula I can follow?

          In addition to the usual "When is my product ready for someone to use?" "Is it good enough?" etc :)

          1. 1

            ok thanks - will check that out.

            Great answers, thanks for taking the time. Those questions have already come up a lot and I'm putting some pretty good answers together now ;)

  6. 3

    EPIC

    By end of 2019:

    5K MR

    By end of April:

    • Conduct 3 post experiments with a minimum CTR of 2.69% - First experiment: 6.15%
    • Double organic growth from 10 to 20 persons.
    • Double social growth from 49 to 98 persons.
    • Publish 15 articles - Planned: 2 of 15 | Written: 2 of 15 | Published: 2 of 15

    By end of week:

    • All posts migrated from WP to Gatsby - 11 of 15
    • 3 new articles published - 2 of 3

    YESTERDAY

    • Not much. Just lazed about.

    TODAY

    • Finish migration of how-to posts.
    • Customize page metadata.
    • Get started on Privacy policy.
    • Get started on 404 page.
    • Research schema.

    KUDOS: Happy birthday, @helengriffinjr!

    WIP: Jeanius

    1. 2

      Thanks, @Harlem Glad you got a chance to relax a bit yesterday too!

      Quick question. How much of a priority are your privacy policy and 404 pages that they have your attention at this stage? Are they so customer facing that they'll introduce leads and churn for your sales?

      1. 2

        404 pages... not much. But I hate sloppy experiences. (Plus, it's an opportunity to reinforce the tone of one's brand.) Privacy policy I need to make happen. Google is dinging sites that aren't doing right by their visitors.

        1. 1

          Regarding privacy, gotcha... def get Google off your back. But sloppy exp for 404 pages - I would rather just update links or redirects vs doing UI, UX for lower level pages esp when customers aren't opening their wallets yet*.

          • Take what I've said as a grain of salt - remember my black @$$ his job hunting - so "time x money = $$$" is all that I'm thinking about. lol ;-)
    2. 2

      Nice! I missed a bit. Hope gatsby is working out well :)

      1. 1

        It is. I'm soooooo glad I gave it a go. Still have tons to learn, but for now, I'm focusing on finishing the experiments.

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