Unoptimized People

Feeling unoptimized?
Feeling unproductive?
Feeling like you can do better?

That's okay.

And in fact that might be optimal. Wait, why?

We're all people here, except for a handful who seem like robots sent from the future they build and launch so fast.

And as people here, of all places, we're building businesses or products or projects. Or we're a part of a small team, or a big team.

In the end we're all working on trying to get profitable businesses.

We're all trying to become profitable people.

And honestly in 2020 the only way I made more money than I spent was by selling my business. Day to day the business operations were profitable but year over year I was not a profitable person.

My bank account was going down, down, down, down.

I turned my life around by selling an unoptimized business.

An unoptimized business is a buyable business.

Look, you're going to always have a long list of To-Do's.

Your list of To-Do's gets longer and longer as your list of "Done's" gets longer.

That list of To-Do's is an asset.

Nobody else, Nobody on the outside, knows what your business is like on the inside. Until we reveal it to them by building in public or doing an interview. And even then, they don't get the full picture. And that's what we want.

Businesses aren't sold...

They're bought.

And the reason someone buys your business is that they think they can make more money than they are spending on it.

So show them.

Share what they can do immediately to make money.

Chris of @KintuLabs is positioning Bitlist exactly this way.

"Buyer just needs to turn on Adwords 🤑"

This little sentence shares that he's got adwords turned off. He could turn it on, it's simple, but just not for him. It might be right for you.

I sold my newsletter last year to Nii and one of the reasons I sold it is because I could see it could be much much larger with someone else's growth tactics. I tried facebook ads, and they worked. But I need the month to month cash to stay alive. I couldn't really scale the ads. Nii is a PPC guy. He knows what to do.

I felt that was a good fit. But he bought it... I didn't "sell it". He bought it because the SEO was lacking (he knew what to do their) and the map had been drawn. He talks about that when we met on Newsletter Crew a few months after the acquisition. I'd recommend listening.

Selling a newsletter for 5-figures with Andrew Kamphey and Nii Ahene

I left a lot unoptimized. For months it felt like I was behind. For years even. I had too many plans to execute them all. And that turned into an asset for the next person to run the newsletter.

This isn't a plea to leave major opportunities untouched. Don't forgo SEO because you're just bad at it. Don't not do FB Ads because you can't figure it out.

Figure out how to start the engine.

You don't have to drive around the entire world.

We're builders, us Indiehackers, not drivers.

We can be unoptimized people.

That's okay.