Thread by @jmikolay

A distillation of what @stephsmithio said about creating, taking feedback, and marketing yourself in the 10x Creator Course:

Creating is like a cross-country bike ride: a long, ambitious journey.

Long journeys are physically demanding, but the hardest part isn’t the work itself. It’s managing your own psychology.

It’s showing up every day and continuing to ride.

Many creators focus on pedaling ten percent faster or finding shortcuts instead of eliminating things they don’t need and investing in things that make the ride easier.

The one thing that ultimately determines your success is ensuring you show up every day and ride.

Keep your identity small.

Don’t restrict what you can learn or become based on who you are today or what you’ve done before.

You can be many things, but have one thing people know you for.

At first, stick with the one thing you know best. Then branch out past that by following the things that interest you most.

When you know a product should exist:
1.You struggle with something
2.You get better at it
3.You notice other people struggling with it
4.You notice people asking you about it

Don’t seek to build a product.

Instead, ask:
🔷What have I been thinking about?
🔷What documentation have I created?
🔷What have I worked on for a long time?

Failure mode for creators:
🔷Trying to go through many steps in a single step

Success mode for creators:
🔷Dumping thoughts on the page
🔷Building without thinking about the end user
🔷Then flipping the switch and architecting everything to the end user

Too much feedback from too many people too early can rob your product of your original point-of-view.

Before you realize it, your product loses its central value: you and your philosophy.

Don’t ask for feedback on your MVP until it has an established, concrete point-of-view. One that's mature enough to represent itself without you explaining it.

Otherwise, the person giving you feedback will be grasping at straws.

If you ask for feedback when your product is terrible, you will learn something you already know: your product is terrible.

Premature feedback can disorient you and blur the core focus of what you were creating.

Don’t ask, “Is this good?” or “Do you like this?” or “What would you improve?”

Just create something, present it to the world, and let the market decide.

Are people recommending and buying your product when you’re still increasing prices?

Early in the creative process, validate your work at a high level, not at the level of details and particulars.

Launch a pre-sale and study the questions people ask.

Then use your intuition and build until you’re proud of your work.

People who let the market decide on their work, rather than continuously asking for feedback, tend to imbue their products with a strong point-of-view and build from intuition and expertise.

They know what they want to communicate and why.

Late in the creative process, red team your product by asking yourself, “If this were to fail, why would it fail?”

Meet failure modes and address them before your customers can.

Building a valuable product is hard but not complicated:
🔷Recognize what you’re deeply curious about
🔷Curate things that are valuable to you
🔷Package them together
🔷Add your own interpretation

That’s it.

Creating products is like squeezing oranges.

Before you can squeeze oranges, you need to grow orange trees.

Either squeeze oranges now or go plant more orange trees.

Don’t invest in a perfect launch.

In the long run, your launch is a blip, and the long tail drives sales.

Many products with great launches fail, and many products with mediocre launches succeed.

The difference is people with successful products execute for a long time.

Don’t launch on Product Hunt on launch day.

If your Product Hunt launch is the first day people are seeing your product, you’re hoping the launch makes it successful.

Create a product, get awareness, and get your product to customers who care about it, who like it, and who are following it.

That way, when you launch on Product Hunt months later, you have a base of customers to support you.

Marketing is tiring, doesn't feel natural, and takes time.

At first it feels like nothing, nothing, nothing. Then suddenly people pay attention.

You don’t need traditional marketing, you need people to care about what you're doing.

Build an awareness engine for your work.

If you enjoyed this and want more creators and entrepreneurs to see it, please:

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