Hey Product makers!🎄 What's the hardest part of your job?🤯
Alexey Shashkov
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Bogomil Shopov - Бого@bogomep
Threat Modeling e-book
Believing in myself maybe :)
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FromNotion
Bonboarding
Getting motivated and sit down to do the work...
When you're your own boss, there's no one to tell you what to do, give you deadlines. I find it difficult to get as much done on my own projects as otherwise would be a piece of cake when working on other projects as a freelancer.
FromNotion
@johnnyfekete Yeah, man! I totally understand! I am familiar with this problem very well. =)
How do you handle it? What are the best practices for you today?
Bonboarding
@shashcoffe I have a couple
- have an accountability buddy, who checks on you and your progress periodically
- plan ahead for the day, so you never have to stop and think, what's next (that's when I end up on Reddit and Twitter and start procrastinating)
- and I use an app called Focus that disables certain websites and notifications while I'm trying to focus ☺️
but even with all that, I still feel I could do better
FromNotion
@johnnyfekete Jhonny, I absolutely understand.
I'd love to chat with you about this on a Zoom call if you have time.
1. Conveying your new idea exactly to your team the way it is in your mind. Without the wireframes and designs.
2. Aligning designers, developers, and marketing teams.
FromNotion
@rajat_dangi1 Rajat, how do you convey your ideas to your team without visuals? And how do you align designers, devs, and marketing teams? How the process looks like?
Threat Modeling e-book
@rajat_dangi1 @shashcoffe Aligning designers, developers, and marketing teams is the thing I do best :)
FromNotion
Flowmapp
Probably working on holidays
FromNotion
@avserafima Hey Serafima=) Why is that the hardest part for you?
You're forced to work, and you don't want to?
Flowmapp
@shashcoffe Yeah, sometimes it's harder to keep the pace and push forward when everyone around you is relaxing and playing three all-time-favorite Christmas songs :)
And what about you?
@shashcoffe @avserafima That's only one part of the problem. Another is that people around you don't get it. Some people don't understand that some tasks are time sensitive and unpredictable.
Part of our family told us we shouldn't work on Christmas Eve and help with preparations instead. Yes, we wanted to help, but we got featured so spend a day on PH and social media. But at the end, we had a nice evening with family too.
You can't always rest when you want to.
FromNotion
@avserafima Haha=) Now I get it=) For me the hardest part is to find the problem worth solving=)
FromNotion
@klavikova What brilliant thoughts, Kamilla!
Adadot
Prioritising!
FromNotion
@alexharris Hey, Alex! Prioritizing is one of the hardest parts of my work too. I understand. How do you do that working on Adadot? What are the best practices for you?
Adadot
@shashcoffe For product we estimate complexity vs impact. For the rest of my list I am only allowing myself to prioritise 3 things from my list a day and tackle in order.
FromNotion
@alexharris An interesting approach! I'd love to chat with you about that on a Zoom call. What do you think? Let's have a conversation to get to know each other and add us to our networks?
Planning a Sprint and reduce the backlogs
FromNotion
@rushikesh_kavathekar Wow! These are common problems in product management.
Rushikesh, can you tell me more about how you plan your sprints and prioritize your backlog?
@shashcoffe Hi Alexey, I like to keep things simpler. Backlogs and Sprints have to go hand-in- hand. Thus, prepare some goals in a Quarter for the product and then, go ahead for it. Also, the main point here is listening to customers first before planning any feature list. They will tell you what they really need. Don't put your dream feature in your sprint list until an unless, you fulfilled basic customers needs.
FromNotion
@rushikesh_kavathekar I totally agree with you, Rushikesh!
How do you listen to your customers? What do you do about that? What’s the process?
@shashcoffe Its simple connect with them via surveys, chat and call. If you're having larger customer base, then collect each input via data points.
FromNotion
@rushikesh_kavathekar Go it. How often do you call and chat with customers/users?
Databar.ai
Making product decisions - so many things we want to build and not enough time!
FromNotion
@david_abaev1 Hello, David. Thanks for answering.
That’s a good problem! I’m really curious how do you make your product decisions? How do you handle it?
