Hey friend,

Turning a new chapter AKA, Monday has me feeling 50 shades of different.
What do I mean by different?

As determined as ever to my North Star. To support the Dreamers of this World in becoming Doers and kickstart their purpose-led entrepreneurial journeys.
To live masterfully, free, and bring their visions to life.

I’m sick and tired of playing the same games:

• business as usual

• weaponizing insecurities with marketing

• overriding autonomy and decision-making with sales

• chasing vanity metrics and perpetuating fear with social media content

• trading 9-5 corporate suits and despair for 9-9 startup flannel shirts and anxiety

After a week of hanging out and connecting with epic people offline and online. Skipping a beat with this “weekend weekly” newsletter and breaking my daily social media posting stride.

I feel lighter. More energized.

And ready to get back to work. So let’s talk shop.

In this edition, I want to address the big problem most startups and solo captains face when building digital products.

How am I even qualified to speak on this topic?
Let’s dive in and you’ll find out.

I recently talked with a developer friend about his LLM (Large Language Model, AKA AI) platform launch. The same applies to all digital products. And it’s why I decided to shift my strategy and create a service offer in March.

He said: “You’re risky man!”
I politely disagreed.
After saying sell first, build second.

Here’s the scoop:

Build it and they’ll come

I used to think the same way. Feeling like everything needs to be perfect before I start having conversations and moving pieces forward.

Thinking I need to (not in any particular order):

• have a perfect idea

• design the perfect logo

• build a perfect website

• come up with a catchy name

• hire a photographer for a photoshoot

• enroll in a PhD and research the thing to death

• spend weeks creating an elaborate marketing plan

• spend months developing the solution and (hopefully) customer journey

Guess what.

This is a surefire way to spend months (if not years) building something you have no clue if it is going to help anyone, including yourself and your bank account.

This is the riskiest approach to doing anything in life. It will cost you time and money.

Without any guarantee that your product/solution will launch successfully and continue to serve its intended purpose.

I get it. People generally fall into 2 categories:

• builders

• ambassadors

A tech developer is your modern-day stone mason. An Ambassador is your modern-day marketer/salesperson.

1 is focused on building a masterpiece. Sales and Marketing are an afterthought. You know, that soft skills thing I’ll pay affiliate marketers to do.

1 is a people’s person and social butterfly. They’re focused on building relationships and creating movements. You’ll hear them say, a bad product with great marketing/sales trumps a great product with lousy marketing/sales.

It’s a good thing that we’re holistic thinkers and see that both wings are what makes a bird fly.

While you’ll always benefit from focusing on your zone of genius and expertise, you’ll need to round out your perspective and strategy to thrive as an entrepreneur.

Don’t shoot first and ask questions later

Unless you’re the fastest gun in the West, bear with me on this analogy—Cringe or not.

“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”
- Henry Ford

Let’s back it up for a second.
Imagine you’re not Henry Ford or John Wayne.
Chances are you’re also not Noah. Unless you saw a flaming bush and it revealed the 10 commandments of a perfect launch strategy. (If that’s the case, do share).

Getting back on track.

What’s a better way of building and launching digital products?

Whether you’re a savvy developer or a seasoned salesperson.
Despite having built nothing before or already several months into your build process.

Sell first.
AKA, ask questions first.
Build (mostly) later.

If you haven’t built/launched/offered anything before, congratulations.
You’ve lost no time and are off to a well-thought-out start from day 1.

If you have done all of these, congratulations.
You’ve learned the hard way.

Just like I have when I just started my solo journey saying farewell to the 9-5 bubble.

Here’s what I learned:

1. Passion and determination to build something yourself will get you far.

2. When (not if) you hit a wall, the only thing that will keep you going is a vision (or delusion) and commitment to something greater than yourself.

3. If you’ve spent your entire life following other people’s direction (like I have) you might (with certainty) tilt too far in the other direction and make it about yourself.

4. It’s not (only) about you, your needs, your dreams, your wants, you don’t live in a vacuum.

5. If you persist in your folly, you’ll become wiser. And make it about others (too).

6. When you make it about/for others, you hit a sweet spot and start building for those you choose to serve.

7. When you talk to them (and you should, often, salesperson or not), listen to what they say with every breath, pause, gesture, and head nod.

This is by no means a complete list of learnings, but 7 is a magical number and those are the most important to let sink in and ruminate on.

And here’s the trick.
This is where Henry Ford was partially helpful.

If all you do is have conversations and ask a lot of questions.
Well, you’ll have a lot of seemingly helpful answers.

You’ll learn there’s a big disconnect between what people say and what we do.

So what you want instead is a focused conversation.

You’re only able to have a focused conversation once you do up-front work.

It can come in the form of:

• research

• hypothesis

• experience

• previous work

Something you found missing in your life (on the market) and spent a significant amount of time figuring out how to solve said problem for yourself (or others).

This puts you in a position to:

1. Formulate a process on how you solved the problem

2. Flush out a Google doc writing out the problem-solution

3. Edit said Google doc and make it flow (by writing it out, you’ll get clear on what you’re solving and why someone would consider trying it)

4. Round up your ideal customers (your social media friends, email contacts, phone contacts)

5. Reconnect and understand where they’re at (don’t try to sell anything, we’re human beings and we crave connection and authentic relationships)

6. Create a list of individuals for whom what you’re building is relevant.

7. Start having focused conversations and fiercely document their feedback and reflections.

8. Use those golden nuggets of feedback to refine your solution/process and Google Docs.

9. Start documenting your journey and share your findings and learnings on 1 social media platform (You’re not Gary Vee, you don’t have a team of social media managers)

10. Build an email newsletter and go deep into your findings, common obstacles, mental blocks, emotional responses, and everything that helps solve the problem.

11. Create a simple (low-cost or free—in exchange for testimonials) coaching/service offering based on this journey and plug in your calendly.com or cal.com link for booking. (Yes, this is not a digital product, yet)

12. When you get your first 5 clients, and your first 2 referrals, you’ll know you’re onto something great.

Congratulations. You’ve now:

• had tens/hundreds of conversations with your potential customers

• got deep into the psychology of the people you choose to serve

• validated a digital product market fit

Now you can start building

By this time, you’ve become an expert problem solver. Your digital products now have legs to stand on.

You wiped out the guesswork and reduced the risk of building something no one wants.

You’re ready to scale back your (intensive but much-needed) 1:1 client work.

Leverage your time and knowledge by launching a group cohort.
Document the journey, and package it as a lower-priced course.
Build a paid community in the backend.
Develop an application.

Now is the time to build a waitlist and drive attention toward your launch.

I hope this perspective shift helps you reduce the overwhelm and delivers a simple strategy for building your visions and bringing your dreams into reality.

Let me know if you’ll try this out.
Shoot me a DM/email, John Wayne.

See you next week.

Aleksander Brankov

Find me on LinkedIn