Shipping 10x faster
What’s your excuse for not shipping as much and as fast?
Pieter makes millions in annual revenue already, yet still ships new products like crazy.
I see this.
I look at my 1 project I shipped in the past 2 years.
I shake my head.
What’s my excuse for not shipping as much and as fast?
I gotta ship way more.
Need to find a way to 10x my rate of putting more buy buttons on the internet!
Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more.
Sure, I recognise that as a newish dad, with consulting and all, I got the odds stacked against me to be that productive. Some have said, yeah he has no kids, that’s why. I should enjoy my kid and family and just take the hit and accept and be contented that I will be slow(er).
Realistically speaking, I ‘should’.
But why should I?
Why should I surrender to the situation, just because?
Yeah priority is definitely family for me, but I sure will work darn hard to not have to feel like I have to trade off between them. It doesn’t have to. I want both. I’m trying to go for both now. It’s harder, but not impossible. Just got to be smarter about time! I don’t have the luxury of time, so I got to prioritise and timebox my new products to a level of obsession – can’t just let it happen.
To ship fast I also got to set up the stack and systems that help me get from idea to launch in 1-2 weeks. Every fast shipper I know has that stack they just use over and over. I don’t have that yet. I need a stack and a SaaS boilerplate. That’s something I need to fix/setup soon if I want to ship as fast!
Case in point: I have a system set up for my Carrd plugins already. I know what I have to do every month to continue shipping on my 1 plugin per month pace. I know which stack and tools to use, which channels to launch to. And that got me shipping consistently, leading to 12 plugins in 12 months last year.
Similarly, I might have a rough set up ready for directory info products, via Lists Kit. With the HTML boilerplate, I can set up a new directory in a day. Launching it in the right channels is harder, as it depends on niche.
So it can be done! It’s 100% possible! I can do this too for SaaS and other products. I just need:
an opinionated system for SaaS
strong intention for prioritising
a commitment to a shipping pace/schedule
ruthless time organisation to keep MVPs small
What else do I need?
I asked the question on Twitter to crowdsource more tips and hacks. Summed it up:
Some indication of product-market fit. Because why build it if you don’t know if there’s potential for success? This could be say, a validated product in a saturated market. Or there’s paying customers. Some form of keyword/customer research is helpful. Been wanting to not mess around with building something unique and instead just build something in a saturated market and validated product… simpler.
Preferred/familiar tech stack. A starter app or boilerplate that gets you 90% of the way.
Preset workflows/processes for the whole process.
An undisturbed block of time. I see this as timeboxing the effort to a predetermined window of time, say 1-2 weeks, and organising life and chores beforehand to have that focus.
Ruthlessly scoping a MVP small enough. A strong conviction to prioritising the single feature that truly matters to customers.
Commitment to launch deadline, and a shipping pace/schedule, and the smart organisation of time, effort and other life commitments around it.
A marketing stack would be helpful too. Places where you know you can launch to, or a community where customers hang out, or an existing audience.
Basic marketing materials, swipe files and established workflows to make open graph images, logos, web graphics, etc. Now I use DALLE to generate logos and web graphics, svgrepo for SVG icons, and Sketch to design anything else. What I lack is a good copywriting swipe file to get good conversion copy up fast. This usually takes longer than I realise! I think copywriting frameworks like Pain-Agitate-Solution is a good tool too.
Outsource some of the help. A virtual assistant to do the admin and time-consuming onerous stuff, or a customer support assistant.
What else do I need?
Great read, Jason! I can relate to the time constraing managing family, work and indie hacking at the same time. Looking forward to see how you build your ship-system!