14 years running little businesses and 3 books about my learnings along the way. Tweets about the career path of entrepreneurship & the business of indie books.
Catalonia
- Tweets 4,475
- Following 637
- Followers 16,850
- Likes 2,501
I missed screencapping the magic moment of 1k exactly, but finally got into four-figure reviews. (Also now selling 1k copies per week, which is also rad.)
Much love to everyone out there who is fighting the good fight of trying to bring their ideas into the world. Keep at it.
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I think it's been about ten years since something of mine has shown up on the HN homepage, so this is neat :)
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🚩After a two hard years of writing, learning, testing, beta reading, and refining, it's nice to see that #1 flag :)
⏳Currently in preorder. Full access and paperback from Monday July 5th: amazon.com/dp/B0983HFQX7
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Two weeks of nonfiction royalties from two short books. Going strong (and growing) after 7 years. ~160k/year.
Software scales, but books require no maintenance, no costs, no support.
Royalties are the purest passive income. Here's the design process: writeusefulbooks.com
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If anyone is interested in how this works under the hood, drop me a note -- am putting together some notes on designing books for strong word of mouth and am keen for a few more eyes to offer a sanity/bullshit check.
Not all best sellers happen immediately. It took @robfitz 6 years to hit #1 in small biz and sales on Amazon 🎉
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2023 royalties for my first two books landed at just under $20k/mo, almost totally hands-off (was on paternity leave).
If you've been thinking about a book, this is your friendly reminder that they're still worth writing, so long as you write them right. usefulbooks.com
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Readers pay for nonfiction twice:
- first with the money to buy it,
- then with the time to read it.
For most professionals, the second is orders of magnitude higher than the first.
Design your books to maximize value per page, not number of pages.
Not all nonfiction books need to be 300+ pages long. It’s perfectly fine to publish a concise 100-page book, rather than stretch it and repeat the same thing over and over to fill up what has apparently become the necessary length to be considered a “serious book.”
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Rich people love giving the advice to shoot for the moon, but I found it fairly hard to be ambitious when I couldn't afford food.
Entrepreneurship is a career path, not a company. You can secure your finances with something more reliable (ie., not hypergrowth) and *then* go big.
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Just finished a huge rewrite of the new book (about designing and testing nonfiction like a real product) and have started the (hopefully) final paper review.
Shipping out to early-access readers on Monday👀
Grab a copy and help me make it better at writeusefulbooks.com
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Sometimes an industry is so broken that the only way out is to jump right in.
So, I'm delighted to now announce the Useful Books publishing imprint: writeusefulbooks.com/imprint…
And huge congrats to our first authors, Adam & Bob, on hitting #1 New Release: geni.us/coffeechats
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Every book is a workbook if you write in it.
And why not?
Books aren't heirlooms that you're supposed to preserve forever in mint condition.
They're made for you to learn from. Get in there. Strip-mine them for knowledge. Make a mess. Make them yours.
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If you're building services, a simple idea that I'm pretty sure would be wildly successful:
—Accountants for ADHD business owners (personal + biz accts)
More checklists, check-ins, sync calls, & hand-holding. I already pay crazy fees for my accountants, and I'd pay 2x for this.
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I made a series of five brief videos (5m each) about how The Mom Test and customer development change when you're forced to do it remotely. The first video is an summary of the overall approach, and then we get tactical: piped.video/watch?v=bcWqxq2f… #custdev
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Stick to the plan and keep showing up, for longer than you think you'll need to. It's an underutilized approach and, for certain challenges, the only one that works.
On showing up as a strategy: robfitz.com/c/living/on-show…
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A little framework I've been tinkering with for picking the right ideas *for you* (as opposed to the optimal ideas for a spreadsheet).
(Basic structure is also helpful for cofounder calibration convos, founder mentoring, and hiring.)
More details: robfitz.com/c/writing/the-sh…
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It's wild to hear parents complain about TikTok.
Audience building is arguably the _most_ valuable career skill for kids to develop.
They're practicing & learning it as passion project in their free time, and parents want to stop it instead of embracing it as teachable moment.
