Bootstrapper's Paradise

I've worked on many products where many teams ship most features that make their products worse.

The problem here is we get caught in these build loops or traps because we're not following a process to help us first identify what our customers really need.  Let's talk about how to solve this problem.

To find product market fit faster, sign up for my free 5 day email course - https://nxtstep.io/fit

Episode Transcript
Hey, folks, sean here.

And today what I want to talk to you about

is how to know which feature to design and build

next into your product that's going to offer maximum value

for both your customer and your organization.

Far too often I work with clients that

ultimately get caught in what's commonly referred to

as the build trap, which means that you're

continuously building and shipping features without a whole

lot of understanding in terms of why.

Oftentimes this can be referred to

as well as feature factories.

Your product development organization just kind of becomes a

feature factory in that you're just constantly building and

shipping things without a whole lot of understanding in

terms of the impact that ultimately that's going to

have on your product and its experience.

Now, the problem here is if you don't know

why you're building those features in particular, and that's

not commonly understood by your entire product development team,

then ultimately you are more likely to make your

product experience worse rather than better.

And I often see this being a part of

the problem in terms of not really knowing which

process to follow instead, as it just kind of

feels like you should be doing something.

And oftentimes the incentives for product development teams

are misaligned with making the product experience better

and adding more value for your customers, which

makes this problem worse as well as and

you may be being held accountable for ultimately

building and shipping more features, which isn't necessarily

the objective here.

In fact, that, like I said before, can

actually make the whole product experience worse.

So if you're building, I want to talk to

you about why this can make it worse.

If you're building and shipping features for which you don't

have great direction in terms of the impact that's going

to have and how that's going to make the product

experience better, then more than likely your customers and your

users aren't going to need it.

And if your customer users don't need it, then when

they see that feature in your product and they don't

use it, it's going to continue to make the product

experience more confusing for them, more clumsy for them.

That's why I say it

makes your product experience worse.

It's because it's not a need that they have.

And you building those features is not

grounded in anything that is particularly relevant

to solving problems for your customers.

So I want to talk to you now that you

have a better understanding from that perspective in terms of

that trap and why people fall into it.

If any of this sounds common to you in terms of

you've been there before, I want to talk to you about

the approach we should be taking instead to ensure that we

don't fall into one of these common traps.

So what I've shared so far might sound

great, but your next most pressing question might

be, okay, well, what do we do instead?

How do we know if we're shipping a

feature or we're going to ultimately build a

feature or what we should prioritize that's going

to make the product experience better, not worse.

And that comes from discovery,

discovery and also research.

If it's on the earlier stage side of

your product or we're interacting with someone who's

new to your product, I refer to as

discovery that's conversations essentially with prospects who don't

have prior experience with your product.

And if it's on the later stage side, I

refer to that as research in terms of a

customer or user that you may already have.

Now, I want to talk to you about

the objectives when having conversations with each.

But I'm going to use a framework that I call

Buckets and Marbles in terms of figuring out essentially from

the opportunities that we identify from investing in the research

and the discovery, how do we know which one to

pick and how do we continuously prioritize as more of

those opportunities are coming available.

So from the discovery perspective, that helps you

track your market to making sure that you

have a better understanding of not just where

the market is, but where it's going.

And if you're talking to prospects that are

having only a very little, if none experience

at all with your product, they will be

telling you what is most important for them.

So if you are gathering this information and you're

tracking this information, you'll have an idea and you

could create sort of like a trend line in

terms of where it's going, which features are most

popular that they're requesting, which problems are the most

common ones that they're experiencing.

You'll be able to track that.

Now, on the other side, for your existing customers

and users, if you're interacting with them, what you're

trying to do is you're trying to figure out

how to make your product better.

So theoretically here your product

is already offering the value.

That's why they're using it.

But in order for them to continue to

use it, it may need you to prioritize

continuing to make that experience better because their

needs are likely to change over time, right?

The product and the market and product

market fit are both dynamic concepts.

I'm talking about tracking the market so that ultimately

we can continue to upgrade and improve your product.

So that's where that's the process you

need to connect to product development and

that's where all of this should begin.

That's the catalyst for everything that gets

invested in the product development process.

And if you're not investing in either one or both

of those, you need to stop what you're doing now.

Especially stop writing code.

Because like I said before, you're

likely making the product experience better.

And instead, invest in both of these

opportunities to perform discovery and research to

find a source of those problems and

opportunities worth building into your product experience.

Now, the last question I want to talk

about today is once you have identified a

number of those problems from prospects, from customers,

how do you prioritize them for development?

Well, that's where this framework that I

developed called Buckets and Marbles comes from.

Essentially when I'm having these interviews, what I do is

I create a bucket every time I've heard about a

unique instance of a problem that a prospect or a

customer or an existing user has or needs solved.

Every time I hear about something unique, I

create a new bucket to store ultimately future

instances of me hearing about that same problem.

So, if the first prospect I speak with mentions two

proble...

When disruptive technology is invented we sometimes freakout that it may send shockwaves through our industry or render our product obsolete. 

Here's why that fear is often overblown and how you should respond instead.

If you want to reach product-market fit faster, sign up for my free 5 day email course here - https://nxtstep.io/fit/

Episode Transcript
Hey, folks, Sean here and today what I want

to talk to you about is the approach you

should be taking if and when any new technology

is ever developed which is looking like it may

severely disrupt either your product or your industry.

Now, my motivation for wanting to talk about this topic

comes from all of the buzz surrounding Chat GPT.

And a lot of conversation and dialogue is

about how it's going to change things dramatically.

What is it going to make obsolete?

Our author is no longer going to be a thing.

Our artists no longer going to be a thing.

There's all kinds of dialogue going on

about the major hugely disruptive changes that

may take place because of this technology.

Now, the first thing I'll say

is that technology isn't technically new.

It's been around for years, they've been

working on refining it for years.

But more recently, I would argue that the adoption

is significantly more widespread because people are really starting

to adopt it and come up with creative new

use cases in terms of how they may leverage

it in order to make their lives better, create

more value, save more time, whatever it is.

People are figuring out what those use cases

are and OpenAI company that owns Chat GPT

is really studying and evaluating that.

They're doing the research and putting in the

time to figure out how they're going to

ultimately position it in order to figure out

where it generates the most value for the

most people, because that speaks to opportunity.

But having said that, the sentiment that I'm hearing in a

lot of ways is some of it's doom and gloom, right?

And I get it right, video killed

the radio star or whatever, right?

A bunch of examples like that.

