☀️ [30DC] Day 8 » Done, not perfect

The first offer I sold online was far from perfect… actually, the best thing it had going for it was just that it was done.

At the start of this challenge I shared a story about the literal first “product” I sold to an existing client years ago, but was kind of accidental (which of course is how a lot of great ideas happen).

Fast-forward a few years, and I’d love to tell you about the first time I deliberately built a product to sell online, following more of a process.

I’d been selling design services for over a decade, but it was always custom proposals with sales meetings – never something that was listed online that a person could read about, then decide to purchase all on their own – that was what I wanted.

There was this big list of business and product ideas I’d been adding to for years, with lots of frankly dumb ideas, but a few decent ones. I picked a decent one, and committed to building it in a month.

Knowing that I’m not super organised and not a great planner, I knew I couldn’t just wing this.

If I was going to launch this in 30 days, I needed to rough-out a list of absolute minimums to make sure I’d finish it.

Those things were:

• A Tight Scope: Everything I was prepared to offer with this product.
• Exclusions: Everything I could think of that wouldn’t be included that a buyer might reasonably expect or ask about.
• A Guarantee: I needed to be able to guarantee something, but I didn’t want it to be a money-back guarantee.
• A Fixed Price: I wanted people to be able to make a decision immediately.
• A Landing Page: Obviously where someone could read about it and make their buying decision (or ask further questions).
• A Brand Name: Not essential, but sometimes useful for marketing (plus I wanted to have a future exit/acquisition as an option).
• A Climate-First Approach: Also not essential, but for me, it’s a non-negotiable. I aim for a climate-first approach with everything I create, and this was the first time I was trying it for a product or service.

Everything here was experimental – I was guessing that ticking these things off would lead me to a product I’d be very happy to sell, and ultimately deliver.

That product became BrandPocket: a service where I take the established PDF Brand Guidelines from an organisation, and turn them into digital guidelines making them centralised, sharable, and always-up-to-date.

I created a “good enough version 1” for everything from the list above.

• The fixed price was lower than it is today, and I aim to put it up again in a couple of months.
• The Landing page was actually a Google Doc that I got some feedback on, and turned into a landing page later
• The guarantee was the turnaround time, but there are now a few things I can guarantee – I need to update the landing page to reflect them

I created it under 30 days by keeping everything minimal and simple. But it’s constantly evolving.

Version 1 was sold off a Google Doc. I sold maybe the 5th one from the landing page, and after every few sales I make tweaks to include whatever new thing makes it clearer or better in some way.

The message today: Perfect is the enemy of done.

Stuck on something? Let me know.