Remember this from Cards Against Humanity?

Knowing what to do is always the hardest part in business. After all, if you just knew those first two steps, collecting the money is easy, right? Well, you’re in luck, today I’m going to give you the steps to profit. 

Let’s jump in.

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Know Who You’re Talking To & What They Want 🎯

Recently when a good friend and very successful entrepreneur, Jeremy Minnick, showed me a very early version of his most recent project. It was a good direction, but the idea wasn’t formed enough to create a successful SaaS business because the audience wasn’t clearly defined, so the messaging was unclear. 

I took a look at the project and started asking him some questions:

1. Who is your audience?

2. Why would they use your system when there are so many competing, well-established similar projects already out there?

3. Your product is very broad. Is there something you could do that would make it specific to this audience that no one else is doing?

4. The product name is very broad and it doesn’t speak to your audience, is this on purpose?

5. What are the features that your specific audience would use more than anything else? 

6. Are there features for your audience that are easy to build that no one else is doing that would be easy to create?

7. I know you work a lot with this audience as a developer, are there integrations into industry-specific systems that you could build that no other similar system has or would ever have? 

8. Are there groups in this niche whom you know that would be distribution partners? Are there features that would make them work with you over every other system?

The questions above are just a sample of our conversation, and after talking through all of this he decided to stop working on the project and rethink the idea from the bottom up. A month later, he sent me a link to the same project with a new domain and a very specific focus for a very specific group. Now his project had legs. It hasn’t taken off yet, but at least it has a chance now. 

The lesson here is that you have to know who you are going to serve, how you are going to serve them, and why they are going to buy your stuff over everyone else’s. Once you have that, then you can move on to the hard part.

Jeremy’s latest project, GatherQR, is a QR Code system focused solely on the association and conference space. His tool is still in Alpha and not ready for use yet, but he took me through the functionality and how he is going to be selling it to his target audience. I am happy to say that he is already making substantial inroads and has beta users lined up! A year from now, I wouldn’t doubt if he is the primary QR tool used in this niche.

Do The Hard Things 🔨

“Start with the bananas!” my daughter told me last night as we were cooking dinner. The problem is that we were making a salmon. She always wants to start with the things she likes - honey, sugar, croissants, bananas; no matter what we’re cooking. 

But this isn’t terribly different than a lot of entrepreneurs I’ve met and worked with. People like to work on the fun stuff. No one likes to do the hard stuff, especially not first, but most often that's the most important thing to do. How often have you gotten halfway through a project only to peer into your project management system and find it a jumbled mess? Don’t worry, it’s not you, it’s everybody, including me. But this is the difference between the companies that get to that mysterious 3rd step and everyone else. They do the hard stuff first. 

This is stuff like:

• Writing out a project plan and getting it into your project management tool

• Working to thoroughly understand your customers and completely validate your offerings

• Pre-selling even when you’re not feeling 100% about your product just to prove that others find it valuable. 

It’s a simple lesson, but an important one. Even though you want to do the fun stuff first, you have to do the planning and the hard stuff. Like me, a lot of people in SaaS or software development love working on the product, but at the expense of everything else. They don’t want to go to market until they feel like the product is great, not realizing that a lot of people will find value in and pay for the basic functionality if you let them and incentivize them.

So do the hard stuff, the stuff you don’t really want to do, because that’s what makes the business work.

Focus 🔍

Thirteen months ago, my friend Matthew Newton from Leatherback Travel and I talked about what to do about some of the brands he was building. 

In the message he sent to me yesterday, he said: 

First off, I was very excited to hear this! Giving people business advice is my job, but it’s also nerve-wracking because I give notes from an hour or two-hour call. While I am usually right, it’s not like I have been in the business for years every day the way they have, so it’s great to get news like this.

When New Revenue Is An Illusion 🏝️

The lesson here is focus. Focus is hard when there appears to be a lot of potential for more revenue. But it’s an illusion. If your foundations aren’t solid, it’s just a house of cards. So focus on what’s working and do it until you have the systems in place and you either succeed, pivot, or realize that the direction you’re going will never work.

Most of the time when you actually focus, you succeed. You figure out what systems need to be in place until you have a business that works, you’re connected to the demand, and revenue is growing. 

All that said, make sure to meet with mentors and other entrepreneurs quickly to help you realize if your business model is going to work before going too far down the path.

Know who you’re talking to and what they want + Do the hard things + Focus = Profit. 💰

Turns out there were four steps, not three. Maybe that was the problem? Now you know, at least broadly, what you need to do to get to profit. Clearly, there are a ton more steps involved in this, but it’s a good start. 

Other Cool Things: 🧊

A great AppSumo deal is available for a few more days

I bought this one a while ago and I use it a lot. Minvo is used for taking longer-form video and turning it into short clips. The way it works is that their AI ‘watches’ the video and selects the sections it thinks are most important, then automatically builds the clips from there. You can go in and edit from there.

Entrepreneur Burnout & Tax Strategy

I was very fortunate to interview Corin Woodmass on my 'Every So Often Podcast’, entrepreneur and M&A advisor, on his experience with burnout and the mistakes he made trying to go back to work too quickly. We also delved into one of our favorite topics, saving money on taxes. If you want to know what to do when you’re burnt out, how to plan your time off, and how to save some money doing it, this is a great podcast for you.

Product Owner Looking For Work

Hira Hamid is the sister of one of the best UX/Product Designers I have ever worked with. Bushra was the Product Designer at Experience Care that I headhunted to come join the team. She reached out to me a month or so ago asking if I could post about her sister Hira in my email. Of course, I said yes. If you’re looking for a senior product owner, you can learn about her experience here.

Whenever you're ready, here are some ways we can help you:

Grow Your Sales - At Experience Care, we 10X’d sales in one year. Let’s see if we can do something similar for you.

Improve Your Product UX - We can work with your team to implement a product UX system, process, and team that will decrease churn and increase sales.

Application Scope of Work & Financial Forecasting - How much money will you make and how much will it cost to build and operate a new application or SaaS business? We can help you understand your capital outlay and ongoing costs.

Build a Strong Product & Development Team - To hire the right product and development teams, you need to understand what makes a great designer, developer, and product owner. We can find the right people for your team, assemble them, get them building your application, and even manage them for you

Refine Your Messaging - Many SaaS businesses don't properly convey what they do to their users and get them to the 'ah ha' moment fast enough. We can rework your messaging to improve customer acquisition quickly.

That’s it for this week. Thanks for the read and I would love to say “see you next week,” but we both know that’s probably not happening with a new baby in the house. So, see you next time!

Jason Long