The thing that's often not told is how any

of the individuals that were in, for example, radio,

in that example that I just shared, had evolved

from there as the new technology became available.

And there was plenty of that.

And that's really what I want to speak to in

terms of the strategy that you should be leveraging in

order to ensure that what it is you're working on

can be preserved or ultimately upgrade it in a significant way

with the help of this new technology.

So you shouldn't see it necessarily as

a foe in all these instances.

What I'd rather have you do is study it

so that you can better understand how you may

be able to incorporate it in whatever it is

that you're working on because it may speak to

an opportunity to actually improve your value proposition.

And in order to make this strategy sound even

a little bit more convincing, what I want to

do is I want to share with you an

example from one of my own product companies, which

is called Podcast Chef, how we leverage this strategy

in order to improve our value proposition as the

industry evolved, as new technology became available.

So, if you're unfamiliar, my product company, Podcast Chef, which

is a productized service, essentially helps people that are selling

higher ticket services in the B to B world open

doors with who ultimately could become a major client by

instead of going directly at them with a pitch, which

no one likes to be sold to, especially in that

way if you don't have some form of existing relationship,

but instead invite them to be a guest on your

podcast, because that's a great way to kind of open

a door and start building a relationship.

Plus you've got the opportunity to invest in it

and create a bunch of organic content at the

same time, a whole bunch of value, specifically speaking

to the Podcast Chef current value proposition.

However, having said that, at the time when digital shorts

like some of the content that I've been creating and

sharing on YouTube as well too, and across other platforms,

really started to become very popular and start to gain

a lot of traction in the mainstream.

A lot of these platforms like YouTube were

really promoting this short form digital video content.

We didn't originally have that as part of

our core process and we were wondering, is

that something that's going to disrupt podcasting?

Like what's going to happen to podcasting?

So we had some of the same questions that you

may have now in terms of how chat GPT may

be disrupting your product, making it obsolete or whatever.

Is the technology going to disrupt your product?

Is the technology going to disrupt your

industry, and if so, how severely? Right?

So we were having the same type of

conversations about what digital shorts were going to

do to our productized service, Podcast Chef.

Now, instead of freaking out and panicking and doing

anything pretty significantly that was potentially irrational or whatever,

what we did was we studied digital shorts to

better understand what value they could add and if

they could actually be incorporated in what we were

already doing to even make it better.

Did that make sense?

And long story short, it did.

So what we were doing at the time was we

were encouraging people when they were recording podcasts to do

so in video, and then when they had an opportunity

to ultimately promote the video in addition to the audio,

we would do that for them as well too.

So that was already making its way to YouTube,

but we weren't really focusing on it so much.

So now when digital shorts gained a lot of

popularity and traction, we saw that as a potential

lever we could incorporate in order to help our

clients shows grow more significantly, and that's pretty much

what we looked to do.

So we figured out how to take the

video content, chop it up into a bunch

of shorts and share it across the world.

Now, that isn't something that's

particularly unique right now.

That's something we've been doing for quite a while,

but that's how we handled a major disruption to

our industry based on what was going on social

media wise and content wise, and what was being

promoted at the time, and to potentially figure out

how it might disrupt what we were doing.

A podcast, Chef.

So, having said that, that's really the approach that I

want you to take is I want you to look

at new technology from the perspective of what is it,

how do I better understand it, how do I and

then how might you be able to leverage it?

As in, can your product incorporate any new

technology into your process to receive some of

the benefits of the faster, cheaper, easier stuff

that new technology often provides in order to

actually strengthen your value proposition?

If you take that approach, then all of

a sudden, any new technology or any major

disruptive changes really aren't all that scary, and

in fact, they become more exciting.

What is exciting...

People are using ChatGPT to write everything from poetry to entire books. 

So far it seems like it's doing it very well and ridiculously fast.  I want to talk about what this means for the future of writing.

Related article - https://thespectator.com/book-and-art/artificial-intelligence-ai-destroy-writing-chatgpt/

If you want to reach product-market fit faster, sign up for my free 5 day email course here - https://nxtstep.io/fit/

Episode Transcript
Hey folks, Sean here and today what I want

to talk to you about is with the latest

developments tool Chat GPT from OpenAI, how I think

AI may ultimately replace humans as authors.

So my friends and I have been spending quite a

bit of time with Chat GPT and in particular from

my perspective, I'm most interested in the unique use cases

people are coming up with in terms of how to

leverage this technology to generate value.

And I'm using that for the most part to

create content, content like this so I can share

what I'm learning with you so that it helps

you figure out how to make your products better.

But of all the other folks in my network,

they're using it for different reasons as well too.

And I wanted to learn more about that.

So I have a bunch of content that I

want to produce, right, and that includes email courses,

ebooks, even books and things like that about this

type of content specifically and all the various other

subjects that I usually cover.

Now, one of the biggest bottlenecks to

doing that is it's time consuming.

It takes quite a bit of time for me to

have to sit down, plan it out, create outlines and

then ultimately write everything, proofread it, get the grammar correct,

which is definitely not a strength of mine.

I'm an engineer by trade, which means for the

most part I can't spell in almost any language.

But as I'm learning about some of these other

use cases and what folks have been using it

for, I'm hearing everything from people are writing remarkable

poetry that's indistinguishable from some of the greatest artists

all the way to and through.

People are leveraging it to create entire books for

which they may have already been publishing on Amazon

of different categories and things like that.

So that really sent me down a rabbit hole of figuring

out and really asking the question what is an author?

Because where this came from was when I was speaking

with some of my colleagues, I was trying to figure

out for what Chat GPT has been producing in terms

of the questions we ask and the help that we

want, the information we're trying to gain access to.

When it's asked sometimes for sources, that's kind of the

question that came up is like when you're asking it

to cite where it's got that information from.

Because I know attribution is a big thing that a

lot of people in particular authors are concerned about and

in some instances, in terms of at least from what

I've heard, I still need to do more testing.

Sometimes it will list the sources, but sometimes it's

pulling it from so many different locations that sometimes

I think there's a little bit of pushback there.

So this part is at least unclear.

But that made me think about yet another question

in terms of, well, what makes an author?

What would the difference be in terms of what a human

may be doing versus what the AI may be doing?

Because as I started to think about it, I

was thinking that I think the AI or the

tech is essentially following the same, if not a

similar process as a human would, but just at

a remarkably faster and more efficient pace.

It can be more effective as well too, because

you can apply different types of rules like grammar

and spelling and all that kind of stuff in

order to make sure that it's essentially as perfect

as it's going to be and you can introduce

different styles and all kinds of things like that.