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avoid starting a business with anyone who gets more excited about understanding investors than they do about understanding customers.
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Another lovely conversation with @csallen about books, product design, passive income, learning, and teaching.
(And your listening experience will perhaps be heightened by hearing that Courtland was wearing his finest, fluffiest bathrobe at the time.)
👂 indiehackers.com/podcast/223…
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When you're competing with (and losing to) a blank, unlined notebook...
Reminder that effort != outcome ;)
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An attempt at understanding the context and picking the right tool for the job: Validation Quads v0.9.
Partial explainer: robfitz.com/c/writing/custom…
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Figured out nice hack to cut through the noise and BS of learning email mktg:
Just add "Brennan Dunn" to whatever you were already going to search for.
I'm actively trying to learn & literally *every time* that I've found an actionable, canonical answer, it's from @brennandunn.
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Whenever I read one of these aspirational company culture docs, I'm reminded of when I spent a week writing one (while believing I was being fully authentic) and then asking our first employee to review it & tell me what she thought. She said, "Well, I'd sure like to work there."
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The cat has been overseeing the final touches to the website for my 🎉NEW BOOK🎉
It's about creating more useful (and profitable) nonfiction by applying the modern tools of product design & testing to the old-school world of writing.
Dreaming of a book? writeusefulbooks.com
ALT A kitten (named Couscous) standing on its hind legs between my keyboard and monitor, watching the screen as I code and debug the website for my new book.
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"My friends were like, 'Why are you selling this for $15? This is *way* too cheap!'
And I was like, no, if I raise my prices, no one's going to buy. And then I raised it to $39 and then $49, and funnily enough, people continued to buy."
—@JanelSGM (piped.video/-VBeAE5l1AA)
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Everyone's in such a hurry to stop doing this sort of grunt work, but @pg was still cooking himself when I went through 2.5 years later.
My dad used to say, "The owner is the janitor."
(Also, the pictured benches would tip over whenever the person on the other side stood up.)
For the first couple years, I did the cooking at YC. This is me making a last-minute vegan dinner for Evan Williams when he came to speak. Twitter hadn't been founded yet. He was there as the founder of Blogger. I remember he gave a really good talk.
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As all comms shift to video, everyone on earth is gonna need to learn the same lesson as early tech VCs: that many of the sharpest people are also kind of goofy and discombobulated.
And that judging ideas by aesthetics (of either presenter or presentation) is huge disadvantage.
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If you've ever got questions I might be helpful with (e.g. Mom Test or whatever else), ping it to rob@robfitz.com and I'll send you back a video reply: piped.video/channel/UCOC7QFJ…
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Any recommendations for a good guide on helping people through the transition from a sync/meeting culture to an async/documentation culture?
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Every time I use mailchimp to send an email, I end up wondering how many human-life-equivalents worth of hours they've erased with their ridiculous UX.
(Nine minutes so far just to delete all their cruft and get to a blank email. It's very likely the worst product I still use.)
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Idea selection matters a lot, but so does idea *rejection*.
Ideas are never good or bad in a vacuum, but only good or bad *for you*.
First filter: do I legitimately enjoy hanging out w/ this customer segment? If not, everything gets harder.
More soon at piped.video/c/robfitzpatrick
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The *wrong* way to write a book is exactly the same as the *wrong* way to build any other product: to do it all in secret.🙈
You want to start getting feedback—real feedback—the moment you suspect that the core value is in place, long before you've polished or beautified it.
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Hiring a professional to narrate your audiobook is like hiring a cover band to record your album.
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Finally realized I had ADHD just recently, at 37.
Loads of past failures (biz, relationship, personal) made sense.
Started fixing it ~3 months ago. Big part of that was working w/ ADHD coach Dr. Larry @EnableTables
Oct 21st, he's joining for a live Q&A: lu.ma/larryjones
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I love seeing this ;)🦜🏴☠️
Designing my books in a way that converts "piracy" into "free marketing" is something I intentionally work toward. It's discussed a little bit in Chapter 8 of Write Useful Books:
Have you ever pirated a book and then it was so good you bought it out of pure respect That was me w the mom test @robfitz this book is pure heat. Thanks for the rec @cunninghamkaito
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The first $1 of revenue from something new feels so much more uplifting than $1,000 from something that already works.
