Sleep Shifu

Some lessons are learned the hard way.

Cash flowing ad spend to scale a product without product market fit is one of those lessons.

I THOUGHT I had a great idea.

I THOUGHT I could deliver on my promises.

I THOUGHT wrong...

The previous entire business model of Sleep Shifu was predicated on me creating expert level sleep education content that people were willing to pay for.

I know a lot about sleep, but I'm not the guy to deliver on that night after night.

I know that now.

But then, I thought I was greater than I was.

Like I said, a lesson learned the hard way.

The upside here is I now know where my strengths lie and I know my glaring weaknesses.

So how does this inform the future of Sleep Shifu?

Moving forward I'll seek to find product market fit more quickly.

My assumption for this iteration of Sleep Shifu is that there is plenty of sleep advice out there and there are certainly a lot of sleep products, apps, and methodologies out there. How do we, the sleepless, know what's best?

Sleep Shifu will operate as a crowdsourced curator of the most impactful products, apps, methodologies, and supplements. Pulling together user feedback on what's worked for them in 4 categories:

1. Hardware - physical products like beds, pillows, snoring devices, etc.
2. Software - apps
3. Mindware - the mental models/methodologies that impact our sleep performance (i.e. CBTi)
4. Earthware - supplements, diets, exercises, and all things natural that have a positive impact on sleep performance

The simple MVP will intake user opinion on products they like via a simple google form asking, "Which products has worked for you in each category?"

You can actually fill out the form here (it's anonymous) - https://forms.gle/7qAWv8MVHmdu5vAS8

Then I will manually rank and stack the products and curate them on the homepage of Sleep Shifu.

Later this can all be automated, but again... product market fit. Will people actually use and benefit from this?

So how will I get users interested and to know about Sleep Shifu and this curation concept?

Giveaways.

I'm currently running a giveaway for a Purple Pillow (one of my personal favorite). - https://sleepshifu.com/purple-pillow-giveaway/

After this I plan on leveraging connections in the sleep space to partner with sleep apps, products, courses, supplements, etc. to run giveaways that grow the Sleep Shifu list, give these partners exposure, and drive people to fill out their sleep google form.

I have many ideas how to monetize this concept in the future but for now just looking to start building the user base.

This concept fits my strengths of promotion and pulling together the best of people and things within a given space.

It shy's away from my weaknesses of needing to pump out new content frequently and playing an expert online.

Like the title says, it's a hard pivot to what I was doing before but I feel much better about the direction this is heading and the prospects of actually helping people to get better sleep.