So anyway, that's the question that I'm posing here.

I want to dive into some detail from an

article that I read which really painted a very

particular picture about what the future of writing looks

like with the advent of this technology.

Now, from one of the enlightening articles that I

found, which paints somewhat of a gloomy picture here

in terms of what the future looks like for

authors, it makes two specific key points which I

think are very relevant in this context.

And that's the fact that, number one, the prediction

from this writer with decades of experience is that

writing is essentially over and that authors should drop

it or switch almost entirely because rather soon the

computers will be here too.

And their words quote, do it better, which I can

understand and has kind of been the plot for a

ton of sci-fi movies for decades at this point.

And the second, which is even more interesting to me

because I'm not sure I completely, 100% agree and I

want to talk about what I mean by that, but

I do see where they're coming from, is that if

you break writing down to a formula, so to speak,

it essentially is an algorithm.

And this is where I would agree

with this author as well too.

Is that's kind of where I was when I was

thinking through citing sources and pulling information from where?

And is AI essentially an author?

Can it become an author like chat GPT?

What's the difference between Chat GPT

writing something and me writing something?

Chances are we're going through a similar process.

We're going to do research, we're going

to create outlines, that type of thing.

The difference is the technology is doing

it ridiculously faster than I am.

So that's really what it broke down to for me.

It's pulling information from different sources.

It's arguably learning.

Like when I was going to school a million

years ago, what they would talk to you about

is you needed to paraphrase, you couldn't just plagiarize

and all this other type of stuff.

You got to cite your sources and whatnot.

And I understand all of that, but the thing

that always was questionable for me was like, well,

what's the difference between me just reading and learning

and kind of like paraphrasing, so to speak, versus

taking that information and sharing it.

It seemed very similar to me.

So to me there appeared to be quite a bit of gray area.

So if you look at it at a fundamental

level in terms of what writing is, I would

100% completely agree that it's an algorithm and the

process that's followed by humans probably very similar to

these language models like Chad GPT.

As such, the results that are produced probably

are of equal, if not greater quality and

done remarkably faster and more efficiently than a

human who could ever do it.

So that brings me to the next question,

which is, if that's the case, then what

does the future of writing actually look like?

So as I asked myself this question and started

doing research down another rabbit hole here in terms

of what does the future of writing look like,

I realized that ultimately what it really boils down

into is will writers in the current format in

w...

The OpenAI team shared a survey on their Discord server to gather data on building a pricing model for ChatGPT.

I want to talk about the questions they're asking related to pricing and how it might help you perform research for figuring out how to best price your product.

Survey - https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScwuQEWBkxsNftEkvUgFx2Ov7pKcrOx8IUlZ241lvet7ziXCQ/viewform

Article - https://www.techradar.com/news/chatgpt-could-soon-start-charging-you-for-its-ai-skills

If you want to reach product-market fit faster, sign up for my free 5 day email course here - https://nxtstep.io/fit/

Episode Transcript
Hey, folks, Sean here.

And today what I want to talk to you

about is that OpenAI is actively doing research, trying

to figure out how to monetize ChatGPT.

And I want to talk to you about the research

that they're doing, some of the details of it, and

what we can learn from it to help you figuring

out how to design pricing for your product.

Now, I don't know about you, but I've

heard some really impressive use cases that people

have come up with in getting very creative

with how to leverage this technology.

Terms of generating a ton of value.

I've heard of everything from people leveraging Chat GPT

to write code, all the way to creating poetry

and writing books and everything in between.

It's pretty wild.

In fact, one of the most interesting things for me

about all of this so far is outside the technology,

hearing about the use cases and how people get really

creative in figuring out how to generate value.

Now, the common theme in terms of what I've

been paying particularly close attention to, in terms of

what people are figuring out what to do with

this technology, is how much value it's generating.

When I say value, what I mean

is it's providing them time back.

It's helping them become more efficient or generate even more

effective results in terms of I can start to quantify

some of this, which helps me get closer to this

concept that I talk about a lot as well, too.

In ROI or return on investment, as in

for the customer, they're receiving time back.

If they're getting more value, we can start

to figure out how to quantify that.

And if we've got a better understanding in terms of

what type of return on investment they're getting, that can

end up being a direct line for us to figure

out where the product should appropriately be priced.

As in you want to make sure you're

not charging too little and leaving a bunch

of money on the table because you're providing

a lot of value and you're under charging.

That can cause positioning problems and require people

to kind of lose confidence in your product.

Or you might be charging too

much and chasing people away.

Or there might not be enough value in your product.

And if you set that price a little

bit more appropriately, that will help you gain

more traction and as such, generate that much

more revenue because it's priced appropriately relative to

the value it's providing for your customer.

So what I want to do next is I want to

talk to you more about the process that OpenAI and the

folks at Chat GPT are doing in terms of figuring out

how to develop a pricing model for this product.

Now, they've shared a survey through Google Forms,

which is super straightforward and easy to use

through their Discord server, which is asking a

ton of questions about pricing.

And there's two questions in particular that I'd like

to focus on because I feel like they're really

insightful for those of us out there are trying

to figure out how do we better understand whether

or not our products are priced appropriately?

So let's take a look at that survey

and in particular those specific two questions.

The first thing I'll mention is I

love the simplicity of the survey.

It's just Google Forms.

It doesn't need to be all that advanced.

And it's pretty interesting when you think about how

advanced the technology is that powers Chat GPT, but

for this specific purpose, it works great.

It's a great way to get feedback from the users that

are getting a lot of value out of the tool.

Now, the two questions in particular that I want to

pay particularly close attention to are related to the upper

and lower bounds of what they ultimately might charge for

the product, which I think is a great way to

gain context around how do we figure out whether or

not the product is priced appropriately.

And one other thing I'll mention before I speak

specifically to these questions is this tool has provided

so much value for so many people, the use

cases are all over the place.

As I mentioned already, there is a lot of

value that this product has provided a lot of

people, meaning that they have almost unlimited potential to

figure out how to price this product.

But even so, even the fact that that is

the case and they know that is the case,

they're still figuring out how to price it appropriately

and they're using techniques and strategies that I've leveraged

to help people with their products as well too.

In terms of figuring out the right pricing model, that

could be a really key component for strong product market

fit and figuring out what it is, I've worked on

products that had almost everything else relatively well buttoned up

with the exception of their pricing, and pricing mistakes can

be made too low or too high.