Databar.ai
@shashcoffe I think it's difficult to give a general answer since each problem has it's own nuances, but the one question we ask ourselves often is 'what are we as a company the best at and will this feature contribute to that?'
This way we split the nice-to-haves from the must-haves - makes things a bit easier :)
What about you? Curious how others do it also
FromNotion
@david_abaev1 Thank you for the answer, David.
I usually try to estimate the potential output of each task and how long it will take to implement. Just an empirical analysis. But I have a feeling I'm doing it wrong.
Why don't we have a Zoom call and talk more about that?
Databar.ai
@shashcoffe Interesting, yeah I think everyone does it their own way, most important is that you ship :)
Sure, let's have a call! Do you have telegram? could be easier to schedule there
FromNotion
@david_abaev1 David, I try to rely on mined data. I do user research, extract insights, and make decisions on that data. It's not easy but I'm practicing.
Notesally 2.0
One problem that I am baffled with (at the moment) is this: How can I get early adopters for my SaaS product?
FromNotion
@vivek_ganesan This is one of the most important questions that I am personally looking for an answer to.
I think the best way to find early adopters is to observe potential users with pain points in the communities, talk to them about their pain points, and the most desperate of them will be the early adopters.
What do you think, Vivek?
Notesally 2.0
Getting the first paid customer is always the hardest!
FromNotion
@hemantwarier Hi, Hemant! I totally agreed. How did you do that for NotesAlly? What’s your way?
Notesally 2.0
@shashcoffe LinkedIn Campaigns, SEO and running PPC Campaigns on Capterra
FromNotion
@hemantwarier That makes sense.
Hey Alexey and fellow product builders!
Let me give you my version based on the current hardships.
So here I'm with a few friends trying to build something that would actually matter! There's always excitement and so much brainstorming happening. But the main issue that we found was execution.
We keep making our Scrums and adding so many tasks to it, but the funny thing in building a product is that you might complete a few tasks every now and then but that is overcompensated by the addition of multiple more tasks.
We sat down and discussed what made us lag in the execution and came to the conclusion that we needed more hands-on deck. Now being bootstrapped as we are at a very nascent stage in our product life cycle, we obviously had to think hard if we could afford to make a few hires or not. A week after running through numbers we finally did decided to go ahead and build the squad, right!
Until now I was under the impression that execution was the hardest part of my job. I thought that the solution was hiring a few more people to work with us. Little did I realise at that time that the solution would evolve into becoming harder than the initial hardest part of my job :)
Now I spend most of my time screening through applications and getting on calls with these potential hires, which kind of makes my scrum board look stagnant; and the irony is that when I do finally find somebody that's a good fit, they never show up when its the day of joining.
It's funny how after reading through the comments of others I find my hardest part of the job to be the easiest.
Cheers guys!
FromNotion
@shashcoffe So I am still experimenting in multiple ways. One of which is outsourcing work to other agencies, but trust me, that hurts the pockets. But what I have going on right now is making my first hire.
And guess what?
.
.
.
Our first hire is going to be an HR. So I guess that should help with the current issue at hand to a great extent.
Fingers crossed!
FromNotion
FromNotion
@shashcoffe soooo sorry for the delay. Need to start checking into PH more often. With regards to your question I think for me best practices are:
1. Creating my own deadlines and milestones
2. Tying the goal to some sort of theme/campaign/goal/system
3. Consuming content by others doing the same thing as me e.g.entrepreneurial articles, or videos.
4. Leveraging the 'Value of Delight' e.g. using my notion workspace which I love. Or listening to a certain playlist to get me in the zone.
FromNotion
Finding new clients. Any tips you can share?
FromNotion
@m_kamrani Hey, Mohsen! I’m glad to see you here! Why did you decide to start that site?
@atulghorpade Hi Atul, I'm starting an open-source site dedicated to pre-seed startups with and the priority is absolutely with pre-revenue startups.
If you're interested will let you know as soon as the very first version is up.
FromNotion
@atulghorpade Hi, Atul. No, I don’t give tips=) But how do you find new clients now? What are the best practices for you now? What have you already tried?
@shashcoffe Hey Alexey. Same here mate. I just felt the need and wanted to help pre-seed startups, but cannot spend much time on it atm as we're gonna start our beta with utopiops next week.