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Instead of preparing list of X detailed questions, better to prepare just *3-4 crucial learning goals/topics.*
Keeps you on track w/out denying ability to improvise, go w/ the flow, & dig deeper into surprising off-script signals like strong emotion or intuition-breaking remark.
One reason most customer interviews kinda suck is that the interviewer goes into the customer conversation with a structured list of questions and his/her goal is essentially to go through that list of questions in 30 minutes & to diligently capture notes to share with the team.
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Wondering about visibility bias in “audience-first” advice…
Two equally successful builders: one makes product that grows; other builds audience to whom they sell prod.
Both give good advice. Yet you’ll hear from the audience-builder far more often, cuz they have the audience.
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Such a pleasure to read about pg's meandering, curiosity-fueled career path: paulgraham.com/worked.html
Some people seem to enjoy having (and are able to execute on) a clear plan, but I'm firmly in the "just do things that excite me" camp of career planning.
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If you're anti-Amazon (or just pro-Rob), you can now buy books from me directly: store.robfitz.com
It's brand new, so if you try it and it breaks, please let me know ;)
Bulk discounts of up to 35% kick in automatically if you want a bunch of copies.
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Latest book has been out for 6 months now.
$49k royalties thus far👇
-Preorder: $4,042
-Month 1: $2,430
-M2: $4,254
-M3: $5,028
-M4: $6,300
-M5: $5,645
-M6: $8,319
-Subscription (community): $12,901 ($1,729 MRR)
Most importantly: growing.
Full writeup: robfitz.com/c/living/first-6…
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Entrepreneurship is a career path, not a company.
Compound your resources, insights, and connections over time to turn previously impossible opportunities into easy wins.
The tipping point for me was somewhere between years 5 and 8 of steady grind. Play the long game.
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Lovely project by @tracy__henry pulling all book recommendations (40k of them!) from HN comments: news.ycombinator.com/item?id…
Some delightful hidden gems in there.
(Also psyched to see Mom Test at #1 of recent business recs and #6 in recent recs overall: hacker-recommended-books.ver…)
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I've struggled forever balancing deep work v. email upkeep.
Finally making real progress, in big part thanks to the ass-kickery of @amyhoy's 📘Just Fucking Ship.
Main change is making progress more tangible (while ascribing more purpose to it).
Details: robfitz.com/c/reading/refram…
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Customer: "Hmm, interesting, but I think I'm happy with how we're already doing things."
Founder: "No no, I must be doing a bad job of explaining it; what you need to understand is..."
Customer: "(sigh...) Oh wow yeah it's great. I've, uh, got to go now..."
Anyone will say your idea is great if you’re annoying enough about it. @robfitz
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Big thanks to @AlexAndBooks_ for the lovely review. A fun thing to see on a Sunday afternoon😅🌞
(And also so cool to to be able to see a few of the highlights. The bits that resonate with any given reader are almost never what I expect.)
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We all love describing new products w/ same lofty, aspirational (ie vague) language used by big companies.
But customers already know what big companies do! If you're unknown, descriptive is better.
Same applies to book title/subtitle. Who is it for & what will it do for them?
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What makes nonfiction tick as a profitable standalone product?
We're digging deep into the process, promise, and payout with best-selling author and all-round wonderful fella @arvidkahl
piped.video/8zA6jZQ8uwo
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Writing a useful book is like being paid to design your own PhD program.
You gain a perfect excuse to talk to the smartest people in the field that most excites you, and to go as deep as you are able and willing.
Yeah, it takes time. But so does anything worth studying & doing.
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My biggest revelation about books-as-products was via Godin:
"Publishers make >90% of their profit from books they published more than 6 months ago. And yet they put only 2% of their effort into promoting & selling those books."
Longevity + recommendability ⇒ impact & profits
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"Hi I'd like two hundred sugar cubes, held together by egg whites," said the first person to order a meringue.
