One of the most brutal and constructive lessons we learn as bootstrappers is this: nobody cares about you or your product. Many here at The Sparkline have learned that lesson the hard way, launching a product or website—some labor of time, love and sweat—into nothing but crickets… no sales, no links, no love.
All month we’ve been sharing tips and tactics for defining your audience, complete with loads of interviews with experienced entrepreneurs on how they do it. This week we feature two more interviews and listener questions covering some of these topics:
A month before turning 29, after having spent the majority of my 20's working for five different companies, I finally decided to strike out on my own. In September of 2012 I said goodbye to what I hoped would be my last office job. In October, I created an online business that would teach entrepreneurs how to get started with online video.
Last week was the first part of an excellent series where we bring experts in to shed light on how they discover, define and target their audience. We talked about how this process can make the difference between a product/service/article released into crickets (people ignoring you) or released into the hearts and minds of an engaged audience (ready to buy something from you).
Q: What’s the secret of growing a startup? “You’ve got to start with a small, intense fire. Suppose you’re the Apple I. They only made about 500 of those things, so, all they had to do was find 500 people to buy these computers, and they launched Apple. APPLE!
There’s one question that can get to the heart of whether what you’re working on is a soon-to-be-failed side project or a business with a good shot at financial success. This is the question that kickstarted my career as a designer. After wallowing and fiddling with side projects for years, I finally grokked the bit I was missing.
Every business owner gets a Spidey Sense. You learn to see trouble before it starts. You wouldn’t need much of a Spidey sense to feel the danger from Jon’s presales email:
Your brand could move people from bored, unmotivated, and ignoring you to driven, curious, interested, and dynamically involved in your business. Chances are that’s not happening for you. In this episode Chase shares insights about story that can help your brand do just that, including:
As I was listening to this conversation Chase and Chris Ducker were having (the audio of which is below this post), it made me think of something all entrepreneurs struggle with. There is a feeling of validation that we all expect to feel whenever we share or publish something online.