It's hard to make a living as an icon designer.
So when Traf made $280,000 selling iOS icons which took 2 hours to make, I had to check out his interview.
Here are my notes on dare I say the best episode in Courtland's series so far.
There's lot to unpack here so here goes.
https://twitter.com/csallen/status/1324797402914586624 …
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Feedback was positive* so he decided to publish and sell his work. *100s of retweets, and thousands of likes snowballed into a million impressions in 24 hours. He used tools he knew best (notion + gumroad). And the whole work (landing page & set) took 2 hours.
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This wasn't the first icon set
@Traf made. His work dates back 7 years into the jailbroken days where he shared his designs on DeviantArt in 2013. He also talks about how sharing feels natural when you've been doing it all along.
That's another reason to #buildinpublic.Pokaż ten wątek -
What this teaches us is a) make your mark – and make it quick. b) Overnight successes can be years in the making. c) Use the tools that you're comfortable with. d) Keep your ear to the ground on information that surfaces.
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2. Quality matters I'm going to add my own commentary here. But lately I've been thinking about the work I publish in public. It has to meet some bar of quality that we are comfortable with. This forces us to focus on the 80/20 rule.
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We want to ship fast but also don't want to ship anything buggy since our reputation is on the line. Around the 15:00 mark, Courtland also adds that his playbook for driving success is persistence, speed, time and strategy. Let's drive in some more...
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3. Optimize for the freedom that you want.
@dvassallo calls this optimizing for your lifestyle & minimizing obligations (in episode #177). Traf uses the following#lifehack - "inspiration is perishable, so use it as a productivity multiplier...Pokaż ten wątek -
...Schedule your day with enough buffer to act on that inspiration" Getting to lazer focus is easy when you're hyped up and excited on an idea; you're working 5 times faster. Turnaround time is important, so use whatever tools that are available to you and that you know well.
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P.S. I'm paraphrasing a lot, so full disclaimer - all credits are theirs and any errors mine. 4. There's a lot that won't go right. "I didn't have the best set or the best price but it was good enough".
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Offices teach us to be perfectionists. I've heard of schools training us out of creativity [1]. But this is the first I've heard about workplaces drilling perfectionism into us. [1] https://www.ted.com/talks/sir_ken_robinson_do_schools_kill_creativity …
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When we are in individual contributor roles, our only role is to do one thing really, really well. That is to say a) our job is to design well, b) write code that doesn't fail, or c) manage projects that don't go into budget overruns.
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We focus on our core job and say the marketing team will take care of the rest. As a solo founder, we have to wear all these hats.
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Courtland and Traf dive into the psychology of pricing, which can be a whole blog post on it's own. Here are my key takeaways: - Price is not ancillary to your product - Pricing is part of your product - A 99¢ icon set is seen as cheap and crappy
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- A $28 set is premium and "you’re lucky to be able to buy these" It also attracted vloggers like MKBHD [2]. He reviews hi-end stuff and his audience has an affinity to spend on hi-end stuff. Sales jumped 6x when featured by MKBHD.
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A question I wrote down on my notepad and still have yet to answer - Why is that weekend projects that seem like a joke to you get more traction than your serious ideas? My guess is that you're less detached to it, and so you take more risks.
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Both Traf and Courtland were at VC backed companies. Their side projects however saw more traction than their Y Combinator startups. Traction may not be the right word here but I digress - Small bets seem to compound at a higher success rate than unicorn bets.
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I've got another 15 minutes of the podcast left; and I've got to jump on to a birthday call in 10, so I'll wrap this up quickly. Courtland here starts talking about category-defining startups like Homejoy.
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The takeaway here is whether you'd be dependent on forces outside your control (investment, talent, etc) or independent enough to go in a direction and lifestyle that suits you. I'm going to star this one so I'll come back and write a blog post these 2 models one day.
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"You don't need permission from Apple to build icons, or from Notion to build plugins." says Traf. There's whole plugin marketplaces and suites of products based on platforms like Wordpress. You run the risk of getting Sherlocked but that could be a blessing in disguise [3].
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[3] https://astropad.com/blessing-in-disguise/ … "Whether it's cooking, video games or playing chess. You don't realize it but you're creating your own versions of recipes. It's very easy to document it and publish it."
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Your competitive advantage is to make things - simpler, nicer, easier to use... regardless of what exists in what market... People will always pay if it makes their lives 0.001% easier.
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On working on something evergreen vs trending. 1. Trending - there's lot of demand, and no competition. Your work stays on top of people's minds. But trends are fleeting.
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2. Evergreen can be boring. There's the same SEO tips that are being taught 10 years later. And you have infinite competitors. But keep your ear to the ground, see whats new and do the thing that's important to you. That will allow you to capitalize on these opportunities.
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I reconcile these 2 viewpoints as when preparation meets a HUGE market opportunity. Traf also calls this short term pipeline bleeding in to long term gains. That is, you're leveraging short term trends to for long term growth and revenue.
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If I heard it right, the best way he recommends doing it - is to link all your online profiles together.
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On predicting the future: - Here comes tools (like Notion) that replaces 3-5 prev. tools you're using (CRM, docs, BaaS). It's bundling in a sense. Just as unbundling can create opportunities as well. [4] [4] https://personalmba.com/bundling-unbundling/ …
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Build your vision, build your life, regardless of competition. It's easy to get salty seeing other people's success but the flip side is to get inspired. There's webflow, notion, wix (and shameless plug
@blarebotHQ) all doing similar things.Pokaż ten wątek -
Courtland says* "even if your vision is weirder and slower, harder to use, and it's orange... people really like orange, and people out there there will like your style". *blog tip: Things Courtland says
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"If you're trying to sing like Michael Jackson, you'll only be a worse Michael Jackson. You have to find your own voice". There's more people getting on the internet every day, so you can still carve your slice.
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I'm going to end it here with a few questions & things I want to come back to another day. - on trying a whole boatload of things - to outsource or not For the full interview
Check out the Indiehackers podcast on iTunes. This one was episode #179.Pokaż ten wątek - Pokaż odpowiedzi
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