Sharescription
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150 hours later…we make our first sale.
My 2021 resolution was to only test ideas that people could pay us with a credit card. No complex business models. Test ideas at light speed. Test if people will hand over their credit card for a simple product or service.
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140 hours later
My family left me alone 11 days ago when they went to Grandma’s house. I have spent every waking moment since building two marketplaces. For the first 5 days, I built the foundation for Giveback Coffee from scratch. Then on day 6 I switched gears and cloned the shop code to build Ver. 0.3 of Sharescription. Moments ago I switched off PayPal Sandbox and its live. Let’s see where this little Sharescription experiment takes us.
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Sharescription Rejected by Betalist 😥
I’m surprised and disappointed. I emailed betalist this morning to know what I need to fix to get accepted. Developing…
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Just posted Sharescription on Reddit (or anywhere) for the first time🍾
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Facebook could be my one-stop launch shop
I spent a few hours last Friday updating old Facebook pages. Facebook allowed me to change the name on two. So I converted one page of a product I launched years ago into a page for this blog. I changed the name of another with the hopes to merge it with that Blog Facebook page. I’ll know by the end of the week if I was approved.
I then connected the blog page to personal Instagram so I can get more insights into my Instagram posts. I love the way brands are selling on Instagram. Having a professional Instagram page will allow me to open a store. I need to learn how to sell products for another project. I also connected that page to WhatsApp. I know nothing about what you can do with WhatsApp so I thought I would learn.
There is a lot to learn on the Facebook business portal too. I added a Facebook pixel to this blog to learn how their analytics works. I think you can use this to advertise to people like those who visit your site. Insights should give me an understanding of what our audience looks like.
In the spirit of restrictions and not using new software, I will also use Pages to get user feedback.
I am excited to finally take advantage of Facebook’s power. It’s possible that Facebook could be the one-stop-shop for launching, validating, and scaling an idea.
UPDATE: If I’m learning to make a Facebook Hub, why not add messenger chat to this blog, right?
UPDATE II: Merge was approved!
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The fear of people calling me out
I wanted to launch all in the family before New Years’ Eve, but I was being crazy insane. You know, like someone, who never followed through with a diet who says they are going to lose 50 pounds in 30 days. I am on track to launch on ProductHunt next week. Three weeks to launch a product is Bizzaro for me, considering I’ve not launched a product after 15 months.
I can speak in front of thousands of people with no problem, but struggle to put my work out there.
It wasn’t me who launched HeyRide, it was my partner Dennis. He got so fed up with me that he said, “Anthony on Product Hunt.” I gave him my usual bullshit excuses of why we shouldn’t do it. It’s not ready. Someone will steal our idea. We’re only in Berlin, let’s not launch worldwide. Pathetic.
This year I’m trying to redeeming myself from past failed launches. I’m learning how to quiet the lizard brain. Learning how to embrace vulnerability. Learning to live with the fear of people calling me out.
Learning how to quiet the lizard brain. -
Use what you have
Yesterday I bought the domain for the “all in the family” project. Now I need to set up our email for my partner and me.
Last year, I bought additional licenses and force people to use Microsoft Office. I had to write a blog post to help our sales guys connect Outlook to HubSpot. What a waste of time, especially since the product we sold was wrong. 2020, so many hard lessons.
But not in 2021. We use what we have. I will only consider using new software when what we have doesn’t work anymore.
Look, I don’t know if this is the right more, but the restrictions and doing less could reduce the pain of failure. Also, doing less cuts down on my tendency to feel good doing busy work.
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Working on Product Hunt Post first.
Instead of spending the day working on the website and app of the idea, I focused all of my attention on writing the product hunt post. Validating the concept is more important to me than getting the solution right. If the idea is a product people want, I will have no problem building the solution.
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Just launch it.
I have an idea. I want to put it on Product Hunt to see if it has legs. Something is blocking me from doing it. Whatever that thing inside of me that stopping me has robbed me much happiness in my life.
Fuck it. I’m going spend 3 days on this idea and launch it on Wednesday.
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UPDATED: All in the Family
I’ve had an idea for a service/product in the back of my head for years. Over the weekend I spoke with an old friend of mine who needed such a service. Today I’m going to build a website and test the idea over the weekend.
UPDATE: I do believe in my idea. After asking myself tons of questions I’ve felt this would gain more traction if focused in one vertical. There are better verticals than mobility for this, but that is where I have the biggest reach.