Now, the two questions in particular that I want

to talk about, they're helpful in terms of providing

context in terms of whether or not you might

be charging too much or too little.

And figuring out that right balance means that you're

going to have the opportunity to create the best

experience for the customer as in you're going to

be providing them with more than enough value in

the form of this return on investment, which is

then going to in turn enable your product company

to be able to generate maximum value as well. Too.

So getting it right is really important.

Now, like I said before, the two questions

in particular are about exploring these bounds.

And the first, which explores kind of the upper bound,

is framed in a way to kind of get at

whether or not to get more context around what the

top end of that spectrum might look like.

As in where would the product be priced at and what

would that level look like to the extent where it would

be too expensive, to the point where you wouldn't consider buying

it, as in what's too high for this product.

Essentially, give me a little

bit more context around that.

Now, on the other end of the spectrum, in order

to figure out the bound on the lower end, the

question is at what point would the product be priced

in terms of that price being too low?

To the point where you would question the

value that you would get from the product.

And this speaks to positioning.

So if you have a product that provides a

ton of value, but it is charging too little,

that can actually impact your customer's perception of the

value that the product is going to provide.

It's almost ...

The turmoil at Twitter has created a huge opportunity for Mastodon to fill the vacuum.  Despite some aggressive growth, it has failed to scale.

I want to talk about why and what this means for your product in terms of being ready for opportunities to scale.

Related Article - https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2023/jan/08/elon-musk-drove-more-than-a-million-people-to-mastodon-but-many-arent-sticking-around

If you want to reach product-market fit faster, sign up for my free 5 day email course here - https://nxtstep.io/fit/

Episode Transcript
Hey, folks, Sean here.

And today what I want to talk to you about is

why Mastodon has failed to scale, despite the fact that Twitter

has done everything in its power to send as many of

their users as possible over to that platform.

Just in case you're unaware, there's been quite a bit

of turmoil going on over Twitter, and every time something

major hits the news, a new wave of users goes

from Twitter over to a platform called Mastodon.

Now, if you're unfamiliar with what Mastodon is,

it's essentially an open source equivalent to Twitter.

It's got a relatively similar user experience,

or it's considered by many to be

the most similar product on the market.

And as such, many were expecting it to

kind of fill the vacuum that Twitter seems

to have been creating all on its own.

But despite that fact, and despite the fact

that in a single day when it was

at its peak growth rate from converting users

from Twitter over to mastodon, those numbers where

over 100,000 users per day are leaving Twitter.

And joining mastodon.

Not only have they failed to continue to scale

at that rate, that trend has since somewhat reversed

itself almost as aggressively as it was once growing.

So the question here is why?

Why has Mastodon failed to scale despite having

this tremendous opportunity, it seems, to kind of

fill the vacuum that Twitter has been creating.

Like I said, all on its own.

In fact, there's a great chart and article from

the Guardian about this event that has taken place,

and it's overlaid essentially in a series of a

timeline where there is a chart reflecting the growth

of Mastodon and when new waves of users have

spiked joining their platform.

And that timeline of events is also mapped

to when controversial things have happened at Twitter,

or just things like Elon Musk taking over,

but him announcing massive layoffs, him doing really

questionable things, or Twitter doing very questionable things

like banning journalists and things like that.

Every time any one of these controversial things have

taken place, mastodon has seen a massive spike in

user activity and people joining the platform.

But despite the fact that that's been happening in

almost rapid succession over time, giving macedon time and

time again opportunities to capitalize or benefit from this

level of scale, not only has that growth kind

of stalled or stopped, it's reversed itself and almost

aggressively as it was once growing.

So ultimately, what looks like is happening now

is people aren't adopting the Mastodon platform.

In fact, many of them are probably actually going

back to Twitter, which is really interesting trend, despite

the fact that the motivation was probably pretty high

given the fact of what has taken place more

recently over at Twitter for them to join really

any other platform that can meet that need.

And that's what I want to talk about now.

Probably the biggest reason why Mastodon has really failed

to continue their aggressive growth and scale is for

something that I talked about before, which is very

important in order to really nail a product experience,

and that's the user experience.

The usability of Mastodon is very

different than that of Twitter.

It is much harder to use, quite a bit

more complex, and requires the user to have to

do things that they really don't have to do

to get the same experience out of Twitter.

In addition to that, the feature set which is

prominent over Twitter, is not really all there when

it comes to the Mastodon experience as such, because

it's been hard to make that transition for users.

They're not sticking around.

I think what they were probably all hoping for

was a relatively similar experience to that of Twitter.

They were looking to kind of fill the void

in the value that they were getting from the

feature set that's been popularized over at Twitter.

But Macedon largely just doesn't offer it, or doesn't offer

it in the way that the users have yet found

to satisfy what their need was from before.

And this is why they're either quitting social media or

many of them are flocking back over to Twitter.

So this really underscores the level of

importance of nailing the product experience.

And what's interesting here is that Twitter

doesn't really have dramatically complicated tech.

In fact, there are many programming languages like

starter courses like Ruby on Rails, which is

something that I took many years ago.

That part of one of the larger but earlier projects

that they actually have you do to really get familiarized

with the language is building a Twitter clone.

I mean, if you think about the

tech that goes into making the Twitter

experience, it's really not all that complicated.

As such, I'm surprised that another platform has yet to

kind of take the reins here because this is a

golden opportunity to satisfy a bunch of users who are

frustrated by what's going on at that social media company.

Yet it really still has yet to happen.

And I would point to the largest reason for

that not happening is that user experience, the usability.

So this really underscores the level of importance.

There something that might not seem as important from

time to time, but when we see lessons like

these, it really underscores its level of importance.

So this is why, to me, the aesthetic

or the user interface is not as important

anywhere near so as the user experience.

Because despite this golden opportunity, right,

mastodon has yet to capitalize it.

And largely I feel it's because of

the difference in the user experience, because

Mastodon's is significantly more complicated.

So I know the two of those

concepts are often talked about together.

People often refer to them as UI UX.

In fact, there's usually slash in between

them whenever either one is mentioned.

And I feel like they are dramatically they're

significantly different enough to the point where they

largely probably shouldn't be lumped together in the

same category because I've seen great UIs with

terrible UX's and vice versa.

So it's really important to nail UX and

in the way that they reflect that.

UI is always mentioned first, and

I feel like that's a mistake.

It always should be user experience first because

you're creating the right type of user experience.

Something like this would not happen.

In fact, Mastodon had every opportunity in

the world to scale here really aggressively,

yet it's failed to happen.