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Manuscript complete! Final PDF should be shipping out to my 300 wonderful early-access readers on Monday🤞 and paperback/audio shortly after that.
(Now I just need to finish the layout, illustrations, typography, website... Big week!)
writeusefulbooks.com if you want it!👈
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One of my biz mistakes was the skype tagline "let's start with the assumption people are amazing", autocropped to "let's start with the ass"
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Best way to finish a book in 2024 is to get started in 2023 ;)
From Sept 18, I'm teaching a 6 week course covering everything I know about designing nonfiction as a long-lasting, recommendable, modern product.
If a book's been on your mind, come join us: usefulbooks.com/
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Just finished the final proofed text for the new book by @hailpixel and I, the Workshop Survival Guide. If you ever find yourself thrown into teaching or facilitation, perhaps you will enjoy it. Should launch in 1-2 weeks. Get a preview and reminder here: workshopsurvival.com/
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One of my favorite talks that I've ever given was about taking a long-term view of the bootstrapping career path.
And thanks to @skmurphy, a transcript exists.
I've been trying to write a book about this forever. In the meantime, hit the link: bootstrappersbreakfast.com/2…
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Today is my 35th birthday and my new book just launched on Amazon. (It's about designing and teaching great workshops). Perhaps you or someone you know would enjoy it? workshopsurvival.com (Coauthored with the mighty @hailpixel)
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The real fun is when it starts happening so often that you have to turn it off ;)
The nicest thing about book revenue is it's *truly* passive. No server maintenance, no bugs, no security crises, no support reqs. It doesn't scale like software, but also doesn't have the fuss.
My Apple watch vibrates whenever I sell a book on Gumroad. This morning has been vibration-heavy. Just now, 3 buzzes within one minute.
Selling books is fun.
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Finally found an entrepreneurship newsletter that I don't regret subscribing to. Y&F's notes are surprising, insightful, and brief. Loving it: younglingfeynman.com/subscri…
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I'm still making little videos answering questions about The Mom Test. (314 subscribers bling bling.) They are good!
Today we're talking about how to use customer discovery as a way to find ideas, how it can go wrong, and how to find the good ones. piped.video/yCGi1k5DB9s
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@andreasklinger Can you recommend any good guides or resources for non-US founders raising money (mostly) remotely? Or is it still a huge uphill battle with no good solutions?
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The "time cost" of marketing has always felt so painful, but it turns out I was just doing it wrong.
Working on the new marketing chapter of @hey_wub with @arvidkahl, and learning loads about becoming able to see (and use!) the content that's already there.
Huge time leverage.
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Hope that 2021 either provides what you need, or that you manage to extract it in spite of everything trying to stop you.
We celebrated the fresh start with a polar bear swim in the local waterfall. The snow has melted away today, but the water is still straight up chilly ⛄🐳
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Which books to read to continue learning after The Mom Test? Depending on what you're struggling with, I suggest: Never Split the Difference (Voss), This is Marketing (Godin), and SPIN Selling (Rackham). Here's why: piped.video/7Jqkft8O1lY (w/ thanks to @cryptopwincess for the Q)
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Is there a worse UX experience than joining a new slack group after you already have an account?
Can't even count the number of groups I've been forced to abandon after slack refuses to recognize that I'm me.
Would love to read a case study which justifies their UX decisions.
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Write stuff that you'd be proud to have on your bookshelf forever.
To thine own shelf be true.
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Ship side projects w/ smartest friends.
Coding is safest option-creating foundation (~like law used to be).
For more opinionated path, genetics feels like reasonable bet on future.
Whatever you do, learn audience building. Email, blog, TikTok, YouTube, Twitch… It's core work.
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Drinking in the eve disturbs your sleep. Drinking in the afternoon tires you at work. Drinking in the morning just makes you feel fabulous.
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Now that the book is out there, I'm shifting my attention to the digital bonuses and extra resources.
First-time authors: what's still missing from these checklists that's got you worried or uncertain about the publishing process?
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I built my first community!
