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What is the one thing that you want to start doing, but still aren't doing?

There are these 'right' things to do, that we know we need to do, we want to do, but still aren't doing.

I want to write about what to do in situations like this, and I would appreciate if you can share any examples of your own, so that I can make my write-up more specific and practical.

#ask-ih

  1. 6

    Spending money to make more money.

    This is something everyone has to do eventually — there’s simply no other way in business. Spend some to earn some. And yet I’m still hesitant to pay for ads, pay for external help, pay for design assets…

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      It's a mental hump to get over but its difficult. If there is something that is out of my core competency, I look to just purchase or pay someone to do it. My nights and weekends are when I work on my side-projects and that time is limited, so paying for something that can give me time to work on things I'm good at and can do on my own is totally worth it.

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      Thanks, Paul.

      Can I clarify, in such situations, when there is something that you can pay for in order to make more money, how clear are the exact steps to pay (for example, whom you should pay)?

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        P.S. I live in a culture (an ex-USSR country) where money is considered valuable but time not so much. Hence I’m more comfortable with doing as much as possible myself (e.g., making artwork even if it takes forever) but not subcontracting. Cannot help this, it’s a part of deep carved mentality.

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          I'm also from Ukraine so I know what you mean :)

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        Good question. I think, most of the time this is about investing money into something that may or may not work, e.g. buying ads from FB/Google. I’m not sure whether that will have good ROI or I’ll just waste money.

        Paying a developer to port my app to another platform is mentally more easy, because I am almost 100% certain that’ll pay off.

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          So it sounds when the benefits are clear it's easier to pay others and when there is uncertainty about whether it is going to pay out you find it hard to pay others. Is that the case?

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      This comment was deleted 5 years ago.

  2. 2

    Gathering validation input. I was asking on here...
    https://www.indiehackers.com/QuaffAPint/post/fb6a09ded2
    ...but really just need to start reaching out cold to people who are just starting saas sites to get their input. It's a tough thing to do. Even though I'm just asking for their thoughts and not selling anything I don't want to sound spammy.

    P.S. I visited Prague a couple years back. What an amazing place. I'm very jealous. I like where I live, but it's pretty a pretty boring place in comparison.

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      Thanks for the example. Can I ask what kind of results reaching out cold to people will give you, both right away after reaching out and in the long run?

      Prague is beautiful, especially now. I've relocated here fairly recently, a year and a half ago, and I enjoy living here a lot. If you decide to travel here again we can have a beer :)

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        It's not the 'reaching old cold' part that adds value. I just need more information from people from different aspects. What I'm offering you can look at from a few different avenues like saving time, providing something they might not have the knowledge to do right now, or offer a feature they might find valuable for other reasons.
        I need to be able to reach these separate groups of people and just share a few quick chats/emails to see what their thoughts are from their perspectives.
        The challenge is finding and reaching out to these people that would be willing to answer these few questions.

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          And what is challenging about finding and reaching these people?

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            The challenge is figuring out where they are and how to contact them. There's indiehackers and producthunt/etc, but what about others who are less dev (or really just more willing to see the value in paying vs taking the time out do it themselves).

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              I'm probably asking too many questions, but I'm wondering, do you know how would your ideal process of getting validation inputs from these people look like?

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                I'm happy to talk about this all you want (feel free to email me whenever through my profile).
                I have a cold 'email/dm/etc' message that I'll be sending out just as a hello to get a chance to ask them how they did their process. So then I can group them into 'saving time', 'lacking knowledge', or 'missing feature' groups and ask how they did or plan to do it and would they pay for a solution that did it for them.

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                  We can have a conversation about this later this week if you want.

  3. 2

    Prioritizing my actions and weekly planning. My job is literally to teach enterprises how to prioritize and work through a backlog, but I suck at it myself. I know all the things, but don't do them myself. I suspect a big reason is I'm too comfortable in my day job to feel the pressure to really work hard on side project stuff, but I'm not 100% confident that's the reason for my nonsense.

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      Thanks for sharing, Andrew. One of the reasons the change is not happening is the discomfort with the current situation doesn't outweigh the mental or monetary costs of change.

      If that's the case, the potential solution might be to 'increase' dissatisfaction with the current situation (sometimes, just focusing of what would happen long-term if one doesn't take the steps might be enough) or building the vision of the new desirable state.

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    Self-promotion. I used to find this stuff easy, but my mindset on social media and self-promotion changed about 2 years ago and I struggle with it now. Promoting a client? No problem. My own blog post? Major roadblock. I think it's a case of anxiety, overthinking, and fear of rejection, but I'd love to hear strategies on how others overcome it on a regular basis.

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      Great example, thanks Joel. You've mentioned anxiety and overthinking, and depending on how intense are these, the framework I will write about might not work.

      It would be interesting to hear from you afterward and if needed I would be able to suggest some alternatives then.

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