I think l...

Car manufacturers like BMW and Mercedes are getting aggressive in charging customers subscriptions for features that are already built into the car itself.

I want to talk about the outrage this has caused and where the line actually should be from a product pricing perspective.  We'll also talk about the history of where it came from.

Related article - https://adguard.com/en/blog/subscriptions-cars-mercedes-netflix.html

If you want to reach product-market fit faster, sign up for my free 5 day email course here - https://nxtstep.io/fit/

Episode Transcript
Hey, folks, Sean here.

And today what I want to talk to you

about is a developing trend in pricing in the

automotive industry, where car manufacturers are charging you for

features that your car already has via subscription and

the outrage that that's causing.

So if you're unfamiliar with what's going on here, automotive

manufacturers like BMW are charging people for heated seats to

the tune of $18 a month, an extra $10 a

month to access the heated seats steering wheel.

Again, both of those features already in the car.

And car manufacturers like Mercedes are charging well over

$1,000 in order to make the car faster.

Now, these transactions are relatively

new for the automotive industry.

Previously, especially when it comes to features

and hardware your car already had, you

would be charged extra for that.

I mean, they might be in the base

price, so the pricing might be handled differently.

But car prices also haven't gone down.

What they're doing is they're still increasing

the prices of the base vehicle itself,

plus all the features, and then they're

adding subscription fees on top of that.

And that's really adding some serious insult to

industry, especially given the current economic conditions.

So I want to talk about how this is

a strategy has led to pretty significant backlash from

consumers thus far, but at the same time, people

still appear to be paying it.

I want to talk about the history in terms of

where this came from, what this means for the future

of the industry and what we can learn from it

from a product pricing perspective, in terms of what's fair.

Like, where would we draw the line

when it comes to something like this.

Because in certain instances, I might be able to

see it, but in others it seems pretty outrageous.

Like charging you for features your car already has.

Plus we can talk about the history

in terms of where it came from.

I know I've been beating them up a lot in a

number of my videos, but Tesla in the early 2010s created

an infrastructure and network for Ota, which is an acronym that

stands for over the Air updates, which actually add quite a

bit of convenience to the consumer experience.

And a lot of people rave about this.

It's where they have the ability to

essentially kind of update your vehicle.

But over the air, as in receiving an update

like your phone or your computer might, doesn't require

you have to take the car to the dealership,

which I would argue improves the consumer ownership experience.

Now, I might be willing to pay

more for that, but in reality, that's

something they're doing to upgrade their fleet.

So perhaps that should just

be built into the experience.

Now, in addition to that, and around that time frame,

tesla was also providing people with the opportunity to purchase

extended range for several of their models, which meant that

you'd be able to drive further in a tesla model

because you've unlocked some additional range.

Now, similarly so to what I've already described about what

BMW and Mercedes and other companies like that are doing,

the car already had that functionality, but you needed to

unlock it in order to access it.

So this has been going on for a while,

and I should say Tesla somewhat kind of popularized

this model, or tested it, if you will, and

other manufacturers have taken note of that.

Plus, add to that the advantage from a

financial perspective in terms of setting up and

establishing recurring revenue has been very attractive and

made popular by SaaS applications and a number

of other largely successful businesses well tooth.

And these manufacturers have taken note of that, tried

to figure out how they can leverage it into

their model and add it to their world.

This is where this stuff has come

from, and that's the history on it.

Now, despite the fact that

it works for certain businesses.

The question here for me is really, does

it apply in this industry or should it?

Because there's been a lot of backlash from consumers

talking about, I'll never buy BMW, I'll never buy

a Mercedes, because they are doing these things.

Unfortunately for them at the moment, people are paying

a number of these different fees to these manufacturers,

which is likely to mean that they're going to

continue with them, at least to a certain extent.

But what I want to talk about is what the future

of that might look like and how they may be able

to modify it to a certain extent and figure out a

better line in terms of what's fair and what isn't.

I'm also curious to get feedback

from you on it as well.

So I want to talk a little bit about where the line

is here in terms of what might be fair and what isn't.

Now, when it comes to certain research and development

that these automotive manufacturers have had to incorporate in

terms of improving the ownership experience and giving your

car advanced functionality, I could understand in certain instances

what that might look like.

And I'll give you an example from mine.

So I own a Jeep, and there's two ways in which

you can actually start the Jeep, some Jeep vehicles remotely.

There is the ability to do so from your

key fob as, and you've just pressed the mechanical

button on your key fob that will start it.

But you need to be in physical proximity

of the vehicle, probably like up to 100ft

away, probably no more than that.

And in addition to that, they have a you connect

application that I can operate from my smartphone, which sends

a signal over the telecom network, which ultimately will go

to my vehicle as well, too, meaning that I can

start it from much further away.

So if I was a mile away from my

car, I can start it via that technology.

Now, in the case of Jeep, they're charging

you for the latter, not the former.

So my key fob will work.

I can use the remote start, but I need to be

in certain proximity with my vehicle if I want to use

that You Connect app, I have to pay for that.

That comes as an annual subscription.

And remote start is not the only thing that it offers.

Now, in this case, I had

it when I purchased my vehicle.

It came with it as an incentive, but it expired and

I haven't renewed it because I haven't really needed it.

It's not something that I use all that regularly.

As such, I didn't see a

need to spend that additional fee.

And also because if I need remote start,

I'm probably in close enough proximity to the

extent where I can just use the Fob.
...

You need to be careful with how you handle product pricing discounts.  If you aren't, you could create a PR nightmare like Tesla has recently.

Let's talk about how they created this mess so you can avoid it.  Plus we'll get into how you should manage it instead to avoid this situation altogether.

If you want to reach product-market fit faster, sign up for my free 5 day email course here - https://nxtstep.io/fit/

Episode Transcript
Hey, Folks. Sean Here.

And today, what I want to talk about is

how NOT to manage price discounts for your product,

with an example provided by Tesla and the recent

discounts that they've provided and the PR nightmare that

that's caused, especially in China.

So if you're unfamiliar with this story,

Tesla has more recently been steeply discounting.

Several of the models that they offer all over

the world to the tune of thousands of dollars

in some markets, and in particular, customers that have

paid need for the tesla vehicles before these price

discounts went into place are very upset. Why?

Well, because the discounts are not applying to them

in any form of refund or anything like that.

So, as you can imagine, if you were one

of these people that purchased a tesla at its

previously higher price, in some markets, considerably higher price,

you probably wouldn't be very happy to learn that

all of a sudden, they produced that price by

thousands of dollars, and it doesn't apply to you.