@shashcoffe I only tried Reddit and got my 1st client from there. Nowadays, looking for more methods such as cold emailing/calling and more.
Nothing to add more. :)
Marketing our product and finding new users.
FromNotion
@rosie_higgins_grapevine Hello, Rosie. Nice to meet you!
Yeah, that are common problems, especially in the early stage.
How do you market your product and find new users? What's your current way to do that?
@shashcoffe nice to meet you too! I suppose part of the problem is we haven't done that much of it yet, as we've both been focussing on building the product. But so far we have used forums, Product Hunt, Linkedin and introductions from connections/ outreach to our own contacts. We have a lot that we can improve I'm sure!
FromNotion
@rosie_higgins_grapevine I think you’re doing it well, Rosie! Good luck with your product!
FromNotion
That's a tough question. I guess it's explaining why we're leaving out some features and not implementing them. One tries to maintain a certain approach to design while maintaining good relationships with customers.
As developers and designers, we make decisions for the users. These decisions greatly influence what the app will be.
We think about problems and how to solve them so that the solution is not only functional, but also easy to use. We emphasize simplification.
Sometimes the problem needs to be investigated further because it may be elsewhere than it appears. People are usually not aware of where the problem is. I myself have a difficulty figuring out where the heart of the matter is, even though it is an important part of my job.
Sometimes a feature just doesn't fit our vision. Other times, we feel like it wouldn't make sense at the time.
But what happens is that we change our minds and a few weeks later we come up with a solution that fits into the existing system.
Then we get back to those people that we've solved their problem.
We welcome feedback. It makes us look at problems from a different angle. And other times we wouldn't even know there was a problem. This results in a way better solution for everybody.
FromNotion
@klavikova Kamila, I really appreciate your comprehensive reply! You’re the best!
What tasks and processes take up most of your workday? What do you do most of the time working on the product?
@shashcoffe Thank you 🤗!
I spend most of my time on design and promotion. These two areas are very intertwined and can't be completely separated.
Lately, a few hours of my time are taken up by social media and various communities where I try to spread awareness about OrgPad and related things.
Then I serve as a support to the team. I'm studying how different things work. I organize our joint documents. I keep track of product ideas so that they don't fall through the cracks. I find ways we can be more efficient in different activities. In doing so, I'm testing the app.
There's always more work, but there's still the same amount of us.
We also discuss what needs to be done at the moment, how the app should work, ideas for promotion and so on.
It has changed a lot. I used to do a lot of programming and not much promotion. The reason is that now we have different priorities. And would be different three ago.
FromNotion
@klavikova Got it!
Kamila, why don’t we jump on a Zoom call and chat a little about your work on OrgPad? I’m curious to know more about you, your experience, and add you to my network.
@klavikova Thank you for sharing, it's something I also struggle with sometimes, I'd love to say yes to every request, I've found that by having a public roadmap this can help as it illustrates where development time is being spent.
What do you find helps to explain to customers when a requested product feature may be a few months away or will never be built?
@shashcoffe With pleasure! Let's discuss details in DMs on Twitter.
Having to keep a 9 to 5 job in the early stages. Also, sales! Finding the first few users that will kick-start the iteration process
FromNotion
@jonathanm Hello, Jonathan! Oh, how I understand you! How do you handle it? What’s the best practice for you to do that?
@shashcoffe haha have you been there? I feel like the mindset is key!
Knowing that any big endeavor takes time no matter what. So it's ok to set small, realistic, clear and short-term goals for the long-term vision.
Then, every goal reached is extra motivation for the next one :)
FromNotion
@jonathanm For sure, I’ve been there many times! =) So I totally understand you.
Sales :(
And, I hate when I don't know what to do next... since I have no one telling me what to do, I have moments where I simply just don't know what to do next to move my business forward... I hope my answer makes sense and is helpful towards whatever reason you are asking Alexey.
FromNotion
@minal_at_openelevator Hi, Minal. Yes, your answer makes sense. I have the same problem. Let’s have a zoom call and chat about that?
@shashcoffe Sure Alexey. Do you want to book something via my calendly link? https://calendly.com/minalopenel...
FromNotion
@minal_at_openelevator Cool. Done. See you soon, Minal!