The Goals of Audience-Building
Too many people see audience building as a means to an end: they expect to build a following of people that are just sitting there, waiting to be sold something. The goal of this very limited…
Read the essay →From the archive · Page 37 of 44
The Bootstrapped Founder · Page 37
The Shape of a Problem in the Wild
The wonderful thing about humans is that they have a hundred different ways to talk about their dreams, desires, needs, and challenges. No two people will talk about their experiences the same way.…
Read the essay →On Re-Using Content
Creating valuable content is hard. Producing it reliably is even more challenging. Many creators are holding themselves back by believing that they need to create original work at all times. They…
Read the essay →Audience Discovery: The Importance of Budget
When founders are looking for that perfect target audience for their business, they often get many things right. They pick audiences that they know intimately, that have interesting problems to…
Read the essay →What founders can learn from Twitch streamers about building in public
I’m an avid Twitch viewer. While writing, coding, or just researching, I quite often watch someone playing video games. I could play those games myself, but I wanted to spend time on my projects…
Read the essay →The Emotional Journey of a Bootstrapped Founder: Fear of Disappointing Your Customers
Over the last few weeks, you will have noticed that I have started talking more about the emotional impact of entrepreneurship. I talked about impostor syndrome, people cloning businesses, the loss…
Read the essay →When Your Business Gets Cloned
This week, I ran into a Tweet by Mike Rubini, who had found that not only his product Groouply had been cloned, but the person behind copying his Facebook group monitoring tool had put up a…
Read the essay →Jargon and Community
I’ve been thinking a lot about the understood meaning of terms in quickly evolving industries this week. I even chose to make a major pivot because of this in renaming the book I am currently…
Read the essay →The Grief and Loss of Selling a Business
This week, my partner, co-founder, and love-of-my-life Danielle Simpson appeared on the Software Social Podcast hosted by Michele Hansen and Colleen Schnettler. In a remarkably open and honest…
Read the essay →The Two Goals of Audience-Building
Let’s talk about audience-building today. Last week, I talked about how I use Twitter, and that was received reasonably well. That’s why I want to talk about why audience-building is such a good…
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