Now, in certain areas of the world, in particular

in China, this has become a total PR.

Nightmare where their customers that have

paid that higher price have been

storming their stores and vandalizing them.

Because how Tesla has treated this situation and

the fact that they're not offering them anything,

in fact, it all feels pretty poorly planned.

And the execution does as well.

So this is among some of the risk

that you can experience if you're going to

start offering discounts for your product.

And that's why I say it really

is important with how you manage it.

Because if you don't, it can turn into a PR.

Nightmare like this one.

This is the last thing that you want to see. Right?

I understand that they're trying to incentivize

selling more vehicles, but they didn't execute

that plan well, especially in China.

Now I want to talk a little bit about

the difference in the markets as well, too, because

the Chinese market is different than the American market.

And what I mean by that is,

in China, they leverage a different model. In China.

They Have A Direct Sales model, which We

Don't yet have here in The United States.

But it seems like things are

kind of pushing in that direction.

Although it's undetermined when something like that

might apply in the United States.

But in China they have a direct sales

model, meaning that price transparency is very high.

So everyone could see where your

price is and where it's been.

That means that you need to treat how you manage

your price differently in the Chinese market than you do

in the American market, where there's a dealership network.

The dealership network is kind of like the

wholesale retail model, where the dealer, the manufacturers

provide the vehicles for a price to the

dealership, and then the dealership has some price

flexibility in terms of what they want to

charge from there based on market conditions.

And they can manage incentives and

all that type of stuff.

So American consumers are accustomed to there

being some of these incentives that come

and go, incentivizing them to purchase at

different times and things like that.

So the way you manage the process in

the American market should not be the same

as how you manage in the Chinese market.

And that appears to be what Tesla essentially has

done here, where they kind of just rolled out

the same strategy in both markets and no previous

customers are happy anywhere but in China.

They're particularly upset because

it's very, very uncommon.

So you really need to be careful how

you manage price discounts for your product.

In fact, I would really never would like to see

you offer price discounts, but if you are going to

do it, you really shouldn't have to do it if

the value is high and the value is strong.

I think that's really some of the underlying fundamental

issues that are going on here at Tesla.

But if you are going to manage it, you

need to make sure that you manage it well.

Otherwise you could create one of

these PR nightmares for yourself.

So I want to talk to you about how

you can manage this process much better than Tesla

has to avoid this PR nightmare that you might

experience yourself as well, too, if you want to

get creative with your pricing for your products.

And in particular, this applies when you're talking about

discounting your product and how it applies with managing

relationships with your previous customers, who you should be

taken care of as well too, because they should

be brand ambassadors for you not going around telling

everybody about how they got shafted by you, which

is probably what these Tesla customers are going to

be doing. And it's going to cause

untold brand and reputation damage.

So that is not worth it at any price.

But if you do want to get creative with

how you're managing your pricing, in particular, you want

to offer discounts, but you want to do them

in a creative way, in a way that works

for everybody, you've got to get more creative with

how you manage your relationship with your previous customers.

Now, I've seen other product companies try to do this as

well, too, and it always creates a form of backlash.

So you have to expect that because people have

paid a higher price, then you're all of a

sudden charging for the product right now.

So you need a story to be able to share

with them or something to provide for them that's going

to make them feel okay with the situation, like grandfathering

them in for whatever they had paid previously.

Like, for example, if you wanted to offer

additional services or you wanted to switch to

a subscription model or whatever it is, however

you're changing your pricing model, right?

If you want to do that, then you need to

manage the process with your existing customers in a different

way than you're managing it for everybody else.

That's completely new to your product.

That's where you can make a clean break.

So whatever they've paid before, if that was

expected to include whatever features and upgrades you

were going to add to your product moving

forward, you should manage it that way.

So you have to bifurcate how you're managing this basically

subset of customers in order to minimize the backlash that

you're going to get from making these changes.

Now, everybody understands and expects there to be changes

to products and product companies along the way.

That's something customers, for the most part, are

relatively familiar with, but they're not looking for

you to take advantage of them.

That's going t...

Tesla has dominated the electric car space in recent years, but recently their performance has gotten worse, much worse. 

Let's talk about what's changed and what we can learn from their story about how to avoid a similar situation they find themselves in currently.

If you want to reach product-market fit faster, sign up for my free 5 day email course here - https://nxtstep.io/fit/

Episode Transcript
Hey, folks. Sean here.

And today, what I want to talk to

you about are the reasons behind Tesla's meteoric

rise and subsequent fall in recent years.

From a product company perspective, So if

you're unaware, things haven't been going well

for Tesla as of recently.

They've been steeply discounting.

Their vehicles and their stock prices have been on a

long, slow slide for the greater part of a year.

Now, I want to talk about the reasons for that.

And this might come as a surprise, because we're all

kind of used to seeing a lot of news about

all the successful things Tesla has been doing.

So I want to dive into some of the things

that have been, I think, leading indicators into where they've

wound up performance wise at this point, because most people

are expecting Tesla just to continue to rise.

Now, there are any number of factors for that, but

I've read a number of recent articles like one from

Business Insider, which in my opinion, essentially knocks Tesla in

an area which is the most damning.

If you ask someone like myself and that's

they're considering Tesla to be essentially just another

car company, I think that's the most insulting

thing you can say to Tesla.

Or I should say the most damning thing you can

say to them and probably the worst case scenario for

them and everything that they've been trying to avoid.

And I'll explain what I mean.

I think Tesla's original,

essentially value proposition.

And A Key Part Of It wasn't as Much

Of Being A Car Company, it Was More Of

Being A Tech Company as and they Were promising

features you really Couldn't Get anywhere else.

And that was part of the value

and why consumers were buying it.

They weren't just buying it because

it was an electric car.

You could still get electric cars from other companies.

But the rise of Tesla was nowhere near

like some of the other major automotive manufacturers.

But where else were you going to get the

cool self driving tech and things like that?

Where else were you going to get an electric

car that performed better than a gas vehicle?

These were things that Tesla had done and figured

out that made their value proposition, in my opinion,

a lot stronger, which enabled them to bring the

electric vehicle as a viable option to the mass

market, which is something that, in my opinion, previously

had not been done.

So Tesla gets a lot of credit for that.

And I would consider them to have first mover

advantage in this case, which is a huge deal

if you make the commitment and the investment there.

From a product company perspective, that

can be very rewarding for you.

And thus far it has been for Tesla.

Although recently they've continued aside.