135 active members (49 paying monthly, others grandfathered in w/ one-time payment). So ~1k MRR (and has added +33% to pre-launch book profits).
I don't have all the answers! But I'll tell you what I did, what I worried about, and how it worked out.
How we dream of communities coming to fruition and how they are actually built are two very different things...
Join @DruRly, @robfitz, and @dqmonn to hear real stories about how they're building communities from the ground up.
Register here: lu.ma/startingcommunity
ALT How we started building community at Community Camp on June 28 at 1PM PT
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A major source of founder misery is falling in love w/ a beautiful idea that doesn't align w/ your current goals.
Hypergrowth is a long, all-in journey. If your goal is to be free, retire early, or provide for the family, pick an idea optimized for that.
piped.video/watch?v=ADv_l0BT…
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Exactly. Is about value-per-page, not wordcount.
Adding extra wordcount to extend reading time is like adding extra delays to page-load to extend time-on-site. (Hint: gonna backfire.)
Books are like any other product; deliver the value people paid for as quickly as you're able.
I knew it!
Support self published books, fight word count inflation
Great start by @robfitz on writeusefulbooks.com/
PS: Not planning on writing a book (yet!) just want to learn more about how to write better
ALT Brevity is another reason to self-publish. Many publishers will require you to hit a certain word count, even if that means padding the book with asinine anecdotes and fluff. (Ever wonder why so many business books seem like a strong core surrounded by vacuous garbage? The publishers require it.)
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Made a thing for authors: writeusefulbooks.com/amazon-…
Amazon is super weird about rankings. You can hit #1 and they don't even tell you, & there's no record of it afterwards. So you gotta get lucky noticing the right store at right moment.
This makes sure you never miss good news☺
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It's like going to the doctor: the patient describes their pain, the doctor proposes a solution. If the treatment doesn't work, then you iterate and try again. It would be just as silly for the patient to prescribe the solution as for the doctor to guess the pain.
"The Mom Test" boils down to "you aren't allowed to tell people what their problem is, and in return they aren't allowed to tell you what to build" @robfitz
momtestbook.com/
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If you wanted to write a book this year and were waiting for a sign, this is it.
Beyond the guide, you'll join a community of 70+ incredible nonfiction authors & two weekly events.
In fact, a Writing Accountability Group kicks off in 40 minutes. Get in: writeusefulbooks.com/
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Super common trap which catches so many founders (myself included, many times).
I was writing about this today (in a slightly different context) for my upcoming book-book.
It's all about the empathy.
(PS: ping me if you're working on nonfiction and I'll send you the draft.)
One of the most emotionally draining things I do is help founders write better sales emails.
It's *amazing* how much energy founders put into avoiding seeing things through their customers' eyes.
As a 'bootstrapping community', we're responsible for enabling this.
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A lovely visualization of an important idea from @skmurphy
My take:
😓All doing = silent martyr.
🦜All talking = vacuous charlatan.
🏗Doing + talking = value and serendipity.
🥠Or as a one-liner career strategy: "Make things and tell people." It works.
skmurphy.com/blog/2019/04/03…
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The web version is already free, so I can give you that right now ;) helpthisbook.com/robfitz/use…
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Had a rare chance to dig into how @shl views the business & career path of creators.
- Timing vs. timelessness
- How to think about VCs/Publishers/Universities
- Scaling by caring
- On selling a $10 product for $130 profit
Whole convo is time well spent: piped.video/watch?v=4c_66MoW…
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1/ Start w/ Audience Profile: what they already know & believe, why they're there, what they take away.
Then outline major Learning Outcomes to lead them to that outcome. (2-3 for talk, 3-5 for workshop, 5-10 for book)
On top of that foundation, can make useful slides/prose/etc
I’m on a quest to record how to explain things super simply.
What are the main methods and frameworks for teaching at a really fundamental level?
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Selling a million copies (of anything, and especially books) is crazy hard. Had chance to learn about it from legendary @nireyal
Spoiler:
🐳Curiosity, not commercialization
🎁Sharing & teaching, not creation in secret
🔭Invest time in original research
📺piped.video/watch?v=XaE2iaEh…
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Where is the entrepreneur brave enough to bring back gas-powered roller skates? The world is ready this time [1961].
