[Reflections] July Build in Public Reflections

Written by Stefan on 8/3/2022

What the fuck are reflections 😳?

One of our company virtues is approaching things with a Stoic mindset.

And a big part of Stoicism is taking the time to reflect.

That means critically looking back on the past and trying to learn as much as you can from it, but also appreciating the things that worked well.

So today, we’ll be doing exactly that 💪

We’ll be looking at:

July Goals
The good (Keep doing 📈)
The bad (Improve 📉)
The ugly (Stop doing 🚫)
August Goals

TL;DR

I know you have better things to do than to read this whole thing, so here’s the most important reflections for last month:

The Good, the Bad, The Ugly

📈 Last minute MRR growth saved this month
📈 Got to recharge on vacation
📈 Started to enjoy calls after batching them to one day
📉 First month with considerable churn for Tube Transcripts
📉 Churn shows that Tube Transcripts is not a painkiller
📉 Too many loose ends
🚫 Don’t spend too much time on Twitter
🚫 Stop messing with morning routine

Core Takeaways for your own Journey

Patience is key, your first or next customer usually comes through when you’re about to give up.

Validating if you have a painkiller or a vitamin is crucial

Churn is inevitable, be prepared as good as you can to handle it well

Twitter is great but if it’s not part of your immediate acquisition strategy you should be careful about spending too much time here

Balance how much time you spend producing and how much time you spend working on your production capacity.

Keep reading to get insight into each of the above points and more detailed takeaways 👇

July Goals

We had two main Goals for July.

One focused on an internal product that we build at Niche Mates called Tube Transcripts.

The other one for one of our “Agency” products that we build together with an insurance agent (a CRM).

If you want to know more about our approach (own products/agency) and how we budget our time, you can read about it on our website.

Let’s dive into the details for July👇

Enter Automation Stage

Success: 100%

We approach our projects in stages.

We wanted to be in a place at the end of the month that would allow us to stop building and only focus on growth.

Last month we failed to achieve this and only got half of it done, but we finally shipped the tooltip that should help increase activation of first time users.

We have started collecting some data on this, but we need to wait a bit longer.

Now we will focus on testing a couple new marketing channels and wait for the domain migration to bring back our organic traffic 🥲

Three customers for CRM

Success: 33%

We didn’t manage to onboard a new customer for this because of seasonality.

We’re targeting SMBs right now, and they’ve been very inactive during July, some potential customers taking off for 3 weeks for example 😳

On the good side, our first customer from last month has been activated and started using the tool daily to manage their customer internally.

We aligned with our partner that is running sales for this project and will double down on this after a bit more experimentation.

Overall, our existing customers continued to be quite active, and we're moving in the right direction.

The good (Keep doing 📈)

Three things that went well and should be appreciated...

📈 Last minute MRR growth saved this month

This month was the worst in terms of churn for Tube Transcripts.

Luckily, an existing customer with multiple YouTube channels swooped in and got another subscription.

Making us not lose MRR this month but have a tiny bit of growth 👇

📈 Got to recharge on vacation

Sometimes you have to push…

Sometimes you have to slow down…

And the key is to know when to do what.

I went on vacation in Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 and took some time to recharge, while everybody else is doing the same.

📈 Started to enjoy calls after batching them to one day

I was getting a bit annoyed at having too many calls.

They ate into my productivity too much.

And when I don’t feel productive, I start feeling annoyed.

It felt like something I “had” to do, not wanted to do.

This changed dramatically after just doing them on one day, and now I’m actually looking forward to them ✌️

Learnings for your own Journey

Patience is key, your first or next customer usually comes through when you’re about to give up.

Know when to push and when to take a step back.

If something feels like a chore, do it less and see if you miss it, if you do, start doing it again.

The bad (Improve 📉)

Three things that didn't go as planned, but can be improved...

📉 First month with considerable churn for Tube Transcripts

As mentioned in the other section, we did have MRR growth.

But that’s not the only thing that happened, we had considerable churn for the first time, so far our product has not seen much of that.

We followed up to learn why people don’t use it anymore, and the reason mostly ties into (2)

📉 Churn shows that Tube Transcripts is not a painkiller

When money gets tight, people start cancelling services.

The services that are essential get cancelled last.

Unfortunately, that’s not what we are as of right now.

The value we deliver is nice, but you can run your channel without it as well.

We’re looking at what we can offer to deliver more value, and what’s come up a couple of times now are:

Show people how their subtitled videos are doing in comparison to no subtitles
Translations in addition to transcripts

We’re evaluating those, but want to grow the product a bit more before spending more effort on building features.

📉 Too many loose ends

Currently, we have:

2 own projects we’re growing
1 agency project we’re developing and selling
1 agency project we’re wrapping up
1 new agency project we’re negotiating terms for
2 projects we’re validation
Build in Public on Twitter

As you can see, that’s a lot.

Especially because while we are 4 people, I’m the only one that’s on Full-Time.

Ideally, we’d only focus on our own projects, but they don’t make enough money to drop the rest.

I need to sit down and think about how to tackle those, both in what order and what priority, and cut them down a bit.

Learnings for your own Journey

Churn is inevitable, it’s just a matter of time. Be prepared.

Spend a lot of time finding out how important your product is to people, and make sure it solves and essential problem.

Having multiple projects is fine, but make sure not to spread yourself too thin.

Things add up over time, make sure you stay on top of your opportunities and how they fit into your goals.

The ugly (Stop doing 🚫)

Two things I'm doing but shouldn't...

🚫 Don’t spend too much time on Twitter

This one rolled over from last month, as I haven’t improved as much as I want to…

Twitter is both a blessing and a curse.

I’m quite strict with Twitter and use a tool that lets me engage with others without seeing my own feed, but…

When I feel like I’m stuck on something, I tend to go to Twitter now…

This means lost productivity and time, that I’d rather spend with my dog or gf.

To get an idea how much time I spend on Twitter, check the stats below 🤪

🚫 Stop messing with morning routine

I have a morning routine:

Coffee
Meditating
Journaling
Read / Summarize a book

and I usually stick to it quite well.

But recently I have been slipping here and there, and it resulted in me feeling “off” the whole day.

I need to stop messing with this, as it’s important for my productivity throughout the rest of the day.

Learnings for your own Journey

Question if Twitter is taking up too much time in your day or if the ROI is worth it.

Identify what matters to you and stick to it.

Protect your time against external influences.

August Goals

August has four focus areas 👇

Try new marketing channels for Tube Transcripts
Get three customers for CRM (Rolled over from July)
Create a monetizable product for a Best Stoic Quotes, a project we’ve had on hold over the last couple of months and are now investing a bit more time into as it’s ranking on first position for a couple of keywords
Finalize the terms for the next agency project

I will keep you posted on these 🤙

Now what?

You’ve done it, you legend ❤️

Thanks for sifting through all my BS 🤷‍♂️

If you have feedback or want to know more on a certain topic, shoot me an email.