Escape Velocity

Sam gives an update on Build UI nearly three months after launching lifetime memberships. German talks about how his course launch went and considers what to focus on next.

German talks about finishing recording all lessons for Testing LiveView, sending an email update, thoughts on team pricing, and setting a soft dealing of Tuesday May 16th for launching the course. Sam talks about his first full-time week on Build UI, how lifetime purchases are going five weeks into the launch, finding the businesses new baseline revenue, how to get more content out, and whether video summaries are taking too much time away from making more videos.

German shares how his progress with Testing LiveView has felt like a slog. Sam helps him remove his second-guessing and encourages him to keep shipping. They also talk about what might be next for German after he finishes launching Testing LiveView. 

Sam gives an update on Build UI's new Lifetime Memberships. He talks about last week’s spike in sales thanks to tweets by prominent people in the community, and then follows up by saying he’s really interested to see what Build UI's baseline looks like after the launch week.

Sam shares an update with German about his decision to remove subscriptions from Build UI. They chat about why lifetime memberships are more aligned with how customers use content sites, the psychological benefits of one-time sales vs. the burdens of fighting churn, the decision to use an early-bird price, how lifetime memberships help narrow Sam's focus to more a consistent schedule of publishing YouTube content, how many lifetime sales are needed for Build UI to hit escape velocity, and more.

Links:

- Designing the Ideal Bootstrapped Business with Jason Cohen
- Build UI's lifetime membership

German gives an update on his video tweets and progress on his Testing LiveView course. He talks about how his current pace feels unsustainable, which led to him feeling stressed during the week and snowballing into doubts about the course. Sam contrasts his energy level and productivity this week (bad) vs last week (good) and reflects how exercise and a good Monday can set the tone for the entire week. He then shares updates on finishing another Build UI lesson and trying to create a dashboard to better understand subscriber churn.

German talks about using this week's episode as a deadline for his weekly work, and how he cut scope to make that happen. He also sets up a plan to prioritize his Testing LiveView course work for next week. Sam talks about how he launched a new Build UI course and published a YouTube video using focused 90-minute sprints. He also talks about adding one-time purchases to the site.

German and Sam chat about whether or not they truly want to hit escape velocity, the psychology of creating businesses, and how complacency and fear play big roles in stopping progress.

Sam also talks about recording and sending a new free video to existing and prospective customers, and German gives an update on publishing more short-form Twitter videos (some which relate to his course) and progress on Testing LiveView. 

Sam talks about recognizing that he should bail out of complex demos earlier in the week if they're taking too long, and shooting something that's further along in order to hit his deadlines. He also talks about balancing the benefits of serendipitous free-form discovery vs. sticking to a deadline. German talks about staying consistent with his Twitter videos, gives an update on his course progress, and his plans for using material from his course for his Twitter content.

Resources

• Testing LiveView
• Build UI

German and Sam chat about the constraints of short-form content and the benefits they bring. They talk about expanding content from a core lesson into sharable short-form clips for different platforms like Twitter and YouTube Shorts. German gives an update on the progress of his Testing LiveView course and Sam shares an update on Build UI's subscriber growth.

Resources

• Testing LiveView
• Build UI

Sam talks about sharing his Tailwind course from Egghead on Build UI, and making a sub-10 minute YouTube video that performed well.

German talks about how there's 10 weeks left for his course re-release based on his initial appetite, how he should approach email, and his goals for the upcoming week.

- Build UI
- Testing LiveView
- Matt Pocock's 2022 in review