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Michele knows her stuff on custdev. She has a slightly different interview style from mine (a bit more structured), but it's extremely effective.
Give her new book a look if you're looking for additional advice on running your customer convos👀
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Custdev convos way more leveraged than you'd think.
Few hours of the right conversations will often "return" savings of 100+ developer-hours and month+ of runway (plus whatever equity/dilution that runway represents).
Gotta do the convos right, ofc, but that's learnable.
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Had funny experience w/ a publisher who said, "We'd love to publish it, just add 20k words since business books are always at least 50k."
I asked to see the data showing that larger books perform better.
He said, "Oh, we don't have any data. We've just always done it that way."
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Also true for products, books, business partnerships, cofounder relationships, and a whole lotta other things.
A bit of chit-chat doesn't feel especially "businessy," but it's where strong foundations get built (and where big mistakes get avoided).
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One of the under-appreciated benefits of shipping.
There's an elite club of insight and access hidden in plain sight. It's open to everyone in the world, and all it takes to join is for you to make useful stuff and put it out there.
Creating my own product helped open up so many doors for me. Personally & professionally.
More of my heroes are now my friends and I'm still stunned about that.
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Pitching is fine when pitching is the goal.
The mistake is just in pitching when you're trying to learn.
Once the pitch begins, deep learning ends (i.e., data becomes binary and/or noisy).
(If you're in a situation where you want to do both, just learn first, pitch second.)
.@robfitz recommends that you shouldn't "pitch" your business idea to customers.
Instead you should ask questions to learn about their needs.
BUT(!) what if I talk to people in multiplier positions, who have the potential to spread the word about the idea to customers?
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I never really figured out how to run engaging/impactful online workshops.
But I did teach enough mediocre online sessions to have a few thoughts on the challenges, tools, and opportunities.
6m vid, if that's your thing: piped.video/watch?v=lFV6ps9q…
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In Mom Test (2013), I claimed that remote custdev never works.
But these days it works _so well_, thanks to a broader cultural shift toward treating vid calls more seriously.
Quick five-part explanation (can skip the first vid if already read the book): piped.video/watch?v=bcWqxq2f…
Just finished this and wondering if the ”to communte or to call” section is still valid. Haven’t we become much better in calls, what do you think @robfitz ?
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Same applies to VCs. If you're in a negotiation without the ability to walk away, then you aren't negotiating, you're begging/hoping.
You can walk away in two ways:
1)You have other offers
2)You're able & willing to do it on your own without them
Always secure your alternative.
1/ Don't sign with a publisher before you have any leverage.
Publishers are extremely good at making a big book go bigger, and they are wizards at exploiting the fame, platform, and reputation of an already well-established author.
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A common trap @paulg has mentioned (esp. for new founders) is to optimize around chasing approval (ie. compliments, media, investors) instead of finding the most direct path toward building the business. The approval arrives sooner and is reassuring, but can become anti-progress.
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Not just possible. Optimal ;)
@aprildunford described it as writing something a busy founder or executive can finish on a flight: piped.video/EItZl7kleeI
@jboogie puts reading times on the front cover: piped.video/4F2j1o7esSc
It's about value-per-minute, not pages-per-dollar.
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Can't wait to share the final version -- the latest round of Beta Reading and revisions gave me all sorts of important things to fix and improve. Real reader data is a dream.
Handed manuscript off for final editing two days ago -- finished book should be shipping early June👀
@robfitz's manuscript nonfiction guide Write Useful Books practices what it preaches: it's extremely clear, action-guiding, and not a word longer than it needs to be. I highly recommend it if you want to write a useful book!
writeusefulbooks.com/
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When I was a young whelp of a founder, I always sort of imagined @amyhoy as Professor McGonagall, stern and wise, chastising me through the magic mirror of the internet with great anger (fueled by deep care) to nudge me toward the right path. An honor & delight to be involved :)
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