So I want to talk about what's changed since

then because things seem to be going particularly well.

I Think There Are Two Key Things That Have Changed

in terms of Tesla's trajectory, which has led to their

more recent slide and why they fall off.

And the first is that major automotive manufacturers have

figured out how to become a tech company before

Tesla's figured out how to become a car company.

They want to talk more about this one first,

and that is that Tesla gets beat up by

things like Consumer Reports all the time.

People are constantly tearing apart their build

quality, what the service experience is like,

and a number of other things.

Consumers complain about it a lot

on the web as well too. So if you do a little bit of

research on what Tesla ownership is actually like,

it's not all sunshine and roses.

That's a big difference and a real problem

for Tesla because that means they're losing essentially

what once was their competitive advantage.

Other automotive manufacturers have seen the fact that the

electric vehicle essentially is somewhat established on the mass

market at this point, and they see an opportunity

to capitalize on that because they have most of

these other things figured out that Tesla still has

yet to really figure out.

So the second thing that I want to mention is

that Tesla in many ways has over promised and underdelivered

on some of the key features that made them so

attractive, like, for example, self driving technology.

Now, most of their customers would probably say that

the self driving technology has experience, is nowhere near

what it was once promised to be, and it's

been continually promised over and over again.

And the can kind of keeps getting kicked in terms

of when that experience has ultimately come available for the

people that have invested in it already, and they've invested

real dollars and a lot of money.

It's been an expensive proposition for a

while now, but yet that experience really

hasn't been delivered upon as such.

That creates another frustrating experience.

And at the same time, just like I mentioned

previously, other automotive manufacturers are making big waves and

a lot of progress in this area as well. Too.

So Tesla seems to have kind of gotten out over its

skis a bit in terms of what it thinks it was

going to be capable of versus what it actually is.

So what can we take away from this case study

thus far for those of us involved in building product

companies to make sure we don't fall into similar traps?

Well, the first is be

careful over promising and underdelivering.

If you're promising something from a product experience perspective

to your customers that ultimately you're going to struggle

to deliver on or you aren't sure whether or

not you can, don't make that promise.

You need to keep that until, from a

solution design perspective, you have the level of

confidence to state that it is something that

you're ultimately going to be able to provide.

And by a certain period of time, because if

your customers are expecting it and they don't get

it, especially if you're charging for it, which is

something Tesla has been doing, that's going to put

you in a really bad situation.

And that's where Tesla finds itself today.

And the second is if you are lucky

enough to have benefited from first mover advantage,

you have to continue to innovate.

Because if you aren't, other people are going

to have the opportunity to catch up.

And that's exactly what's happened to Tesla.

So far, ford, GM and others have had the opportunity

to catch them in the market because they've been able

to figure out problems tesla has yet to conquer.

As such, that's made Tesla's life a lot more

difficult and the competition that much more fierce.

People have been educated and trained by Tesla because

they've had this first mover advantage, which is expensive

and ti...

Most product development processes don't consider ROI, but it's probably the best way to improve the effectiveness of this process for your product company.

Let's talk about how to find your customer's bottleneck and what that means for providing them and your company with more value.

If you want to reach product-market fit faster, sign up for my free 5 day email course here - https://nxtstep.io/fit/

Episode Transcript
Hey, folks, Sean here.

And today what I want to talk to you

about is my favorite way to get more of

an ROI out of your product development process.

And it starts with finding what

I refer to as the bottleneck.

So if you're unfamiliar with this as a concept, you

can think of a bottleneck almost if you're like, going

over a bridge and you have to go through a

toll, usually it goes from many lanes down to a

few lanes as you go over said bridge.

Now, that is kind of visually how you can

think of of what is a bottleneck, right?

It goes from high traffic area to a low traffic

area or vice versa, as in slowing the process down

considerably because you are funneling what was moving much more

quickly or in higher volume into what's ultimately going to

move a lot more slowly or much lower volume.

Now, that is a good visual kind

of understanding of what a bottleneck is.

But to understand what it means from a process

perspective, the same thing happens when your customer may

be trying to do something much more quickly, but

something in that process, any given step, like going

through a toll of a bridge, for example, is

slowing that process down.

They may want to get from A

to B much faster, but they can't

because something's preventing them from doing that.

And that thing that's preventing them

from doing that is the bottleneck.

So if you're trying to level up your product

development process, a great way to be able to

do that would be to, through research with your

customer, better understand and find these bottlenecks in their

process that are slowing them down.

Now, in order to be able to do that,

as I mentioned, you need to do the research.

So you need to speak with them and you

need to talk to them about not what they

want necessarily in the future, but what's preventing them

from getting what they want right now.

Focus on historically what they've tried to

do, what's worked and what hasn't worked.

That'll give you a much better idea for where

they need the most help and what may be

the biggest bottleneck in their process to date.

So if you start with that approach, it's going to

enable you to find areas of opportunity to turn.

What I refer to is problems

worth solving into solutions worth building.

So let's talk more detail about what happens

when you help them make this transformation.

Now, to me, by far the most exciting part about

following a process like this is it enables you to

calculate the return on investment built into the process.

And that's something that doesn't happen a whole lot.

In terms of the clients that I work with trying

to help them level up their product development processes, what

gets built is often not based on ROI or customer

value or even value for the business, which sounds weird,

but it happens a whole lot.

So what I love about this process is it's

straightforward in going from the customer's problem, looking for

the best area of opportunity to try to improve

their situation and quantify it along the way.

That's going to be important as

we figure out how much value.

Ultimately, building that solution to eliminate said

bottleneck is going to provide for them.

Because if that number is high enough, that's going to

enable your product or your company or both to be

able to generate more value as well too.

In terms of if your customer is getting a

high enough return on investment, in terms of that

new solution that you're providing for them in the

form of your product by eliminating this bottleneck, that

may give you the ability to generate more revenue

through your product, which is going to increase the

value of the product and the company as well.

So that's the most exciting aspect of

this and that's essentially how it happens.

So if you go from understanding what the bottleneck

is, which again, just to summarize, is figuring out

the type of progress your customer is trying to

make, understanding what is specifically slowing them down and

trying to make that progress, as in they want

to move faster, but they can't. Why can't they?

You need to figure out what that is

and that's where you're going to laser focus.

But you also at the same time need to understand what

the impact of them not being able to move faster is.

This is where you start to get

into the ability to quantify it.

So if they tell you, well, we could move ten

times faster if we eliminated this step or solved something

related to this step, that's great, but what outcome is

that going to enable them to achieve?

If you can ultimately figure out what that outcome

is going to enable them to be able to

achieve, like, are they going to reduce how much

time gets invested into this process across an entire

team or the organization by 90%?

If so, that leads to a huge number.

As you start to quantify how much we're talking about in

terms of what you would need to pay that team in

order to do and how much time they're going to get

back, or maybe it enables them to charge more, right?

Whatever it is you want to drive towards

the successful outcome, eliminating that bottleneck is going

to enable them to be able to achieve.

So if you've found one, that's

great, but don't stop there.

You have to keep going until you get greater context

for understanding what eliminating that bottleneck is going to mean

for them, as in what transformation are you going to

help them be able to make once you know that

you have a better understanding for the value that they

will get if you prioritize building this solution.

So, like I said before, if you move from

what we've uncovered in eliminating this bottleneck is a

problem worth solving into a solution worth building.

You want to understand what type of outcome

that's going to enable them to achieve and

what type of return on investment they're going

to get as part of this process.

And if you understand that, you understand how to quantify

the value the customer is going to receive if you

provide them with that solution through your product.

And if you do that as well too, and that

number is high enough, that may give you an opportunity

to generate more revenue through your product because of how

much value you're providing them, which makes your product more

value and your company more valuable.

So this is one strategy that I use on a

regular basis which can provide pretty immediate results in terms

of how to level up your product development process and

build return on investment into the process itself.

Free Email Course - https://b...

Prioritizing design over function for your product can actually make it harder to validate your value proposition.

Let's talk about why design isn't critically important and why you should focus on experience more than anything.

If you want to reach product-market fit faster, sign up for my free 5 day email course here - https://nxtstep.io/fit/

Episode Transcription
Hey folks, Sean here.

And today what I want to talk to you

about is something I call the beauty trap.

And that's where people prioritize the design of

their product over the function of the product.

Now, why I consider this to be a trap

is because if you make your product look great,

that can actually motivate people to gravitate towards it.

As in they'll start using it because it looks

great, it's attractive, but ultimately a lot of people

might stop using it because your product isn't providing

them with kind of value that they need.

And that could be misleading in the beginning because

if people are using your product but ultimately stop

using your product, or worse, if you're not paying

close attention to how consistently people are using your

product, you might not know that ultimately it's not

performing all that well.

Even though people are using it, they're

not getting value out of it.

And that's what really matters.

That's why we always prioritize the function over the

aesthetic, but that can be misleading in the beginning.

Let me talk about this in a little bit more

detail and compare the two and also share an example.

Now in the beginning, what I actually recommend people

do, especially with early stage products, is almost focus

on not making the product look great.

That sounds weird, but let me explain as in

not prioritize the design, but instead prioritize the function.

The reason why I recommend this is because prioritizing

the design can be tricky and can enable you

to fall into what I call this beauty trap.

As in if people are gravitating to your

product for the wrong reasons, that's actually going

to be misleading for you, cause trouble.

Further down the road, we see this

strategy leveraged successfully in other industries.

For example, some logo design or web design companies

will present early stage designs but do so in

grayscale or not add photos so that they can

make it easier for their customers to focus on

basically the function that they've created first, the type

of experience that they're going for.

Because if they put beautiful photos up

there, beautiful colors and all that type

of stuff, it can be misleading.

As if people can see it be like, oh this looks great.

But they might be only evaluating it from

the perspective of the design, not the experience.

And ultimately what matters most is the experience.

That's how you really avoid

falling into the beauty trap.

So in the beginning when you're creating the

early stage versions of your product, I would

actually recommend you stay further away from particularly

advanced or beautifully aesthetic design elements and instead

focused almost exclusively on the function.

As in instead of making it look great, just

make sure it does what it needs to do

and it's okay if it's rough around the edges.

In fact, in the beginning I would almost recommend

that you make it that way on purpose.

Why because if your customers are willing to

jump through extra hoops to use your product,

even if it doesn't look great, that means

a whole lot for the longevity of your

product and ultimately how successful it can become.

Because that means your customers are willing to put up

with a little bit more trouble now, because that pain

that they need solved by your product is that important

for them, giving you really good long term indicators that

your product can reach really great success at scale as

you are trying to figure out product market fit.

So if you remove the design elements in the beginning,

that can prevent you from falling into the beauty trap.

It also enables you to be able to

ship a product faster, because you don't need

to worry about it looking great.

You just need to make sure it does what

it needs to do in terms of whatever painful

problem your customer has, they need solved.

Make sure that the function for

your product ultimately solves that problem.

And it's okay for it to be a little rough

around the edges, especially in the beginning, because, again, we

don't want it to be misleading, and we don't want

people using it for the wrong reasons.

We want them to have to jump through an

extra hoop if they need to in order to

get that problem solved and be able to measure

whether or not they're actually doing that.

If they do, that's a really good long term indicator.

Now, let me show you an example of a

really successful product that has, in my opinion, really

never looked great, giving you a little bit more

confidence that a strategy like this could be successful.

And the site that I'm going to use as my example,

which I'm also going to pick on but complement at the

same time as Craigslist, if you're unfamiliar, it's one of the

most successful ecommerce websites out there to date, and I'm going

to share with you some performance statistics for the site as

well, too, to back up my claim.

But have you ever seen craigslist or used it before?

There's not a whole lot going on.

It's pretty basic.

In fact, it almost looks like to me, a site

that was designed and built in the 1990s, but the

site still looks like that today, I promise you that.

But it's very easy to use, and for its

hardware market customers, it solves their problem very effectively.

I've used it many times myself.

If you need to sell anything to anyone, and

relatively quickly, without needing to jump through a whole

lot of hoops in order to get that listing

online so that you can get down to business

relatively quickly, craigslist is undoubtedly your site.

So let's talk a little bit more about the

performance statistics and success that craigslist has had.

So I can prove to you through the

numbers that they really haven't needed at a

very beautiful design and really highly prioritized aesthetic

in order to achieve this level of success.

Now, according to statistics about Craigslist from similar web,

they generate hundreds of millions of visits each month,

at least hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue

every year, and are still considered to be one

of the most successful, if not the most successful,

ecommerce website of all time.

So despite the fact that this website still looks like

it was designed and built in the 1990s and really

does not have a lot going on from a design

and aesthetic perspective, it has been ridiculously successful and still

continues to do so to this date without having updated

to really change the design all that much.

Still very simple, still very basic, does what

its target market customers need to do and

because of that, it's been hugely successful.

So let this be an example that your product does

not need ...